Online Updated for virtual and in-person classrooms
What are the adjustments that teachers can make on an everyday basis to increase equity, access, rigor, and engagement for all students? What are the dispositions, skills, and actions needed to differentiate instruction, online and off?
Overview
Differentiated Instruction Made Practical builds educators' abilities to differentiate instruction as a part of their daily classroom routines, whether online or in-person. By using a four-step teacher decision-making framework and implementing structured classroom routines rooted in research on cognition and motivation, you will increase equity, access, rigor, and engagement for all students. This program will prepare you with the agile thinking required to analyze problems of student learning and then make decisions to adjust and differentiate instruction within the given time and curriculum constraints.
Modifications to Support Diverse Teaching Environments During the Pandemic
The course content and completion deadlines have been fully updated to help you utilize the tools of differentiated instruction in online, virtual environments as you adapt to changing teaching conditions.
Course Details
Students come to the classroom with diverse experiences, understandings, interests, strengths, and needs. This program will teach you why and how to build differentiated instruction into your daily habits as a teacher and the daily routines within your physical or virtual classroom.
Differentiated Instruction Made Practical will provide theory and practice for both engagement and rigor, with an emphasis on sustainability for instructors and deep, durable, and flexible learning for all students. Through videos, readings, personal reflection, and online forums, you will experience differentiated instruction for yourself as well as learn methods for implementing these techniques in your own classroom. You will learn and practice agile teacher decision-making, such as when and what kind of help to provide, when and how to use group work, and how to offer student choice. You will learn how to adjust instruction through practical classroom routines designed to ensure all students, including those on the edges of academic achievement, are engaged in meaningful learning.
View the course outline for additional information on course sessions.
Online Course Schedule
Please review the course schedule to ensure that you and your team will be able to participate fully in the course, the average time commitment is about three to four hours per week.
Module 1: How will we learn through this online course? (1 week)
Module 2: Where are the parts of every lesson that teachers adjust to meet learner needs? (2 weeks)
Module 3: How do teachers know when to adjust instruction? (2 weeks)
Module 4: Why do teachers adjust and differentiate instruction? (2 weeks)
Module 5: How do teachers provide differentiated help that fosters student independence? (2 weeks)
Module 6: How do teachers differentiate instruction by offering students options on a choice continuum? (2 weeks)
Module 7: How can the impact of differentiated instruction on student learning be measured? (2 weeks)
Objectives
- Learn the theory and methods of differentiated instruction and how it can serve all learners including English language learners, students with disabilities, and students needing further challenge.
- Practice adjusting instruction through a practical four-step method designed to help you better meet the needs of diverse learners.
- Begin to measure the impact of differentiated instruction on student learning and ensure alignment with established standards in your system.
Who Should Participate
Teams of 3-6 are encouraged and should be able to try out course ideas with students/learners in classrooms or other learning environments. Teams should also be able to meet synchronously, in person, at least once a module to engage in group-based activities.
Individuals are also invited to apply; they will be placed in a virtual team with other people who have enrolled as individuals and will be expected to meet synchronously (via phone call or video conference) once a session. We will strive to group individuals with others who are in the same or similar time zones; if this is not possible, exceptions to the team meeting requirement can be made.
Teams can be comprised of classroom teachers, instructional leaders, school leaders, administrators, and other educators in a variety of settings (e.g. museums, after-school programs, and other informal learning contexts, etc.). Team members can come from within or across schools or organizations.
