What is differentiated instruction?
Differentiated instruction means adjusting content, process, or product to meet students at their varied readiness, interests, and learning needs — while keeping the same core objective.
Differentiated instruction is adapting how students access and demonstrate learning so a single lesson reaches a class with varied readiness, interests, and needs — without lowering the goal for anyone.
Carol Tomlinson frames it as differentiating three things: content (what students learn or the materials they use), process (how they make sense of it), and product (how they show what they know). You might offer a reading at two complexity levels (content), let some students use manipulatives while others work abstractly (process), or accept a written or recorded explanation (product).
The objective stays the same for everyone — differentiation changes the path, not the destination. The practical version isn't 30 different lessons; it's a small number of deliberate options at the points where students predictably diverge.
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