The instructional concepts should be broad-based, not focused on minute details or unlimited facts. Teachers must focus on the concepts, principles and skills that students should learn. The content of instruction should address the same concepts with all students, but the degree of complexity should be adjusted to suit diverse learners.
I often find that teachers struggle to identify different concent for learners because they are overly focused on the facts of the assessment rather than the concepts in the standard. If we can always articulate to learners what they are going to learn in broad terms we may be better able to see that the concept can be covered at varying levels of complexity. I found with middle school students the easiest content differentiation was providing different reading materials to different students about the same theme.
Differentiated instruction is a process to teaching and learning for students of differing abilities in the same class.
they
do not understand what to do or why they should do it. Teachers should
spend more time explaining why we teach what we do, and why the topic
or approach or activity is important and
I have found that in many cases it is the praise or acknowledgement of good behavior or good work- the reward is physical evidence of that- the kids do not care about the value of the reward. In fact often the crummier the reward the more they enjoy it.
If you can
make something fun, exciting, happy, loving, or perhaps even a bit
frightening, students will learn more readily and the learning will
last much longer
United States Historical Census Data Browser to find
raw data for projects. You may search census data by decade
from 1790 to 1970. There is a wealth of information here.