A Study On American Differentiated Instructional Strategies

The basic goal of education is to promote one's development, to maximize one's potential, and to maximize one's spirituality and probability. Our students, they are different in their learning styles, interest, characters, readiness, cultural background and family factors. We can't promote their best development, unless our teaching can fit their different needs. However, in reality, students' difference is always ignored, many teachers often teach the same material, with the same teaching methods. And the students are often evaluated by the same standard. Differentiated instruction, which is springing up in 1990's, can enlighten us to respect students' individuality and to response to their needs. Differentiated instruction means changing the content, the process and the product to response to individual learner's needs, styles or interests. To implement differentiated instruction effectively, the relevant teaching strategies have to be mastered. This paper uses research products of America for reference, to study four kinds of differentiating teaching strategies, including the differentiating teaching strategies of the determination of the teaching targets, the teaching methods, the assessments, and the classroom work and homework.This paper is made up of one introduction and five chapters.The first part is the introduction, which presents the reason, process and the methods.Chapter One is the differentiating strategies of the determination of the teaching targets. The teaching targets' determination is the first step to implement differentiated instruction. This chapter will discuss the basis, the methods and the procedure of the determination of the teaching targets.Chapter Two is the differentiating strategies of teaching method. This chapter focuses on the essential parts of differentiated instruction, tiered lesson and flexible grouping. Their meaning, organization and management will be presented by concrete cases.Chapter Three is the differentiating strategies of assessment. To differentiated instruction, teaching and assessment are just like the two sides of one coin. This part will discuss the differentiating strategies of multi-subjects assessment, differentiating assessment contents, differentiating assessment methods, and the differentiating treatments with the assessment results.Chapter Four is the differentiating strategies of seatwork and homework. Homework and seatwork can support the effective implementation of differentiated instruction. This chapter will discuss the principles that the seatwork and homework have to follow, the differentiating work's form, and the management.Chapter Five is summary and forecast. Thanks to a supporting system, the differentiated instruction can implement effectively, so this chapter will summarize the supporting factors firstly. Comparing with the supporting system of America, we can find out the challenges and difficulties we will face. Finally, the author will try to give some constructive suggestions.