Learning contracts: An agreement between student and teacher designed to match skills and/or content to readiness, interests, and/or learning profile.

Curriculum compacting: Compressing the required curriculum into a shorter period of time so students who master it ahead of their classmates can use the time they "buy back" for other activities.

Adjusting questions: In class discussions, tests, and homework, teachers adjust the sorts of questions posed to learners based on their readiness, interests, and learning profiles.

Learning centers: Stations or collections of materials learners use to explore topics or practice skills matched to their readiness, interests, and/or learning profiles.

Flexible grouping: Students are part of many different groups – and also work alone – based on the match of the task to student readiness, interest, or learning profile.

Independent study: Process through which student and teacher identify problems or topics of interest to the student. Both student and teacher plan a method of investigating the problem or topic and identifying the type of product the student will develop.

Adapted from How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms,
by Carol Tomlinson. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1995.

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