Differentiation for Highly Able Students

All stu­dents have needs, and it is mis­lead­ing to think of strug­gling or below-​​level stu­dents as being the “need­i­est.” While their needs may require more inten­sive atten­tion, it is unfair to leave gifted and advanced stu­dents to fend for them­selves. The goal of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is to iden­tify the spe­cific needs of dif­fer­ent stu­dents in order to design appro­pri­ate types of instruc­tion for each of them.

Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is…		Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is not…
Dif­fer­ent work		More work
Deeper or broader assignments		Longer assign­ments
Tiered assign­ments		Extra assign­ments
High expec­ta­tions for all students		Indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion
Struc­tured choices for students		Always teacher-​​assigned
Rote tasks and memorization		High-​​level thinking
Instruc­tion in needed skills		Self-​​help or peer tutoring
Appro­pri­ately challenging		Push­ing to the limits
Respect­ful, mean­ing­ful work		Keep­ing stu­dents occupied
Flex­i­ble group­ing based on pretesting		Sta­tic abil­ity groups
Demon­strat­ing mastery		Assum­ing understanding
Mov­ing at their own pace		Wait­ing until the group is ready to move on
Var­ied strate­gies, approaches, and adaptations		The same dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion strat­egy all the time
Giv­ing credit for mas­tered content		Hav­ing the same grades for every student
Sup­port­ing and scaf­fold­ing for all students		Focus­ing atten­tion on the strug­gling students
Fair		Equal