Differentiated Instruction

We discussed how differentiated instruction is not developed overnight and I firmly believe that is true. In addition, I believe that differentiated instruction is never fully "mastered". There are many ways to incorporate differentiated instruction into the classroom and one method of differentiated instruction may not be better than another form of instruction. Also, students from one year are never the same at the next. I believe that for these two reasons, differentiated instruction is never fully mastered.
That being said, using differential instruction can be used very effectively and teachers can be very good at utilizing it. When beginning teachers first try differentiated instruction, I believe that the three key ares they need to focus on are 1) Preparation, 2) Classroom Management and 3) Assessment.
Preparation is probably the most important area for new teachers to focus on when using differentiated instruction. Teachers must plan every detail of the instruction, from what they will be working on, who they will be working with, how they will work, how long they will work and what the final working product should look like (exemplars). Although this may require a lot of work on the teachers part, the results from the class or lesson will be much more successful. If careful planning is not done, the lesson will fall apart and you will lose class time which is much more important than time out of school.
Classroom management for most beginning teachers is difficult and therefore using differentiated instruction will only make it harder. Teachers must have a firm understanding of each students characteristics, learning abilities and performing abilities. Managing the time within differentiated instruction is most important, making sure that students are not wasting time sitting around wondering what they are suppose to be doing. The other aspect of differentiated instruction is managing who will be working with who, perhaps switching groups up depending on the level of the student for the particular activity and managing the level of difficulty is required for the student to be challenged.
The last important area of differentiated instruction is maintaining constant assessment of the students understanding. Assessing the students at the end of the unit or project will only be disastrous for the students as well as for the teacher. The benefit of differentiated instruction is that the level of instruction or pace of instruction is based on the students understanding of the learning outcomes. Therefore, it is important for beginning teachers to assess the students understanding at the beginning of the topic, during and after, this can simply be done using exit slips, questioning, small quizzes, thumbs up/down, etc.