Everybody's Classroom

Book excerpt: Most people are keenly aware that every student is different and that today’s classrooms challenge educators to build safe and successful learning communities comprising students whose races, languages, cultures, experiences, assets, and dreams vary greatly. This book offers K–12 teachers both the foundations for differentiating their instruction and the means to maximize learning opportunities by getting to know students beyond the labels and stereotypes that often accompany them into the classroom. Tomlinson shows how to use “Highways and Exit ramps” to reach the whole class, with “highway” content and “exit ramps” to specialize needs. Chapters offer numerous recommendations for modifying environments, activities, and assessments; for helping teachers move forward in their instructional planning; and for helping each learner grow academically. Everybody's Classroom extends Tomlinson’s previous work by looking more deeply at specific student populations to help educators create classrooms that are more inclusive than ever before. Chapters cover successful differentiation for English learners; students experiencing poverty; students with different ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender orientations; and students with diverse identified special needs. Book Features: Provides a framework for understanding the scope of differentiation, as opposed to seeing it as a prescribed set of instructional strategies.Shows how to recognize common student needs that cut across student labels, from gifted to traumatized.Offers suggestions for teacher actions based on observation of students and student work.Classroom examples and helpful tables, charts, and graphics.