Whether you are a special education teacher or a general education teacher, learning how to differentiate your curriculum is an important step in making certain you meet the needs of all of the students in your classroom. Rather than “teaching to the middle,” differentiation of the curriculum involves meeting the needs of a variety of learning styles while still teaching the same concepts to all of your students. While differentiation of the curriculum can be a challenge at first, it become much easier after you have implemented the teaching method for some time and you and your students become accustomed to this means of teaching. Of course, before you can start differentiating your curriculum, you need to understand the basics of this teaching method so you can determine how to use it in your classroom.

What is Differentiation of Curriculum?

Differentiating the curriculum involves allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge in different ways. Rather than lecturing and testing all students with a paper and pencil test, for example, you may provide students with different options to demonstrate their knowledge. This may include providing them with the option to give an oral presentation, to create a poster, to write an essay or to take the traditional test. By providing students with options, you allow them to use their personal strengths to present the information to you. Not only does this help allow all of your students to be successful, it also provides you with a more accurate idea of how well the student has learned the information you have taught. After all, a student who experiences a great deal of test anxiety may perform poorly on the test even if he or she has a good understanding of the content.

How Do I Differentiate the Curriculum?

There are many different ways to differentiate the curriculum, but one of the easiest ways is to start off a new unit by providing your students with a handout that describes the different types of projects they can complete at the end of the unit. Of course, in order to do this, you will first need to decide upon about three to five different choices to present to the students. Try to address different learning styles – specifically, think of a project that would appeal to kinesthetic (hands on) learners, verbal learners and visual learners.

When thinking of the projects that you will provide as options, be sure to think of projects that will take an equal amount of time and/or effort to complete. In addition, think of projects that will allow you to assess whether or not the student has learned what you are trying to teach.

By presenting your students with the options beforehand, they can be thinking about how they will complete the project throughout the unit. This will further guarantee that the immerse themselves in the unit and, if you have chosen projects that your students can really enjoy, they will become more actively engaged and interested in the unit you are teaching.

If you are still feeling uncomfortable with differentiation of the curriculum, just try it out on a few units throughout the school year. Then, as you become more comfortable with it, add more differentiated lessons to each school year. Not only will this help you more effectively address the needs of your special education students, you will also more effectively address the needs of all of your students so everyone can be successful.