Differentiation in the 21st Century:

Models for All Classrooms and Students

Jackie Drummer, blufflovers@wi.rr.com

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or to the present are likely to miss the

future.

~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

So what is in our children’s futures?

Continued outsourcing of jobsContinued automation of jobsKnowledge doubling exponentially and in increasingly shorter periods of timeJobs/technologies of the future that have not yet been inventedDwindling global resources

Thomas Friedmann, “The World is Flat”

Shift Happens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

We desperately need…indeed we may not survive…without a

generation of young people who are imaginative, inventive,

fearless learners, and compassionate leaders.

~David Warlick

Rhetoric Question: Is the current culture of constant teaching to the test, spending the first six to nine weeks of each semester reviewing for the test, stopping all new learning for the two weeks of testing, waiting at least five months for the results of the test, and then spending the rest of the year digesting the results of the test the best way to prepare learners in the 21st century?

Put another way: Are we spending so much time weighing the pig that we don’t have time to feed it? And if we fed it premium food for optimal brain growth, what would that look like?

Insert 21st century skills route21.com

21st Century Skills

21st century teaching, more than ever, requires us to take into consideration: who we teach

what we teach

how we teach and differentiation is designed to help us do that.

Differentiation is, simply,…

A teacher’s response to differing students’ needs

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

My personal definition of differentiation

At its most basic level, differentiating instruction means “shaking up” what goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learn.

Differentiation can occur in:

Content – (what a student learns)

Process – (how a student learns)

Product – (how a student shows us what he/she has learned)

Differentiation takes into account…

Student readiness

Student interests

Student learning styles

What are some ways that teachers find out about readiness, interests and learning styles?

7 Basic Strategies of Differentiation

CompactingFlexible GroupingLearning contractsInterest centersLearning centersTiered assignmentsQuestioning

What are some of the staples of excellent 21st century programming that

are supported by differentiation?High quality curriculum and resources – online and offlineEmbedded creative and critical thinking Decision-making trainingProblem-solving trainingResearch and “I” search skillsProblem-based learning (PBL)Early foreign language experiencesVaried products for REAL audiences (not just the teacher)

In the 21st century, ALL people need 21st century skills.

The ability to learn and use new information and new technologies, and

to adapt flexibly with innovative thinking, will separate those who are

prepared from those who are not.

21st Century Skills: Learning and Innovation

Creativity and innovation

Critical thinking and problem solving

Communication and collaboration

21st Century Skills: Information, Media and Technology Literacy

Informational literacy

Media literacy

Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) literacy

21st Century Skills: Life and Career Skills

Flexibility and adaptabilityInitiative and self-directionSocial and cross-cultural skillsProductivity and accountabilityLeadership and responsibility

Diversity and Achievement Gap Issues with 21st Century Skills

Identification of talents/need for differentiation by try-outRaise expectations for studentsIncrease early enrollment in challenging courses for all studentsIncorporate multicultural curriculumProvide models/family involvement

21st century teaching must embrace huge paradigm shifts…

Teachers must be the experts at teaching and learning, not the repositories of vast quantities of information – we need to become the “guide on the side,” not the “sage on the stage”Our job is to help kids process (analyze and evaluate) information, remix (synthesize) it, and present it in new waysDifferentiation provides many opportunities for this paradigm shift in teaching and learning

Are we preparing students for their futures, or for our pasts?

Willard Daggett

Creativity will become as important as literacy.

Sir Ken Robinson

21st century teaching will require more

attention to process than ever before

We will teach a subject, not to produce “little living libraries” on that subject, but to teach students to think for themselves, using the knowledge, tools and dispositions of that discipline.This will require moving beyond the basics in core competencies, and weaving the core content together at much higher levels of thinking, using more technologically savvy tools. (And guess what? The students are already doing this…at home!)

Informational technology and media and technology literacy will become

the currency of the future…

Accessing and navigating through volumes of informationEvaluating data and information for source, bias, efficacy and efficiencyLeveraging information – about what, so what, using what, what next?Applying information to make the world a better place

21st century teaching must embrace another huge paradigm

shiftTeachers will become the guides to ethical thinking, the sorters, the pickers and the choosers – what to use, how to use it, and why to use certain technologies, certain strategies, or certain informationJust because we can do something, should we do it?

Learning To Change and Changing To Learn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahTKdEUAPk

Learning in the past vs. Learning in the future Slow, controlled

release of informationSingular process/singular taskLinear, logical, sequentialWork independently first, then network“Just in case” learningDeferred gratification/rewardTeaching to curriculum guide and/or tests

Quickly retrieved informationParallel multi-processing tasksProcessing of pictures, graphs, video, then text“Networking” simultaneously “Just in time” learningInstant gratification/rewardTeaching for relevance, usefulness, fun

What are we resolved to do to bring our schools into the 21st century? “One size fits all” learning is quickly becoming a thing of the past as students learn to generate their own questions, to utilize many high speed, high touch technologies, and to satisfy their curiosity at their own processing pace. Should kids have to “power down” their devices (and their brains) at school?

And, as educators, how do keep the pace? How do we serve as

guides?

Are we willing to learn alongside our students, and to let the lines

between teacher and student blur?

Consider this:While “digital immigrants” (those who did

not grow up using much of today’s technology) will need to improve

technical skills,“digital natives” (those essentially younger

than thirty) may need help in the future improving social skills

Dr. Small, Psychiatrist at UCLA, quoted in eschool news, 12-04

Will differentiation strategies help bridge the gap?

Can we learn to help kids generate and refine the essential learning questions?Can we teach them to evaluate sources and resources (tools?)Can we help them make ethical choices? Efficacious choices?Can the marriage of differentiation, 21st century skills, and technology reawaken the love of learning that we are all born with?

The 21st century has already seen a dramatic evolution of technology

and applications. How many of them have you heard of? How

many do you use? How will you stay educationally current?

Is it time for “a whole new mind?”

Or a whole new mindset about teaching and learning?

Are we as educators willing to give up our status as “the

learned” -- and remain lifelong learners?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yCB4i7GJuM&feature=related

So…what does this mean for

YOUR classroom?

In the words of Kevin Honeycutt, “We challenge you to challenge your kids to create, invent and

improve the world through their ingenuity.”

And…in the words of Jackie Drummer, “I challenge you to keep one foot firmly planted in excellent pedagogy (which is another name for differentiation), with the other foot propelling you forward into this 21st century – and with your heart wrapped around your students, and your mind focused on their future.”

Resourceswww.21stcenturyskills.orgwordle.net (word art) webtools4U2use.wikispaces.complurk.comtwitter.com (microblogging)artsnacks.org (Kevin Honeycutt’s site)delicious.com (save bookmarks online)http://www.wetpaint.comgiftededucation.ning.com (for more ideas – created by Ginger Lehman)

Questions?