What Is Differentiated Instruction?

Students enter the classroom with diverse backgrounds and acquire knowledge at different paces. Despite their differences, students who learn in classrooms where teachers differentiate instruction achieve academically and report higher motivation and confidence levels.

While assessment and materials help differentiate instruction, teachers play the most significant role. They plan, facilitate, and guide instruction, ensuring all students can engage with the lessons meaningfully and successfully.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, a leading expert in differentiated instruction, described this instructional practice with the teacher at the center, who proactively plans varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn, and how to express what they have learned. As Tomlinson puts it, this approach "increases the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible,” (Tomlinson, 2003).

What Is Differentiated Instruction and Why Is It Important

Today’s classrooms are more diverse than ever and can no longer foster a one-size-fits-all approach. 

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 14% of children younger than 18 lived in poverty in 2023, up 1.2 percentage points from the year before. 
• Hispanic students comprise 29% of the student population, and more than 10.6% are Emergent Bilinguals. 
• At the same time, reading scores continue to drop, with more than 37% of fourth and 30% of eighth grade students scoring below Basic on the NAEP in 2022.

These statistics underscore the importance of addressing crucial learning gaps, promoting equity in the classroom, and using instructional approaches that ensure academic success for students at all levels. 

Strategies for Differentiating Instruction

Teachers respond to individual students’ needs by differentiating instruction based on their individual needs—and you may already be doing it. You differentiate instruction whenever you adapt your teaching to help an individual or group of students access a lesson differently from their peers. 

Tomlinson theorized teachers can effectively differentiate instruction through the frameworks of content, process, products, and learning environment.

• Content: What the student must learn or how to access content better
• Process: The activities in which the student engages to make sense of or master the content
• Products: Culminating assignments that ask the students to rehearse, apply, and extend what they have learned in a unit
• Learning environment: The ways in which the physical classroom supports student learning

By modifying content, teachers adjust what students learn; through the process, they adapt how students engage with the material. The product’s framework allows students to demonstrate their understanding in various ways, while the learning environment supports a supportive and inclusive space that fosters student engagement and collaboration. 

Content

Content differentiation involves adapting instruction to meet the needs of all students, including students with disabilities and Emergent Bilingual students. To differentiate content, teachers must be well-prepared to teach concepts and skills and also understand what support students need to understand the concepts they will be teaching. This might mean adapting materials, presentation style, and other instructional elements to meet each student's readiness, interests, and learning styles.

When differentiating content for students in your classroom, you should:

• Consider students' motivation, behaviors, and support at home
• Implement research-based scaffolds or supports
• Establish clear learning objectives for each lesson
• Align new concepts or skills with the planned learning objective, class materials, and tasks

Differentiating literacy lessons includes using reading materials representing varying levels of complexity, providing spelling or vocabulary lists, or presenting materials through audio or video. 

Process

Process differentiation refers to how teachers can adapt instruction to help students learn new content. When differentiating a process, teachers might provide different ways for students to explore a topic and give students strategies for making meaning of new ideas or information. 

For example, you might group students based on assessment data that reveals gaps in their literacy skills. While whole-group instruction might be beneficial to introduce a new skill, other groupings allow you to re-teach skills in small groups, facilitate peer-led groups, or target individual needs with one-on-one instruction. 

Examples of differentiating by process include:

• Asking students to work on the same skills but give them different levels of support
• Offering manipulatives or other hands-on tools for students
• Encouraging advanced students to support struggling learners or encourage advanced learners to pursue a topic in greater depth

Products

Differentiating instruction by product means helping students demonstrate their knowledge of a lesson or skill differently. Teachers should aim to make assignments—products of student knowledge—challenging for all learners but not so difficult that striving learners can’t complete them independently.

You can assign audio, visual, or kinesthetic products that require creativity and analysis. Students can complete assignments alone or in groups. Although you might allow your students to choose their assignments, they should be encouraged to complete different types of products. 

Examples of differentiating instruction by product include: 

• Giving students options for how they might demonstrate their learning 
• Allowing students to work alone, in pairs, or in small groups 
• Encouraging students to choose how they’ll express their learning in assignments, as long as their products contain required elements

Learning Environment

While most classrooms are set up to accommodate whole-group instruction with the teacher at the center, you can rearrange your space to better support differentiated instructional strategies. By supporting independent students, pairs, and student groups, you can maximize your space for differentiated instruction.

