Differentiated Instructional Strategies: One Size Doesn't Fit All

This book presents practical techniques and processes that teachers can use to adjust learning based on individual students' knowledge, skills, experience, preferences, and needs. Six chapters focus on: (1) "Creating a Climate for Learning" (strategies for creating a safe, nurturing environment with high challenge and low threat); (2) "Knowing the Learner" (e.g., learning style theories, multiple intelligences, and tools to help dentify students' learning styles); (3) "Assessing the Learner" (suggestions for and examples of effective pre- assessment tools and tools to use during and after the learning process); (4) "Adjusting, Compacting, and Grouping" (ideas for grouping students for a variety of reasons, and techniques to form groups and design interactions); (5) "Instructional Strategies for Student Success" (explores research on best practices and pedagogy that make a difference in student achievement, presenting brain-based strategies); and (6) "Curriculum Approaches for Differentiated Classrooms" (explains centers, projects, problem based learning, inquiry models, and contracts and provides examples for each approach). Included are more than 50 planning models, matrixes, rubrics, checklists, and questionnaires to help teachers make the right decisions about instruction and assessment on an individual basis. (Contains 95 bibliographic references.) (SM)