Initial assessments are crucial to preparing and maintaining a differentiated classroom. A good assessment determines how well a student understands a given subject. This determination creates a starting point for the student's instruction and assists teachers in learning the particular strengths and learning styles of that student.
Class sizes should be kept as small as possible. With a large class, it is difficult for the teacher to give proper attention to individuals if there are too many students in need of attention; neither should a class be so small as to inhibit the establishment of a sense of community in the classroom.
Use anchor activities to manage multiple students properly in a differentiated classroom. Each student has individual work and may finish at any time, before or after his peers. Anchor activities are assignments a student can work on when her own work is finished and the teacher is still busy with another child.
Tiered instruction enables a teacher to give lessons that meet each student's needs at his own level of knowledge. This further enables the teacher to follow the lesson with activities and assignments that appropriately challenge a student rather than overwhelm or bore her.
A tiered reading lesson might present a story to children. Some students might only be ready to read the story and answer basic comprehension questions about it. Others might be more appropriately challenged by having to retell the story. An advanced student might be asked to create a new story using the same tone or setting.
After a lesson in multiplication, a tiered approach to assignments would offer simple operational problems to less capable students but more complex word problems to more advanced students who received the same lesson.