Lecture 5

The Learning Environment in a

Differentiated Classroom
• Characteristics of an effective learning
community
• Creating a positive learning environment
• Differentiating within the digital classroom
Characteristics of an effective learning
community
Everyone feels welcome and contributes to
everyone else feeling welcome
• Many things make students feel welcome:
• The direct and positive attention of the teacher
• Peers who acknowledge their classmates in positive ways
• A room that contains student work and other artifacts
that are student-designed and interesting to look at and
think about
• Flexible and comfortable seating options
• A time in the day or class period when students and
teacher can talk about the day, or life in general
Mutual respect is a non-negotiable

• The teacher helps students distinguish between feelings

about something someone did and the value of that person.
• The teacher helps students learn to solve problems in
constructive ways that attend to the issue at hand without
making a person or group feel smaller.
• Respect is cultivated; it requires effort. The teacher is
inevitably the catalyst for that effort.
• Positive humour plays a central role in a welcoming and
respectful classroom.
Students feel safe in the classroom

• Students should know it is a good thing to ask for help

when it is needed, that it is fine to say you do not know,
that an earnest question will get an earnest response, that
eyes will not roll when someone expresses a thought that
seems unusual or evident, that fledgling ideas will be given
a chance to develop, and so on.
• Safety happens when you feel accepted as you are and
valued enough that people want to help you become even
better.
There is a pervasive expectation of growth

• The teacher gets excited about evidence of growth in each

individual learner, and in the class as a whole, and expresses
that excitement to students.
• Students learn to chart their own growth and to talk about
both their learning goals and ways of achieving them.
• The growth of each of the students is a matter of
celebration, and one person’s growth is not more or less
valuable than another’s.
The teacher teaches for success

• It is the teacher’s goal to figure out where a student is in

relation to key learning goals and then provide learning
experiences that will push the learner a little further and
faster than is comfortable.
• The teacher coaches for student effort and productive
learning choices, and will ensure that there is scaffolding.
• The teacher is constantly raising the stakes for success for
any individual, then doing whatever is necessary to help the
student succeed in taking their next step.
A new sort of fairness is evident

• Fair means trying to make sure each student gets what they
need in order to grow and ultimately succeed.
• Students and teacher alike are part of the team trying to
ensure that the classroom works well for everyone in the
class.
• Regular opportunities for peer conversation, collaboration,
and support help students learn to both accept and provide
assistance in productive ways.
The teacher and students collaborate for
mutual growth and success
• While the teacher is clearly the leader of the group,
students help develop routines for the classroom, make
major contributions toward solving problems and refining
routines, help one another, keep track of their work, etc.
• Different students will be ready for differing amounts of
responsibility at any given time, but all students need to be
guided in assuming a growing degree of responsibility and
independence as learners and as members of a community
of learners.
Creating a positive learning environment
There are two concrete practices that can help
teachers create a positive learning environment in a
differentiated classroom:
• teaching students to work productively in groups
• planning for flexible grouping
Both practices rely on students being able to
collaborate successfully.
Continually coach students to be contributing
members of a group
• Study groups at work in your classroom and try to list the traits
of functional versus dysfunctional groups.
• Then create tasks and give directions that steer students
toward the more functional ways of working.
• Students can help you develop groups that are productive if
you involve them in goal setting, reflection, and problem
solving.
Continually coach students to be contributing
members of a group
• Groups will work better if students know what to do, how to
do it, what is expected of group members, and what will
constitute quality in both working processes and in products.
• An effective task will call for a meaningful contribution from
every group member.
• Have a respectful “way out” of the group for a student who
cannot, at that particular moment, succeed with the group,
even with your assistance and the assistance of the group.
Plan with flexible grouping in mind
• Design tasks for students based on your best current evidence
of their readiness for and interest in those tasks, as well as how
they might work most effectively with the tasks.
• Use a variety of grouping strategies to match students and
tasks when necessary, and to observe and assess students in a
variety of groupings and task conditions.
• This flexibility also keeps students from feeling that they are
“pegged” into a given classroom niche.
Plan with flexible grouping in mind
• There will be times when students of a similar readiness level
work together or with the teacher.
• There will be times when tasks are designed to bring together
students of differing readiness levels in a way that will be
meaningful to each member in the group.
• There will be times when students with similar interests work
together on a shared area of interest.
• There will be times when students with different specialties can
come together to look at an idea or topic from different angles.
Differentiating within the digital classroom
Easy access to multiple information
bases, web-based teaching units and
computer-assisted learning (CAL)
programmes has increased the range
of options teachers have for selecting
activities and assignments that match
students’ immediate needs.
• Almost all instructional programmes provide
immediate feedback and correction, and at a far
higher frequency than can occur with an
overloaded teacher in a busy classroom.
• E-learning has much to offer through
assignments in which all students can research
topics independently at their own level of
competence.
• E-learning can be tailored to the abilities and
instructional needs of the weaker students as
well as of the most able.
• E-learning can be used to investigate and explore
new curriculum topics, and to introduce new
strategies for problem solving and higher-order
comprehension.
During the design phase of developing a study unit
it is possible to cater for different levels of
readiness by:
• presenting multiple examples and illustrations of
key ideas in different formats
• providing hyperlinks to important definitions or
explanations giving choices of faster or slower
progression paths through the content
During the design phase of developing a study unit
it is possible to cater for different levels of
readiness by:
• embedding more opportunities for practice
or for extension work
• including corrective and supportive
feedback to the learner
• At the next stage in online study,
differentiation can occur based on
a student’s current performance,
error rate and questions asked.
• Corrective feedback can be
targeted accurately and any
necessary reteaching can be
provided immediately.
• Computer-based scaffolding (inbuilt hints,
prompts, guidance) can help a student work
through a programme at a high success rate to
achieve all the goals set for that unit of work.
• Inbuilt scaffolding can also be designed to
encourage students to reflect upon their progress
and understanding (metacognitive scaffolding),
which in turn helps to deepen their learning.
Tomlinson, C. A. (2017). How to differentiate
instruction in academically diverse classrooms
(3rd ed.). Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development.
Westwood, P. (2016). What teachers need to know
about differentiated instruction. ACER Press.