A Teacher's Guide to Differentiating Instruction Does
effectively teaching 30 students in one classroom require
teachers to develop 30 lessons, one tailor-made for each
student? Or should teachers “aim for the middle” and hope to
reach most students in a given lesson? The answer is not simple.
While most would agree it is impractical to try to individualize
every lesson for every child, research has shown that teaching
to the middle is ineffective. It ignores the needs of advanced
students, often leaving them unchallenged and bored, while it
intimidates and confuses lower functioning learners. Best
practice suggests an alternative: differentiated instruction.
Differentiated instruction is an approach that assumes there is
a diversity of learners in every classroom and that all of those
learners can be reached if a variety of methods and activities
are used. Carol Tomlinson (2000), a noted expert on
differentiation, points out that research has proven that
students are more successful when they are taught base