Tools for Differentiating Learning

I was lucky to attend Naomi Harm's WEMTA session on personalizing learning this past Monday.  In her session, Naomi went through several resources that can help teachers easily differentiate learning for students at different levels in their classrooms.  Two tools- The Differentiator and Respondo!- really stuck with me as being fantastic resources for teachers to use with students.

The Differentiator allows teachers to define the learning target by choosing the thinking skill, content, resources, product, and group size from the list given on the site.  This gives students the opportunity to design a learning outcome that meets their needs and gives them options for a variety of products.  After choosing one option from each of the categories, a clear learning objective is set!

Similarly, Respondo! is another awesome tool for having students and teachers create different outcomes to meet different learning styles.  This tool, on the other hand, is specifically focused on creating different outcomes when responding to literature.  It works similarly to The Differentiator by having users choose different outcomes based on different elements of the text.

The best part of both tools- They require students to critically think about classroom content and create products that involve higher level thinking.  Learning outcomes can measure the same objective but be different for students with different needs, abilities, and talents.  I think that students would really enjoy being empowered to use these tools to decide on the products that will show what they know.