Differentiated Learning Strategies

1. Differentiating by interest

2. Differentiating by learning profile

3. Peter (Comic books) - Peter loves comic books. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of every character to ever grace the pages of DC Comics. Whenever he has a spare moment, he doodles pictures of Batman and The Flash on the inside cover of his exercise book.

4. Strategy #1: Student will reinterpret the text read in class as a comic strip. They will be told to pay attention to each stage of plot progression and keep characters true to the way they are represented in the original text. This will hopefully work well with this student as it will allow them to reimagine the story in a medium that they already enjoy.

5. Strategy #2: Student will write a short report comparing two different characters from their favourite comic. They will have to apply the same skills as are being taught in class to a comic of their own choosing. After they have completed this, the teacher can use this report as a reference point in future. For example, when discussing characters in the in-class text, the teacher can use the characters from the student written report as examples.

6. Christina (ELL) - Christina has recently moved to our school from a Chinese local school. Her English is good but not native level. She works very hard but it takes her a little longer than the rest of the class to finish reading passages and she sometimes finds it difficult to interpret meaning in written passages.

7. Celest (Visual Learner) - Celest processes information visually. She is very interested in visual arts and excels any time I give her a video or design project to do such as creating a magazine cover or filming a book trailer.

8. Strategy #2: Student can be encouraged to download a grammar app for their smartphone so that they can test themselves at home. Apps such as Grammar Up provide students with the ability to take quizzes and create their own quizzes and flashcards. This will help build confidence when it comes to grammar which will then in turn help with her reading comprehension.

9. Strategy #1: Use visual charts to help student organize thoughts. Student can create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast characters. This will allow them to organize the similarities and differences between characters in a way that is easy to process visually.

10. Strategy #2: Create an inforgraphic using Piktochart or a similar website. This will allow the student to present information in a visually pleasing way that is also organized in a way that is easy for them to process.

11. Learning objective: Students will be able to describe and compare the characteristics of one character with another character in the book.

12. Differentiating by readiness

13. Brian (Sports) - Brian is rarely seen wearing anything other than a Barcelona FC football top. Although he seems to enjoy my class, I am well aware that he would rather be outside playing basketball.

14. Strategy #1: Student will complete trading card template for characters in the text. The template will have spaces to fill in different characteristics in a similar way to baseball and soccer trading cards list the statistics of players. Student will make a deck of cards for all characters in the book and keep them for future reference.

15. Strategy #2: Student will be paired up with another student who has a similar interest. In pairs, they will make a short video where one student interviews the other. One student will be playing the role of the interviewer; the other will be playing the role of a character from the book. Students will be told to conduct this in a similar format to a post-match interview with an athlete.

16. Henry (Gifted Student) - Henry consistently gets very high scores in external tests. He often finishes his classwork before others in class and has a tendency to then distract others from their work if not given another task.

17. Daren (Underachiever) - Daren is a very bright student who consistently performs well in outside testing of his reading and writing ability. However, he has become very apathetic and withdrawn in the past year due to a tragic loss in his family. He has failed several units in my class due to lack of effort and organizational problems.

18. Strategy #1: Student keeps personal reading log that the teacher checks on a regular basis. Student can be encouraged to find other texts by the same author or to explore different texts that cover the same themes. They will then apply skills taught in class to these texts in a reading log. Teacher will regularly check reading log and provide feedback.

19. Strategy #2: Use choice boards. When providing students with projects for formative assessment, the teacher will provide several different options such as “Make a poster” “Make a book trailer” etc. One option can be “Your own idea”. Gifted students could potentially come up with their own project in conference with the teacher. This will allow them to push themselves further by attempting a project that is more challenging than the rest of the class could handle.

20. Strategy #1: Homework checklist. Student can be provided with a monitor to make sure that they have remembered to bring the appropriate books home and also remember to bring homework to class with them. It will be a simple checklist that can be signed by the student and teacher. If it is complete at the end of the week, student will receive a small reward of some kind.

21. Strategy #2: Exit tickets. Since Daren is a naturally intelligent boy, it can often seem that he understand material in class yet not actually know how to apply it when it comes to assessments. Exit tickets would be a useful way of monitoring his learning on a daily basis.

22. Strategy #1: Student can be provided with written list of challenging vocabulary before reading the text. She can then take this home with her to do extra study. These words can be used as part of a weekly class vocabulary test to monitor her progress and understanding.