Understanding The Learning Process To Effectively Differentiate Instruction

By The Center for Development and Learning

The underlying ability a teacher must have to orchestrate differentiated

instruction day after day, hour after hour, by assessing his/her students and
adjusting strategies and tactics moment by moment, requires sophisticated knowledge
and skills.

To successfully use differentiated instruction, a teacher must first have a firm

understanding of each of the cognitive components of the learning process, what
they look like when they are working, and what the specific subcomponents of each
look like when they are breaking down. Next, a teacher must develop a rich
repertoire of strategies and tactics from which to pull the exact strategy or
tactic that will address a specific breakdown for a specific task, at the right
moment. Using a great strategy at the wrong time, or mismatching a strategy with
breakdown for which the strategy will yield no gains, will frustrate students and
teachers alike when the strategy fails to produce the desired result.

There are six interactive components of the learning process: attention, memory,
language, processing and organizing, graphomotor (writing) and higher order
thinking. These processes interact not only with each other, but also with
emotions, classroom climate, behavior, social skills, teachers and family.

In order to engage, motivate and teach all learners at optimal levels, teachers
must understand the learning process in general, understand and respond to
students’ individual emotional and cognitive profiles and select instructional
strategies and tactics that are effective for diverse learners.

Attention
Paying attention is the first step in learning anything. It is easy for most of us
to pay attention to things that are interesting or exciting to us. It is difficult
for most of us to pay attention to things that are not. When something is not
interesting to us, it is easier to become distracted, to move to a more stimulating
topic or activity, or to tune out.

The teacher’s job is to construct lessons that connect to the learner. Relating
what is to be taught to the students’ lives can accomplish this. Relate Romeo and
Juliet, for example, to the realities in our communities of prejudice, unfounded
hatred and gang wars. Or relate today’s discrimination to The Diary of Anne Frank,
and hold class discussions of discrimination that students have personally
experienced or witnessed.

Physical movement can help to “wake up” a mind. When a student shows signs of
inattentiveness and/or restlessness, teachers can provide the student with
opportunities to move around. Many students with attention challenges actually need
to move in order to remain alert. It is wise to find acceptable, non-destructive
ways for these students to be active. Responsibilities such as erasing the board,
taking a message to the office, and collecting papers can offer appropriate outlets
for activity.

Memory
Memory is the complex process that uses three systems to help a person receive,
use, store, and retrieve information. The three memory systems are (1) short-term
memory (e.g., remembering a phone number you got from information just long enough
to dial it), (2) working memory (e.g., keeping the necessary information “files”
out on the mind’s “desktop” while performing a task such as writing a paragraph or
working a long division problem), and (3) long-term memory (a mind’s ever expanding
file cabinet for important information we want to retrieve over time).
Children in school have to remember much more information every day than most
adults do. Adults generally have more specialized days – mechanics use and remember
mechanical information, dentists use and remember information about dentistry, and
so on. On the other hand, school expects that children become experts in several
subjects – e.g., math, language, science, social studies, a foreign language, the
arts.

It is important to remember that when a student understands something, it does not

guarantee that he will remember it. For example, a person may understand a joke
that he heard at a party on Saturday night, but he may have trouble remembering it
when he tries to tell it to his friends on Monday.

In order to enhance the likelihood that all students will elaborate on new
information, teachers should activate their prior knowledge and make new
information meaningful to them. For example, a teacher may ask second graders how
to divide a pan of brownies evenly among the 20 students in the class, and then
connect their solution to the concept of equivalent fractions. Relating how
algebraic equations need to be equal or balanced on both sides to the benefits of
dividing candy or cookies evenly between friends also connects to prior knowledge.

Students who have difficulty with both short-term and working memory may need
directions repeated to them. Giving directions both orally and in written form, and
giving examples of what is expected will help all students. All students will
benefit from self-testing. Students should be asked to identify the important
information, formulate test questions and then answer them. This tactic is also
effective in cooperative learning groups and has been shown by evidence-based
research to increase reading comprehension (NICHD, 2000).

Language
Language is the primary means by which we give and receive information in school.
The two language processing systems are expressive and receptive. We use expressive
language when we speak and write, and we use receptive language when we read and
listen. Students with good language processing skills usually do well in school.
Problems with language, on the other hand, can affect a student’s ability to
communicate effectively, understand and store verbal and written information,
understand what others say, and maintain relationships with others.

