One of the biggest challenges facing teachers today is the attempt to respond to an increasingly broad spectrum of student needs, backgrounds, and learning styles in a single classroom. Differentiated Instruction, a way of thinking about teaching and learning, is a collection of strategies that enhance learning for all students by engaging them in activities that better respond to their particular learning needs, strengths, and preferences. The North Carolina Teacher Academy, in response to the No Child Left Behind legislation and Closing the Achievement Gap initiative, offers half-day, whole-day, and two-day staff development in Cooperative Learning, Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, and Brain-Compatible Learning that is tailored to meet the needs of your school or district.

Differentiated Instruction in the Math Classroom
Differentiated instruction is a broad term that refers to a variety of classroom practices for accommodating student learning differences. This session focus on strategies specifically appropriate for differentiating the math curriculum.  Teachers will increase their instructional repertoire, providing a greater capacity for reaching the diverse learners in their math classroom.

Differentiated Instruction Powered by Cooperative Learning 
Hundreds of studies over more than three decades show a positive correlation between cooperative learning and achievement. Research has been done in every subject, at all grade levels, in all kinds of schools. And there is widespread consensus that students benefit when they can help one another learn instead of having to work apart from-or against-one another. Trained by Roger Johnson, co-director of the Center for Cooperative Learning at the University of Minnesota, and Pat Roy, an educational consultant for the National Staff Development Council, the Teacher Academy trainers will lead you to a better understanding of the difference between cooperative learning and group work.

• Make Mine Cooperative

• Building Bridges for Success

• Working Together, Learning Together

• Creating a Successful Cooperative Classroom

Differentiated Instruction Powered by Learning Styles
Current legislative mandates acknowledge that students have their own unique ways of learning. As the student population in our public school classrooms becomes increasingly more diverse, students struggle to keep up with their classmates. A learning styles approach to instruction will match methods and materials to specific individual strengths.  Student achievement in all areas of the curriculum will be enhanced through learning styles practices and strategies.  Hundreds of studies have been documented that learning-style-responsive environments statistically increase students’ achievement test scores. (Synthesis of the Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model Research)

• Learning Styles: Up Close and Personal

• Movers and Shakers

• Circles and Teams

Differentiated Instruction Powered by Multiple Intelligences
Most educators readily agree that students are smart in different ways. Picture the student who is not particularly good in math but is an excellent artist. Notice the child who struggles in language arts but is always the first picked to be on a team during recess. The Multiple Intelligences theory opens the door to a wide variety of teaching strategies that can easily be implemented in the classroom.

• The Multiple Intelligences Classroom: Awakening Student Learning

• The Intelligence Environment: Exploring the Ways Students Learn

• CPR: Creating Positive Results through Multiple Intelligences

• CSI NC: Capitalizing on Student Intelligences