Differentiated Instruction in Music Education



Differentiate!!

 "Effective teachers have been differentiating instruction for as long as teaching has been a profession. It has to do with being sensitive to the needs of your students and finding ways to help students make the necessary connections for learning to occur in the best possible way." teach-nology.com

"Differentiated Instruction makes it possible to maximize learning for ALL students. It is a professional and responsive mind-set where the teacher is proactively planning for the needs of diverse learners.
Most teachers naturally differentiate to some degree. The more differentiated a classroom, the more its students feel successful and motivated, resulting in higher student achievement." differentiatedinstruction.com



For the past decade, much has been written on differentiated instruction. For even longer than that, teachers have known that their students have vastly different abilities and progressive teachers have adjusted their instruction to suit the specific needs of their students. Are music teachers among that "progressive" group? Or, are we still serving up our instruction in a "one-size-fits-all" model? How are we adapting differentiated instruction in the music realm?

In the coming weeks and months, I'm going to be including different real-world examples of how I'm differentiating instruction in lessons in my music class, and especially with my special needs students. It takes more planning and preparation, but my goal is to help more students (with many different learning styles) make meaningful connections to their music learning.