A Differentiated Approach to the Common Core: How do I help a broad range of learners succeed with a challenging curriculum? (ASCD Arias)

The Common Core State Standards require all students to think in complex and creative ways and apply classroom learning in new contexts. Yet many teachers already struggle with reaching all learners, who come to school with varied levels of readiness, interests, and learning profiles. What to do now that the expectations are even higher? Differentiated instruction experts Carol Ann Tomlinson and Marcia B. Imbeau offer practical, thoughtful advice on how to plan, deliver, and assess instruction that meets this new level of challenge. Combining the goals of the Common Core with the principles of differentiation, the authors present an eight-step process to help teachers make rich, intellectually rigorous curriculum accessible to a very broad range of students. With examples across grade levels and content areas and a checklist for reflection on the eight steps, this timely publication will show you how to meet high expectations with responsive instruction and help all your students grow as thinkers and problem solvers.

Carol Ann Tomlinson is William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor, Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundations and Policy, and Co-director of the Institutes on Academic Diversity at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. Her university career follows a 20-year career as a public school teacher and a leader of district programs for both struggling and advanced learners. She and her colleagues developed a model for what we now call differentiated instruction in their work with heterogeneous 7th grade classrooms. Tomlinson was Virginia’s Teacher of the Year in 1974 and won an All-University Teaching Award in 1994. The author of more than 300 publications, she works throughout the United States and internationally with educators who want to create classrooms that are more responsive to a broad range of learners.

Marcia B. Imbeau is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she teaches graduate courses in two programs. She is actively involved in university and public school partnerships, working as a university liaison and teaching courses in curriculum development, differentiation, classroom management, and action research. Imbeau is a regular presenter at ASCD’s annual conference and has worked with a variety of school districts implementation efforts as a member of the ASCD’s Differentiated Instruction Cadre. She is co-author (with Tomlinson) of Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom along with several book chapters on the differentiated instruction and classroom management.