Most students, especially those with weaknesses in written language, will benefit
from using a staging procedure for both expository and creative writing. With this
procedure, students first generate ideas. Next they may organize their ideas.
Third, they may look at sentence structure. Then they examine their spelling.
Finally, they attend to mechanical and grammatical rules. It is also helpful for
students to list their most frequently occurring errors in a notebook and refer to
this list when self-correcting.

All students will benefit from systematic, cumulative, and explicit teaching of
reading and writing.

Students who have receptive language challenges such as a slower processing speed
must use a lot of mental energy to listen, and, therefore, may tire easily.
Consequently, short, highly structured lectures or group discussion times should be
balanced with frequent breaks or quiet periods. Oral instructions may also need to
be repeated and/or provided in written form.

Cooperative Strategic Reading (Klinger, Vaughan, Hughes, Schumm, and Elbaum as

referenced in Marzola 2006) is another way to engage students in reading and at the
same time increase oral language skills. This tactic is ideal for promoting
intellectual discussion and improving reading comprehension of expository text in
mixed-level classrooms across disciplines. Using this tactic, students are placed
into cooperative learning groups of four to six students of mixed abilities. The
students work together to accomplish four main tasks: (1) preview (skim over the
material, determine what they know and what they want to learn), (2) identify
clicks and clunks (clicks = we get it; clunks = we don’t understand this concept,
idea or word), (3) get the gist (main idea) and (4) wrap up (summarize important
ideas and generate questions (think of questions the teacher might ask on a test).
Each student in the group is assigned a role such as the
leader/involver/taskmaster, the clunk expert, the gist expert, and the
timekeeper/pacer (positive interdependence). Each student should be prepared to
report the on the group’s conclusions (individual accountability).

Broadening the way we communicate information in the classroom can connect all
students more to the topic at hand, and especially students with language
challenges. Using visual communication such as pictures and videos to reinforce
verbal communication is helpful to all students, and especially to students with
receptive language challenges. Challenge students to invent ways to communicate
with pictures and other visuals, drama, sculpture, dance and music, and watch
memory of key concepts increase and classrooms come alive.

Organization
We process and organize information in two main ways: simultaneous (spatial) and
successive (sequential). Simultaneous processing is the process we use to order or
organize information in space. Having a good sense of direction and being able to
“see” how puzzle pieces fit together are two examples of simultaneous processing.
Successive processing is what we use to order or organize information in time and
sequence. Concepts of time, dates, and order – yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
months of the year, mathematical procedures such as division and multiplication,
word order in sentences, and sentence order in paragraphs are examples of
sequential processing. Students who are good at successive organization usually
have little or no trouble with time management and usually find it easy to organize
an essay in a sequence that is logical.

Students who have trouble with understanding spatial or geographical problems may
need successive verbal explanations given to them. They may benefit from writing
written explanations and descriptions of the information contained in charts,
graphs or diagrams. Teachers should model this process for all students.

Students who have trouble remembering sequences of information but who are strong
in simultaneous processing should benefit from graphic organizers, and making
diagrams or flow charts of sequential information such as events in history rather
than the standard timeline. They may benefit from software programs such as
Inspiration that organize concepts and information into visual maps.

Practicing cooperative learning allows each student’s processing and organizing

strengths to be utilized to the benefit of the group. For example, those who are
strong in simultaneous organization may create the group’s chart, visual, or map,
and those strong in successive organization may be the task step organizers, the
taskmasters, timekeepers and pace setters.

Graphomotor
The writing process requires neural, visual, and muscular coordination to produce
written work. It is not an act of will but rather an act of coordination among
those functions. Often the student who seems unmotivated to complete written work
is the student whose writing coordination is klutzy. We have long accepted that
students may fall on a continuum from very athletic to clumsy when it comes to
sports, but we have not known until recently that some students are writing
“athletes” while others writing klutzes. Just as practice, practice, practice will
not make a football all-star out of an absolute klutz, practice and acts of will
not make a writing all-star out of someone whose neurological wiring does not allow
her to be a high performing graphomotor athlete.

