Instructify

With IDEA, kids with an IEP (which qualifies them for special education services) aren’t relegated to the classroom at the far end of the yard. Many are in classrooms like yours and mine. Yeah, I took a class in “mainstreaming,” but I can always use some new ideas and resources. Here is a quick list of resources for all educators that will help you with all your students.

This post is about resources for differentiating instruction. I recently attended a session on this topic at NECC done by Bill Dolton. He began with the question, is differentiation about having individual lessons for each student? I share this because the answer was, “no.” Many teachers think they will have to have to do individual lesson plans, which is not possible with 30+ students in a class. Instead it’s about giving students some choices, and this term wasn’t used, but scaffolding (which technology can be great for). As he puts it, the goal of DI is not to”cure” or resolve student learning differences, but to harness or cultivate them.

Mr. Dalton has a wiki (an editable Webpage) chock full of resources. The nice part is that these resources are not just a hot list of sites, but articles on how and why to differentiate. Most are in friendly, easy to understand language (e.g., lots of pieces are from Edutopia).

I will also take this opportunity to share a series of posts that Mathew Needleman wrote on the how, why, and when of differentiation. -ALICE MERCER

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NECC 2008 Reflections from Sessions on Day 1 | The Blog of Ms. Mercer