The Four Dials | Differentiation in the Inclusive Classroom

Where To Start

Know who you are changing it for

Four things to know before you plan. Tap each one.

Before you change anything about a lesson, you have to know who you are changing it for.

What they can do, what they find hard, and how they learn best.

A profile is only useful once it tells you what to provide.

Thirty individual profiles still have to be taught in one room at one time.

You cannot differentiate for a readiness level you have never measured.

The Framework

The four things you can actually change

Tap each dial.

Once you know who you are teaching, the question becomes what you can change. There are only four things.

1

Content

What a child learns and how they get access to it.

In the classroom: The same objective through a text at three reading levels, vocabulary taught in advance to the children who will need it, concrete materials before the abstract method.

Which Dial?

Sort the strategy

The Other Half

Three things you respond to

Knowing what you can change is only half of it. The four dials tell you where the levers are. They do not tell you which one to pull, for which child, or when. That decision comes from three things about the learner in front of you.

Readiness is not ability. It changes by subject and by week. A child can need more support in writing and more challenge in maths on the same Tuesday.

Take It Away

Which of the four dials do you turn most often? Which do you almost never turn?

Think of one lesson this week. How many ways in did it have, and how many ways out?

Name one child whose interest you could use next week, and what you would change.

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