If you’ve ever been on a bicycle, you know that it takes all the gears and cogs working together to keep you on a smooth ride. If the chain comes off, or one of the gears malfunctions, you might end up walking your bike home or even worse, picking yourself up off the asphalt!

The Three Cogs of Differentiation

It’s the same with education, teachers need to utilize many components of education in order to keep the gears or cogs working in the right direction. The interrelated and interdependent features of such “clockwork”, ensures a cycle of teaching that keeps moving forward at a rate that allows the overall educational goals to be met. A teacher must have a meaningful curriculum, know the students’ needs, and be more than willing to nurture those needs, in order to develop a fully differentiated classroom. With the cogs working together, a teacher can be sure that the most effective and successful classroom environment is being achieved.

In my classroom, I plan to work hard to keep all three cogs working together in unison to ensure my students are getting a real sense of how a balanced and truly differentiated classroom should feel. It’s important to re-assess as you go to be sure you are implementing each cog and keeping them all in sync.                        

 Ride On!