by Stephen H

Created on: May 03, 2009   Last Updated: January 01, 2012

Students are individual with unique needs. They have mixed`levels of ability. Some require a lot of work to learn the basics of a subject while others make the basic connections quite easily and quickly and need to be challenged and stretched to keep their interest and to stimulate their learning. Using a standard approach to teaching the curriculum will serve neither of these groups well, it will be either be too slow and uninteresting for those that learn quickly or too challenging for those that require time and effort to understand the subject. The approach that might work well in this situation is called curriculum differentiation'.

Curriculum differentiation describes a model whereby the teacher employs a range of different activities and approaches to learning and tailors these to the individual needs of students. This is a personalised learning approach and works well for both the slower learning and faster learning students.

For example, for the slower learning student the teacher might identify an activity that interests the student, let's say its fishing. The teacher then might suggest a learning event around this by challenging the student to arrange a fishing trip and using the student's enthusiasm for the subject to build learning into the activity. This might take the form of research skills in requiring the student to identify the best equipment for a specific type of fishing. They might also build in IT skills by requiring the student to produce a spreadsheet of their research findings. In this way the student is motivated to learn and the activities are designed to ensure appropriate learning takes place.

For the more talented and quicker learning student, a very different approach might be taken. These students will not require so much help with the basics but are motivated by being challenged. Here the teacher could employ a more questioning approach to learning. Setting the student intellectual challenges to promote learning and the making of connections between subjects and arguments.

Another aspect of this approach is ensuring that the learning environment is optimum for the students. This isn't just in terms of a quiet space with access to appropriate equipment and learning tools, but also by ensuring the atmosphere is conducive to the learning style of the students. For example, talented students will need to question and challenge as part of the learning process. The teacher needs to ensure that these students feel comfortable to do this and must create an environment where this is encouraged.

To adopt this type of curriculum differentiation approach, teachers have to be equipped with a tool box of learning approaches from which they choose the most appropriate tools for individual students. It will require teachers to understand their students, establishing their levels of skill and prior attainment as well as their preferred learning style. Often these can be determined through some form of testing and on-going testing to ensure that teachers maintain up-to-date knowledge of their students. This will require considerable time in planning and preparing lessons. It will require a creative approach in building individual student learning plans which relies on the professional judgement of the teacher. This approach recognises the skill of the teachers and will therefore have the added benefit of providing a higher level of satisfaction for teachers.

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