My Favorite Differentiating Resources . . .

I use a variety of resources to help me in my journey towards a differentiated classroom, and I’ve had so many readers ask which resources I find most useful so I thought I would share a few of the things that have been helpful for me.  I decided to separate this into two different posts.  This post will focus on actual printed resources or guides that I use and later I will show you specific items and tools that I use in my class (including some items I wish I had but haven’t acquired yet).

Above all, resources that I feel have been most helpful to me are any and all publications by the Differentiated Instruction guru, Carol Ann Tomlinson.  She is the queen of D.I. I’d LOVE to meet her someday but until then, I stalk her through her publications and books.  My favorites are:

This is a super easy read, tons of great ‘get right to work’ suggestions and ideas. 

Great resource guide for elementary specifically.

Great read for those getting started.

Knowing that instruction should focus on core principals, I also reference the following website quite a bit to keep up on the latest Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten.  It’s a great reference site for everything Common Core.

A couple of guides that I have made up myself that help me greatly in my day-to-day planning are:

Click on the picture above to get a copy of the explanation.

And this template I use (not as much anymore more but quite a bit when I first started out) to remind me of the what process I should use for tiering.  You can click on the form to get a copy for yourself.

Another chart that I use quite often when I think about differentiating in response to learning profiles and intelligences is

I put this in the front of my planner to remind me of all the intelligences I should be considering when planning learning centers and other activities.  If you’d like a copy for yourself, just click on the picture above to download it.

These are just a few references that I use regularly to keep me on the straight and narrow. If you have any great resources that you use, please drop me a comment.  I’d love to hear from you.  And come back and check out my favorite tools used for differentiating in the next couple of weeks.