Students with handwriting difficulties may benefit from the opportunity to provide
oral answers to exercises, quizzes, and tests. Having computers in place for all
children helps level the playing field for the graphomotor klutz. Parents and
teachers should be aware, however, that many children with graphomotor challenges
may also have difficulty with the quick muscular coordination required by the
keyboard.

Higher Order Thinking

Higher order thinking (HOT) is more than memorizing facts or relating information
in exactly the same words as the teacher or book expresses it. Higher order
thinking requires that we do something with the facts. We must understand and
manipulate the information.

HOT includes concept formation; concept connection; problem solving; grasping the
“big picture”; visualizing; creativity; questioning; inferring; creative,
analytical and practical thinking; and metacognition. Metacognition is thinking
about thinking, knowing about knowing, and knowing how you think, process
information, and learn.

All students will benefit from advance organizers that relate the big picture and
the main concepts to be covered. Also, all students should be explicitly taught how
to build concept maps (graphic organizers that connect all components of a concept,
and may also connect one concept to another concept).

Give choices for projects and exams that include analytical, practical and creative
thinking options. For example, an analytical choice might be to compare and
contrast the events of the Holocaust to events in Rwanda. A practical choice might
be to show how we can apply the lessons learned from the Holocaust to how we treat
one another in our schools. A creative choice might be to write a play about
tolerance, create a dance that communicates the emotions of the Holocaust, or write
a poem or paint a picture that tells a story about how you feel about the
conditions in Darfur.

Providing ample opportunities in the classroom for self-evaluation and self-

reflection helps students develop self-understanding. Self-Evaluation… Helping
Students Get Better At It! By Carol Rolheiser is listed in the reference section
following this article and is a helpful resource for teachers who want to
incorporate more student self-evaluation in their classrooms.

A student with metacognition can answer the question, “How am I smart?” The first
part of metacognition is thinking about thinking. If a person has metacognition, he
understands the way he thinks, and he understands his strengths and challenges in
specific skill areas, subjects and activities.

A person with metacognition also monitors and regulates how he learns. He can take
a task and decide how best to accomplish it by using his strategies and skills
effectively. He knows how he would best learn a new math procedure and which
strategies he would use to understand and remember a science concept. He
understands the best way for him to organize an essay – whether he would be more
successful by using an outline, a graphic organizer or a mind map. He has mental
self-management.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg lists six components of mental self-management:

1. Know your strengths and weaknesses.
2. Capitalize on your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses.
3. Defy negative expectations.
4. Believe in yourself (self-efficacy).
5. Seek out role models.
6. Seek out an environment where you can make a difference.

Ultimately, this is where we hope students who attend our schools will be upon
graduation. As adults, we should model our own metacognition, talk about
metacognition, and give meaningful examples of metacognition often and well.

Teaching students about the six components of the learning process – attention,
memory, language, processing and organizing, graphomotor (writing) and higher order
thinking, then, demystifies learning and provides an opportunity to increase their
metacognition. It also enhances their sense of self-worth. A student who
understands that she may need to use a particular strategy to help her working
memory function better or that taking frequent breaks will help her stay more
focused on her homework assignments is much better off than thinking that she is
stupid or lazy.

Emotions
Emotions control the on-off switch to learning. When we are relaxed and calm, our
learning processes have a green light. When we are uptight, anxious, or afraid, our
learning processes have a red light. In the classroom, tension slams the steel door
of the mind shut. Creating a non-threatening classroom environment or climate where
mistakes are welcomed as learning opportunities reduces tension, opens the mind and
increases the opportunity for learning.

The more teachers know about how learning takes place – how information is
processed, manipulated and created, the more we will know about what it looks like
when it’s working and what it looks like when it starts to break down. Then, rather
than thinking a student isn’t motivated, teachers will look to see if it is
attention, memory, language, organizing, graphomotor or higher order thinking that
needs an intervention.

Motivation
It is every teacher’s job to motivate every student. Learning more about the brain
and the development of the mind, studying new information on learning, making
learning meaningful and learning about learning, watching the learning process,
monitoring closely for breakdowns, and celebrating the successes of every student –
these are our challenges as we create schools that honor diversity – the schools
all children deserve.