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Keep the Work Meaningful

Posted on November 2, 2008 by in Differentiation

Think about the worst inser­vice work­shop you ever attended. When you filled out the work­shop eval­u­a­tion at the end, chances are you wrote (or at least thought) some­thing along the lines of one of these:

This was a waste of my time.

It was irrelevant.

I had bet­ter things I needed to do today.

I didn’t see the point of what I was asked to do today.

I already knew this and prob­a­bly could have taught the work­shop myself.


This is the sit­u­a­tion in which bright and gifted stu­dents often find them­selves. When the class­room teacher is forced to slow the pace for stu­dents who can’t keep up and to reteach some con­cepts sev­eral times until the major­ity of the class under­stands, the faster stu­dents are con­stantly feel­ing like they could be using their time for some­thing better.

Dif­fer­en­ti­ated work you give to stu­dents, espe­cially highly able ones, should always be worth­while and mean­ing­ful. Instruc­tional time in school is lim­ited enough with­out ask­ing some stu­dents to wait for their peers to catch up to where they are. Con­sider some of these options when you are plan­ning activ­i­ties for these children:

  • Cur­ricu­lum compacting
  • Struc­tured inde­pen­dent study
  • Accel­er­a­tion
  • Per­sonal goal-​​setting and self-​​evaluation
  • Increase com­plex­ity (not quantity)
  • Depth of proof or reasoning
  • Self-​​paced learning/​programmed instruction
  • Exten­sion menus

Differentiation for Highly Able Students

Posted on November 1, 2008 by in Differentiation

The fact that stu­dents dif­fer may be incon­ve­nient, but it is inescapable. Adapt­ing to that diver­sity is the inevitable price of pro­duc­tiv­ity, high stan­dards, and fair­ness to kids.

– Theodore Sizer


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