Teachers can create tiered assignments: lessons whose work presents students with essential skills at different levels of complexity and abstraction. The curricular content and the lesson's outcomes remain the same, but teachers can adapt the processes for learning it according to the students' differentiated levels of readiness. In the course of a unit, teachers may assess which students are acquiring core concepts so quickly that they could be assigned as project leaders for those who struggle. In that case, both the high-level and low-level learner could contribute to each others completion of the same overall science assignment. Educators can assess variable learning styles before developing such a project.
Compacting is a way to tweak the learning process. Having assessed a student's mastery or knowledge of a concept, teachers create lesson plans to exclude mastered skills and specifically address those in need of further development. One science group could be tasked with the mandate of memorizing the periodic table of elements, while another may study theories of experimentation. Compacting is a form of streamlined study. Differentiation allows teachers to free up study time in order to enrich or accelerate a gifted student's course of scientific study. While some students may receive direct instruction on core concepts, their gifted counterparts could deploy those concepts to develop and test the hypothesis in question.
Learners are best motivated by their own interests. In a science classroom, teachers can differentiate the passions of individual students for the purpose of grouping, individual work, topics for experimentation and assessment. Instructors must produce curriculum-based learning outcomes, but their pursuit can be a matter of passion within the subject area. In space sciences, for example, one group of like-minded peers could present a project on black holes, while another group could focus on the Milky Way. It is crucial for teachers to obtain prior knowledge of these interests in order to make this differentiated strategy work.
Teachers can assign group projects in which science students fulfill specific roles that address individual learning needs. If a group has a set experiment, for example, one student could record it, another could observe, another could write it up and another could organize the needed materials. It is important for teachers to ensure that students are fully capable of succeeding in their roles before assigning them. However, the group observer could help the recorder while the experiment is in progress. In that sense, cooperative learning harnesses the power of the individual's many potential talents. The group leader may be challenging on mentoring criteria too.