Course | Differentiated Instruction Made Practical

Learn what adjustments teachers can make daily to increase equity, access, rigor, and engagement for all students. Explore the dispositions, skills, and actions needed to differentiate instruction, online and off.

Effective differentiated instruction is critical to student success, yet it can be difficult to develop and implement. Given the diversity of today’s classrooms and the variability of in-person, hybrid, and online learning, how can teachers provide instruction that offers equity, access, rigor, and engagement for all of their students?

Differentiated Instruction Made Practical provides targeted professional development that enables teachers to differentiate instruction as part of their daily classroom routines. The program is based on a four-step decision-making framework and structured classroom routines rooted in research on student cognition and motivation.

Over the course of seven modules, you’ll learn the agile thinking you need to analyze problems of student learning and effectively differentiate instruction within a range of time and curriculum constraints.

Program Details

Students come to the classroom with diverse experiences, understandings, interests, strengths, and needs. Differentiated Instruction Made Practical will teach you the why and how of building differentiated instruction into your daily teaching habits and routines.

Course content includes theory and practice, emphasizing sustainability for instructors and engaging, flexible, deep, and durable learning for all students. Through videos, readings, personal reflection, and online forums, you'll experience differentiated instruction for yourself and learn methods for implementing it in your classroom.

Learning Goals

• Learn the theory and methods of differentiated instruction and how it can serve all learners including English language learners, students with disabilities, and students needing further challenge.
• Practice adjusting instruction through a practical four-step method designed to help you better meet the needs of diverse learners.
• Learn and practice agile decision-making about when and what kind of help to provide, when and how to use group work, and how to offer student choice.
• Begin to measure the impact of differentiated instruction on student learning and ensure alignment with established standards in your system.

Faculty Chair

Rhonda Bondie
Adjunct Lecturer on Education
Rhonda Bondie is a lecturer in education who specializes in teaching, special education, and teacher leadership. With over 20 years of experience in urban public schools, she is committed to inclusive classrooms where all learners are valued and engaged. Bondie leads the online course Differentiated Instruction Made Practical, based on her co-authored book introducing the ALL-ED framework, used globally to support inclusive teaching. She has also been involved with Project Zero Classroom and currently directs the Agile Teacher Lab at HGSE, focusing on developing teaching expertise through online learning.

Who Should Attend

• Classroom teachers
• Instructional leaders
• School leaders
• Administrators
• Educators from various settings (museums, after-school programs, and other informal learning contexts).

Team Application
Teams of 3-6 are encouraged to apply. Teams may be comprised of people from within or across schools or organizations. Teams should be prepared to try out course ideas with students/learners in classrooms or other learning environments. Teams should also be able to meet synchronously, in person, at least once per module to engage in group-based activities.

Individual Application
Individuals are also invited to participate; they will be placed in a virtual team with others who have enrolled as individuals. Individuals will be expected to meet synchronously (via phone call or video conference) with the teams once per session. We will strive to group individuals with others who are in the same or similar time zones; if this is not possible, exceptions to the team meeting requirement can be made.

Required Text

There is one required textbook for this program, Differentiated Instruction Made Practical: Engaging the Extremes through Classroom Routines, by Rhonda Bondie and Akane Zusho. Please order the required textbook early to ensure you have it by the program’s start. You can buy a paper copy or a digital edition from Amazon or Routledge. If you order from Routledge, you may use the following coupon code to receive a 20% discount: FLR40.