Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom, November/2010

While most books on classroom management focus on keeping kids in their seats and giving good directions, here is a breakthrough guide that explains how to lead a class that is differentiated to individual students’ needs. The top authority on differentiated instruction, Carol Ann Tomlinson, teams up with educator and consultant Marcia B. Imbeau to outfit you with everything you need to deal with time, space, materials, groups, and strategies in ways that balance content requirements with multiple pathways for learning. Using authentic and tested examples from all grade levels and subjects, the authors explain

1. How to set up and orchestrate a classroom in which students work as a whole group, as small groups, and as individuals.
2. What teachers in successfully differentiated classrooms must create, monitor, and modify in order to support the best possible learning outcome for each student.
3. How to proactively plan instruction to address student differences in readiness, interest, and learning profile.
4. How to move differentiation from an abstract idea in a professional development session to a fundamental way of life in the classroom.

Step-by-step guidelines, checklists, and a Teacher’s Toolkit with ready-made classroom activities ensure that you master the nuts and bolts of managing a student-centered classroom—from creating the learning environment and classroom routines to challenging advanced learners and buying time for struggling students.

About the Authors:

Carol Ann Tomlinson began her career in education as a public school teacher, ultimately spending 21 years as a classroom teacher and in various administrative roles. During that time, she taught preschool, middle school, and high school students in the content areas of English/language arts, history, and German. She also served as director of programs for advanced and struggling learners and as a community relations coordinator. While a teacher in the Fauquier County (Virginia) public schools, she received recognition as Outstanding Teacher at Warrenton Junior High School, Jaycees Outstanding Young Educator, American Legion Outstanding Educator, and the Soroptimist Distinguished Women in Education Award. She was named Virginia's Teacher of the Year in 1974.

Currently the William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, where she is also Co-Director of the University's Institutes on Academic Diversity, Tomlinson works with both graduate and undergraduate students, particularly in the areas of curriculum and differentiated instruction. She was named Outstanding Professor at Curry in 2004 and received an All-University Teaching Award in 2008.

Tomlinson, along with several colleagues, has researched differentiation in a variety of contexts. Among them are preservice teachers' understanding of and ability to address student differences; the nature of the change process in schools that implement differentiation; achievement impacts of differentiation in middle school, elementary, and high school settings; and profiles of teachers whose classroom practice enhances success of students from low-economic and/or cultural minority groups.

Her more than 250 books, book chapters, articles, and other educational materials include (for ASCD): How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms (2nd edition), The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom: Strategies and Tools for Responsive Teaching, Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids (with Jay McTighe), and The Differentiated School: Making Revolutionary Changes in Teaching and Learning (with Kay Brimijoin and Lane Narvaez).

She works regularly throughout the United States and internationally with educators who seek to create classrooms that are more effective with academically diverse student populations.

Marcia B. Imbeau is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she teaches graduate courses in childhood education and gifted education. She is actively involved in university and public-school partnerships, working regularly with her interns and their mentor teachers as a university liaison and teaching courses in curriculum development, differentiation, classroom management, and action research. She was awarded the College of Education and Health Professions' Outstanding Teaching Award in 2000 and 2003.

Imbeau's professional experience includes teaching in a general education classroom, teaching in programs for students identified as gifted, and coordinating university-based enrichment programs for advanced learners. She has served as a board member and member of the executive committee of the National Association for Gifted Children and of the Council for Exceptional Children's TAG division. She has also served as the president of Arkansans for Gifted and Talented Education, a state organization that supports appropriate services for all students.

Among her publications are The Parallel Curriculum: A Design to Develop Learner Potential and Challenge Advanced Learners (2nd Edition) (with Carol Tomlinson, Sandy Kaplan, Joseph Renzulli, Jeanne Purcell, Jann Leppien, Deborah Burns, and Cindy Strickland); a book chapter, "Designing a Professional Development Program," for Designing Services and Programs for High-Ability Learners: A Guidebook for Gifted Education edited by J. H. Purcell and R. D. Eckert; and How to Use Differentiated Instruction with Students with Developmental Disabilities in the General Education Classroom (with Barbara Gartin, Nikki Murdick, and Darlene Perner).