Differentiated Learning
At any given moment in education there are a few dozen buzzwords that teachers are expected to know. In Massachusetts the biggest contenders at the moment seem to be SEI, RTI, Social Justice, and Differentiated Learning. The first two are set-in-stone ways about what to do in your classroom. The other two are more open, and full of grey areas.
Differentiated Learning is a way to approach the everyday classroom. It's about classroom management, lesson planning, assessment, seating plans, and curriculum. It guides the way you approach any given subject, and pushes you to try and find new, better ways to teach. Differentiated learning incorporates everything that I have spent the last few years studying; child development, social justice teaching, integrated approaches to teaching, constructivist teaching, etc. It's something that influences all of my teaching, and forces me to keep up and never sit back and let the students work.
Differentiated Learning means, essentially, teaching to a child's strengths. At this point it really shouldn't shock anybody that not everyone learns the same way. Peoples personal wiring, their socio-economic standing, their home culture, even their mood can affect the way that a student approaches learning. For some students reading out of books and writing notes works well, for others nothing sticks unless they can get their hands on it, and others need everything listed in order on the board, or repeated verbally half a dozen times, or they'll never get it.
Everyone learns differently so how do teachers handle this? It used to be that they didn't. They simply taught in the way they were taught, or in a way they felt comfortable, and assumed that students who didn't do well simply were not smart enough. That's no longer an acceptable way to approach learning, nor should it be. Every child is in fact quite intelligent; they learned how to speak didn't they? It's a teacher’s job now to figure out how to help them, and others, see just how smart they are.
As I said earlier differentiated instructions encompasses many aspects of teaching, down to the way you seat your students, but the aspect it influences most naturally is the instruction itself. I believe that all classrooms should be "integrated" classrooms. That is they should pull from other fields to influence the way they approach a subject, because you're going to hit all kinds or ways of learning in doing so. I'm best at bringing in visual art and tech, as I find that students tend to respond positively to these areas, and they are two areas that can easily be incorporated into any subject. Art and tech lend themselves to visual, and kinesthetic learning. Verbal/Auditory learning is there anytime there is instruction, and the sort of memorization learning, reading texts to learn facts, is where most learning starts anyways.
Differentiated learning is about making sure that you hit as many "Ways" to learn as possible in, if not any given lesson, than at least any given unit. I love teaching science because there is so much that can be taught and retaught in so many different ways, and art and tech just blend so well with it. Reading from the texts, doing experiments, watching videos, recording data by drawing and writing...it's a great way to make sure students really understand the subject. English is another one that's easy to hit all sorts of learning, as is Social Studies; read texts, fiction and non fiction, write papers, perform plays, draw stories, create a dioramas, posters, newsletters, etc., film news pieces, discuss...the subject lends itself to learning. Math is probably the hardest, especially as it grows more and more difficult, but it's still not impossible. Giving students manipulative to see how equations work, using student’s body to emulate angles or even graphs is fun and simple, and calculations themselves are a sort of art form. One can keep a class on its toes and ready to learn, and help all students achieve, if they're willing to put a little thought into instruction.
Of course differentiated learning isn't entirely about instruction. It's about knowing your students, making sure to take into consideration any IEP's or 504's. It's about one-on-one and small group for reteach and enhancements...it's about a lot. But I find that if you start with your instruction and aren't afraid to mix that up, you're already halfway there.