We stand firm in our belief that differentiated instruction can provide equitable and effective instruction and learning opportunities for all students—gifted students, preschoolers, English learners, and struggling readers. We also believe differentiated instruction provides opportunities for building teachers’ caring relationships with their students and promotes responsiveness to students’ interests and learning trajectories.
Differentiated instruction is particularly powerful when embedded in rich learning contexts that address persistent gaps in literacy achievement between racial groups, and more-and less-advantaged students. Such contexts offer differentiated pathways for achieving learning goals for all students.
Differentiated instruction is not a skill-and-drill approach that attempts to “fill in the gaps” that, on the surface, seem to be contributing to learning difficulties. Instead, differentiated instruction teaches explicitly a wide array of skills, concepts, and strategies, often simultaneously, while leveraging students’ prior knowledge, learning and cultural histories, and linguistic differences.
Leveraging students’ prior knowledge and histories provides a conceptual foundation for acquiring new knowledge and accessing academic knowledge.
Differentiation gives students access to the same curriculum and learning assignments as their peers. At the root of differentiated instruction, then, is the recognition of students’ strengths and differences and teaching to both. Such instruction counters attempts to close potential gaps between students’ abilities and school performance by reducing the curriculum to a basic set of skills (often taught in isolation or without sufficient application) that can delay access to rich sources of information as needed for concept development and academic learning.
To be effective, differentiated instruction is situated in and designed to be responsive to the curricular and instructional goals, students’ capabilities and needs, and community and parent input.
Guided by continuous and multiple student assessments, instruction engages learning in mixed-ability grouping assignments, guided reading and writing opportunities, use of multiple texts (including digital texts) to scaffold other texts to afford access to new knowledge, and explicit instruction focusing on concept development, strategic word learning and text comprehension, and generative writing, among other literacy skills and knowledge areas.
Teachers who have differentiated the content, process, or products for the diversity of students in their classroom have seen improvements in students’ spelling development, letter-word reading, vocabulary development, comprehension, fluency, and reading engagement through instruction planned in coordination with literacy specialists, supported by administrators, and aligned with literacy instruction provided within the classroom.
Excellent reading instruction includes creating classrooms that optimize learning opportunities for every child. Every day teachers strive to optimize learning opportunities and provide equitable instruction based upon the cultural backgrounds of their students.
Supporting their efforts and documenting their successes places students front and center—where they belong.
Doris Walker-Dalhouse is a past member of the ILA Boardof Directors and current member of the Specialized Literacy Professionals SIG. She is a literacy professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Victoria J. Risko is a past president of ILA and current president of the Specialized Literacy Professionals SIG. She is a professor emerita of language, literacy, and culture at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.