Task: Differentiation
What differentiation is and isn’t Tomlinson (2001, p. 1) explains that differentiation ‘provides different avenues to acquiring content , to processing or making sense of ideas , and to developing products so that each student can learn effectively.’ [emphasis added]. Content refers to the input or what we expect students to learn, process comprises multiple sense-making approaches deployed by students, and product is the output or how learning is demonstrated. The common thread running through these approaches is that they are designed with the purpose of significant student development in mind (Tomlinson, 2001). Tomlinson goes on to clarify that differentiation is not to be confused with individualized instruction as it was practised in the 1970s, where the aim was to come up with something different for each of the more than 30 students often found in a class. She emphasises that it includes ‘whole-class, group, and individual instruction’ (2001, p. 5). The task I was asked t