Professional Development for Differentiating Instruction: An ASCD Action Tool

Written by a leading expert on differentiated instruction, this resource contains more than 45 tools and activities that make it easier for staff developers, teacher leaders, and other professional development leaders to show teachers and administrators how to successfully implement and maintain differentiated instruction. Use these tools in workshops, professional learning communities, and small-group settings with participants to

- Establish a learning environment that is welcoming to educators at all levels of experience and expertise.
- Plan staff development activities that model differentiated instruction.
- Group teachers flexibly for their learning experiences.
- Increase your colleagues' capacity to use differentiated practices.
- Use ongoing assessment to guide your staff development.

All tools and activities are also available for download with additional online-only tools.

Cindy A. Strickland has been a teacher for twenty-five years and has worked with students of all ages, from kindergarten to master s degree. A member of the ASCD Differentiation Faculty Cadre, Cindy works closely with Carol Ann Tomlinson and has coauthored several books and articles with her. In the past eight years, Cindy s consulting work has taken her to forty-six states, five provinces, and three continents where she has provided workshops on topics relating to differentiation, the Parallel Curriculum Model (PCM), and gifted education. Cindy s publications include Staff Development Guide for the Parallel Curriculum; The Parallel Curriculum Model, 2nd edition; The Parallel Curriculum Model in the Classroom: Applications Across the Content Areas; and In Search of the Dream: Designing Schools and Classrooms That Work for High Potential Students from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds.Publications in differentiation include Professional Development for Differentiated Instruction: An ASCD Toolkit, Exploring Differentiated Instruction, Tools for High-Quality Differentiated Instruction: An ASCD Toolkit, the ASCD online course Success with Differentiation, the book Differentiation in Practice: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum, Grades 9 12, and a unit in the book Differentiation in Practice: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum, Grades 5 9.