Examples of differentiating classroom learning environments include: 

• Ensuring students have quiet spaces to work independently without distraction as well as collaborative spaces
• Providing learning materials that reflect a variety of cultures and backgrounds
• Developing routines that encourage students to get help when teachers are busy with other students

Differentiated Instruction and Special Education

Although differentiated instructional strategies differ from special education, both approaches support students with disabilities and Emergent Bilingual students by giving them entry points into grade-level curricula. 

• In 2023, 15% of all students had an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires students with disabilities to have an IEP that includes their academic achievement and functional performance, as well as the impact their disability has on their general education curriculum. Each child’s IEP includes goals aligned with grade-level content standards for all children with disabilities. 

• Similar to IEPs, 504 plans help ensure students receive the accommodations and extra support they need to succeed academically. These plans provide students with physical or mental disabilities equal access to educational opportunities.

Differentiated instruction and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) support diverse learners but differ in scope, legal requirements, and implementation. For example, unlike the IEP process, differentiated instruction is not legally mandated; it’s considered a best practice for inclusive education. Teachers don’t need to formally document their instruction like they would for an IEP, but they should assess students regularly to guide instruction. 

Still, IEPs and differentiated instruction coexist in the classroom, with differentiated instruction often supporting a student’s IEP. By offering differentiated instructional strategies, you can ensure students with special needs and language backgrounds receive equitable access to your general curriculum.

Challenges of Differentiated Instruction

Tomlinson said that one of the major obstacles teachers face when differentiating instruction is determining how to manage a classroom where the students drive the learning rather than the teacher.

“The differentiation philosophy indicates that students become stronger learners when they can accept more responsibility for their own learning and when they become more proficient in understanding their goals, their status relative to those goals, and how to adjust their approach to learning in order to achieve the goals,” she said.

Teachers must also clearly understand their students’ learning styles and academic knowledge, which requires assessment data that provides insight into their skills and learning gaps.

Differentiated instruction also poses these challenges for teachers:

• Time constraints: Planning several lessons requires time for frequent assessment, the design of varied activities, and the creation of alternative materials
• Teacher expertise: Not all teachers have the experience or confidence to differentiate instruction. It takes professional development and practice to implement this approach effectively.
• Resource limitations: Many schools need more resources (for example, technology, materials, or staff support) to differentiate instruction for all students
• Assessment challenges: Frequently assessing students’ readiness, interests, and learning profiles requires additional resources
• Equity concerns: Some educators may fear differentiation could unintentionally exacerbate achievement gaps or water down instruction for some students

Despite these challenges, ongoing professional learning, professional learning communities, and technology tools can help teachers implement differentiated instruction most effectively. 

How to Implement Differentiated Instruction

When teachers differentiate instructional strategies, students can learn at their own pace and catch up if needed. You can build lessons around students’ individual skills and customize your teaching to ensure all of your students can access the content you’re teaching. In a recent EdWeek article, education experts provided these tips to teachers:

• Get to know each of your students
• Understand what you have for materials and use your resources
• Give instructions in several formats to accommodate all learning styles and abilities
• Incorporate active learning into your lessons with manipulatives, movement, and games 
• Adapt reading materials to help students of different abilities and language backgrounds access the same content 
• Use a tiered approach to group instruction, allowing each group to master content or skills at different speeds
• Give students different options for presenting their work, such as papers, presentations, or videos. Giving students choice will help them engage in the learning process.

Lexia Helps Pave Personalized Pathways for Students

Unlike other literacy and language programs that start and progress students at the same pace, Lexia® was designed to help students progress based on their performance using differentiated instructional strategies.

• Built on the science of reading, Lexia® Core5® Reading is a research-proven program that accelerates the development of literacy skills for students of all abilities in grades pre-K–5, helping them make the critical shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Core5 adapts to student performance, addressing skills gaps in real time. It also helps teachers tailor their instruction to each student's needs, allowing for more focused and effective teaching—whether students are at-risk, on-level, or advanced.

• Similarly, Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® accelerates literacy gains for students in grades 6–12 who are at risk of not meeting College- and Career-Ready Standards. The adaptive program saves educators up to a month of instructional time by providing the data necessary to understand students’ current skill levels and creating data-driven action plans to help teachers deliver just-in-time instruction.

Teachers play a pivotal role in shaping student success. Yet, many need more evidence-based strategies and tools to teach diverse classrooms. Lexia® LETRS® Professional Learning can better equip you to meet the literacy learning needs of all of your students by going beyond the essential components of literacy. LETRS gives teachers the skills to differentiate literacy instruction for all students. 

Explore how Lexia can help you support differentiated instruction in your literacy classroom.