Classroom Strategies and Tools for Differentiating Instruction in the ESL Classroom

Abstract

Differentiated Instruction is a relatively widely used instructional approach across instructional contexts. It has proven to be successful in the general education context where studies have found that students exposed to Differentiated Instruction strategies consistently outperform other students (Tomlinson, 2001). Yet, there is a huge gap in professional literature that addresses the use of Differentiated Instruction in the ESL context. It is the aim of this paper to provide the reader with practical Differentiated Instruction strategies and tools for the use in the ESL classroom as well as the mainstream classroom with ELLs. We suggest three steps in implementing Differentiated Instruction, a) beginning with ensuring high quality curriculum that clearly articulates meaningful learning outcomes, both language and content, without which differentiation is not possible, b) moving onto carefully understanding student needs, their readiness, interests and learning profiles, based on systematic pre- and formative assessment, and finally c) implementing effective Differentiated Instruction strategies in the classroom to maximize the learning of all students. We provide multiple examples and useful tools to clarify each of the three steps.