Differentiation in the classroom begins with a teacher's understanding of scaffolding students academic levels to help students reach a common goal. Differentiation occurs in many ways, books like Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom, The Differentiated Classroom, and Learning by Choice have several ideas on how differentiation may look like in the classroom. Common topics among three books include learning stations, levels of tier, and communication and collaboration. Learning stations help teachers differentiate lessons. Usually a learning station is when students are given the opportunity to work at a center and work on a targeted task to help improve a specific skill. Students work in small groups and may work in more than …show more content…
In the classroom, students are at different academic levels based on many different factors. For most students, they are categorized as low, at level, or above, but in the differentiation books students are divided into tier levels. Learning by Choice explains the process in which students are placed in each tier, students are placed in the tier groups based on their pre-assessment score. The common goal is for all students to end up at the highest tier. In order to reach the goal, students work in their tier groups to develop the skills required to reach the end goal. Each tier group is differentiated to meet the needs of the students. The Differentiated Classroom explains different tiered activities strategies to help students. A section has the steps in developing a tiered activity. When differentiating it is important to ask what? how? and why? because it better prepares the activities to meet the targeted skill to better suit student learning. A similar idea of planning was the methods to "buy time" for struggling students and methods to challenge advanced learners mentioned in the Tomlinson and Imbeau textbook. When differentiating lessons, a teacher must keep in mind students who are struggling, at grade level, and above level. I think understanding the tier pyramid is helpful in grouping students to focus on specific scaffolding so students develop a better understanding of the