Differentiated Instruction: A Buzz Phrase or Attainable Vision? Here's a System to Achieve Equitable Access to Rigor and Increase Expectations for ALL

In almost every text you might read about educational leadership or effective teaching, you’ll find an emphasis on the idea of differentiated instruction. The premise that students bring differing learning styles to the table, progress on varying levels, and require customized supports to reach mastery of standards is a common concept in leadership texts. More often than not, while the importance of differentiation is highlighted and prioritized in research and textbooks, it’s done without offering a concrete plan of how to achieve a state of differentiation in a school’s classrooms. Here’s a research, evidence-based approach to provide every student the opportunity to access the deepest levels of rigor while differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all students throughout a unit of study:

It all Starts with the Plan – Make it Unit not Daily!

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Without a plan, teachers have no chance differentiating instruction. Teachers must be deliberate and strategic in creating a plan for a unit of study. A key word being unit. To differentiate effectively, traditional daily lesson plans have become counter intuitive. We stress to teachers that they must monitor students’ learning progression during every lesson and to allow the monitored data to drive future instruction. If teachers at schools are still writing daily lessons plans truly differentiated, they would need to rewrite daily lesson plans DAILY in order to differentiate instruction the next day or lesson. Instead, teachers should create deliberate unit plans that are strategically designed to guide all students through a learning progression from tasks of a lower level of rigor to tasks on the highest levels of rigor. Within this unit plan, teachers need to include daily agendas and most importantly deliberately designed student products to represent mastery on varying levels of rigor. This structure of planning allows for all students to access every level of rigor while also working at their own pace. This system allows for schools to consider the partial or complete elimination of leveling students with “advanced,” or “on-level,” or worse “remedial,” labels on classes and therefore students.  A system such as this removes limits and raises expectations for all students, resulting in equitable access. 

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Taxonomical Approach to Differentiating Levels of Rigor

To develop a unit plan effectively, teachers must identify varying levels of rigor. Taxonomies of thinking offer an excellent structure to guide teachers’ work in this area. 

 Dr. Robert Marzano’s taxonomy is built around four levels of thinking and product. Marzano’s taxonomy begins with what he refers to as level 1 thinking and/or work product that reflect  “knowledge retrieval,” moves deeper to level 2 “comprehension,” and then to the deepest levels of rigor that include “analysis,” at level 3 and “knowledge utilization,” at level 4. Marzano’s research offers a wide array of thinking outputs and student products that reflect mastery at every level on his taxonomy. So, when teachers develop unit plans, they can create concrete expectations for student evidence and product at every level of Marzano’s taxonomy to reflect a student’s mastery at each of the four levels of rigor and complexity. The majority of the Common Core Standards are written with the goal of students producing level 3 “Analysis,” products in mind, so in the case of most states across the United States, teachers can target a learning progression that guides students from levels 1-3 on Marzano’s taxonomy while level 4 “knowledge utilization,” can often be utilized as an enrichment or in concert with a larger, grading period or semester-long in-depth project that applies a selection of target standards to a real-world application. For reference, there are other taxonomies including Bloom’s and Webb’s that can be utilized for the same purpose as Marzano’s. 

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Importance of Shared Tracking of Student Progress

Assessing student learning can’t be a teacher-only event. This system of taxonomical unit planning allows for both teachers and students to monitor student progression through taxonomy levels. Using Marzano’s taxonomy, student products included a teacher’s unit plan aligned to each of Marzano’s four taxonomical levels can be monitored daily by both teachers and students. To help organize and publish this approach in classrooms, teachers should develop and publish  a learning scale for every unit that specifically outlines what students will be able to produce at each of the unit’s four taxonomical levels. 

When teachers develop unit plans, they should identify learning targets aligned to taxonomical levels to guide student progression throughout the unit. Teachers should also identify a holistic learning goal for the entire unit which reflects the depth of student product called for by the taxonomical level on which the target standard was written. For example, if the target or anchor standard was written on a level 3 analysis level, the unit’s learning goal would reflect an analysis level student product. As individual students work through the unit, some will reach mastery of different levels of the taxonomy before others. Teachers AND students need to track this progression so that teachers are aware of every student’s needs and every student is aware of his/her progression through a unit. This leads to students being able to apply metacognition to their learning, one of the most important research-based stages of how people learn according to the National Institute for School Leadership. And this is where differentiation comes into effect for teachers.  

 

Daily Monitoring Guides Differentiation

Many veteran teachers like to say they, “just know,” who among their students are mastering content. The truth is that our teachers need to collect or observe evidence from every student on a daily basis that is in alignment with the unit’s learning scale and daily target. In a truly student-centered classroom, what matters most is student products; the proof is in the pudding. Teachers can create daily monitoring sheets on which teachers can record which students demonstrate evidence of mastery at every level on a unit scale. This provides teachers with documented data to differentiate instruction and move students in and out of groups or tasks fluidly based on students’ learning progression and mastery according to the unit scale. Also, teachers can make use of one of our greatest assets in closing learning gaps – peer support. Students who reach mastery of a unit’s learning goal earlier than most can become a peer mentor in guiding classmates to mastery. This works to build a culture of learning where all students learn the social responsibility of helping ALL students to access the deepest levels of rigor. In addition, research shows that when we can teach someone else something, we deepen our own level of mastery with the content. So, students who support peers’ learning only deepen their own thinking in addition to developing leadership skills. 

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Potential for Untracking Schools

One of the most powerful systems that many schools still adhere to is the tracking of students. From the time students are in kindergarten, they often are tracked into “advanced,” or “on-level,” or “remedial,” classes. In doing so, some schools place a label on students. Students who are tracked into lower level pathways have a low statistical probability of working themselves out of the lower track and onto a higher track. The result is often classrooms loaded with lower-expectancy students who become disenfranchised with the entire educational system, leading to disruptive behaviors and low self-esteem. In a strategically differentiated classroom where students can progress through a unit somewhat at their own pace while taking ownership over their own and their peers’ learning, all students are provided access to the deepest levels of rigor. All students are given what they need when they need it as they work to master learning targeted learning goals aligned to a taxonomy and state standards. All students are immersed in a culture of learning and high expectations. 

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Differentiated instruction doesn’t have to be just a phrase thrown around in meetings and textbooks. Given a strategic system to support differentiation, all students can work to close learning gaps while also enriching learning for the highest performers.