The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (ASCD)

It's an age-old challenge: How can teachers divide their time, resources, and efforts to effectively instruct students of diverse backgrounds and interests, as well as skill and readiness levels? The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners offers a powerful, practical solution.

Drawing on nearly three decades of experience, author Carol Ann Tomlinson describes a way of thinking about teaching and learning that will change all aspects of how you approach students and your classroom. She looks to the latest research on learning, education, and change for the theoretical basis of differentiated instruction and why it's so important to today's children. Yet she offers much more than theory, filling the pages with real-life examples of teachers and students using-and benefitting from-differentiated instruction.

At the core of the book, three chapters describe actual lessons, units, and classrooms with differentiated instruction in action. Tomlinson looks at elementary and secondary classrooms in nearly all subject areas to show how real teachers turn the challenge of differentiation into a reality. Her insightful analysis of how, what, and why teachers differentiate lays the groundwork for you to bring differentiation to your own classroom.

Tomlinson's commonsense, classroom-tested advice speaks to experienced and novice teachers as well as educational leaders who want to foster differentiation in their schools. Using a "think versus sink approach," Tomlinson guides all readers through small changes, then even larger ones, until differentiation becomes a way of life that enriches both teachers and students.