CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

EDU555
ARTICLE REVIEW
TITLE: MAPPING A ROUTE TOWARD DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION

STUDENTS NAME

: MARSIAH BINTI DEMIE

STUDENTS ID

: 2012581103

COURSE

: ED247 4A

LECTURERS NAME

: MOHAMAD HISYAM ISMAIL

SUBMISSION DATE: 21/11/2014

Summary
Carol Ann Tomlinson said that every person has their different ways on how they digest any
knowledge or information. She believes that even the ways are different, the skills and content is
always the same. The equity and excellence are very important values towards our education
system. In order to achieve these values, our school must establish heterogeneous communities.
By establishing the heterogeneous communities, we can help all learners to maximize their
ability in learning process. Nowadays, our education system seems doubtful and many questions
arise regarding the teaching and learning progress in school. In order to answer the questions, the
various roads of differentiation have come appears. Apart from that, the most important is to
have strong and clear curriculum and instruction. Therefore, in this article, Carol Ann Tomlinson
provide us three types of classroom settings, with three different teachers (different approaches
in teaching and learning), but have the same or similar subject (ancient Rome).
The first teacher; Mr. Appleton, more focus in giving lectures and strictly giving a question or
quiz after finish one chapter. So all the questions are based on a textbook or notes. He also
provides his students with a list of topics that have been covered in lectures and inform all his
students what will come out in the test so his students can make a preparation before sitting the
test. The second teacher: Mrs. Baker, is using another type of method in teaching and learning
session. She like to bring many materials as her teaching aids in the class in order to create a fun
and happy learning environment in the class. She brings material such as pictures, graphic art,
and so on. She also likes to conduct some extra activities such as wearing ancient Romes
clothes, creating poems and so on. Students have given a freedom to choose any topic that can
attract them so its more to student-oriented. The third teacher; Ms. Cassel, she is teaching her
student about ancient Rome effectively. She has organized planning in order to help her students.
She gives the key concept and be prepared in every aspect. She was mastered in her own subject
matter and always equipped herself with the current knowledge. She aware about the students
inequality and make a consistent observation to assist her students' behaviour or interests, so she
knows how to help her students. According to the author, this teacher manage to give two
different tasks which have a correlation with each other. Throughout the process of learning,
students are encouraged to use media and technology for their task. The teacher also done the

group discussion, debate, conduct games, wisely questions and various activities which stimuli
the curiosity and cultivate wonders among her students.
Opinion and comment regarding the contents
Mapping a route toward differentiated instruction is a selected article by me for an academic
article review purposes. This article was written by Carol Ann Tomlinson and produced in
September 1999. She is expertise in the field of education, especially in this topic and also one of
the professor and lecture at the University of Virginias Curry School of education. In this article,
the author stressed the important of applying differentiated curriculum and differentiated
methods or instruction in teaching and learning so that students be able to achieve the learning
objectives and at the same time, it will increase students learning performance. Therefore, as
mention before, the author provide three different learning classroom. From these 3 settings the
author had raised the issues on who is the best and how the process of teaching and learning to be
taken by each teacher. So, Carol Ann Tomlinson has done a good comparison between these
three classrooms settings. According to the author, Mr. Appleton class have a sense of what
actually he wants but not in term of what should his students understand. The teacher has an
excellent facts towards history subject, but lacking in term of key concepts, guiding principle and
an essential question. Therefore, the author concludes that there is no differentiating instruction
because the teaching and learning was only based on curriculum facts. Besides that, the author
also argues Mr. Appleton method of teaching because he said that some students may gain more,
but another gain less due to the unequal capacity or potential in remembering the facts.
For the second evaluation of classroom settings, the author think that Mrs. Baker class is
lacking of something. The teacher has a blur vision for her students. By the way, for me it was
not only about lacking, but also about confusing. Mrs. Baker confused about her vision and how
should she lead her students to achieve success in education. These classes have a great
engagement between teacher and students, but the input or information that gained is only a little.
The authors state that Mrs. Baker lack in term of clarification. The teacher brings various types
of teaching aid, but still the learning outcome is not as much as expected. She thinks that she is
differentiating instruction, but her actually bad in giving the clarification. She did varieties
activities and even a project, but these were not good enough to say her classroom as
differentiated instruction.
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Regarding to the third teacher, Carol Ann Tomlinson stated that this type of teacher is the
best and this class is what we called differentiated instruction. The author explained on how good
Ms. Cassel is because this teacher have equipped with perfect package, which means she have
mastered the historical subject, very skilled and talented teacher, having a good determination
and creativity. The way of how Ms. Cassel deals with her students prove to us that students need
different approaches in order to achieve the optimal learning outcomes. She proves that by using
different kind of activities with a good and clear instruction, the learning objectives can be
achieved. Therefore, Collen Ann Tomlinson concludes that Ms. Cassel helps us to see the
differentiated instruction through her classroom setting. In my opinion, generally I agree with
most of the author's point of views regarding this article. However, there are the things that I
want to add and argues a little regarding the 3 types of classroom settings.
First of all, I agree with Collen Ann Tomlinson about her opinion saying even though
students may learn in various ways, the essential skills and content are still the same. This is
because each of us has our own unique personality so the way we obtain input also is different.
This is teacher big responsibility; the teacher should know the behaviour of his/her students.
Teachers should know either his/her students learning best by sight, by hearing or talking or by
doing. According to Mohamad Yusri (2007); individual differences or inequalities mean
individual variation from the norm group either in term of their cognitive, emotional, physical,
behaviour and so on.
So as a teacher, its very important to have a differentiated instruction in classroom
settings. In my opinion, the first teacher; Mr. Appleton, his teaching method is more represented
on how teaching and learning process implement in our country. This was a real system in our
country and we are still bound with the old traditional system for teaching & learning process.
This type of education depends more on teachers power or teacher-oriented. So the teacher is the
one that gives the instruction and the students only have to follow. Teacher emphasize the facts
based curriculum and not the key concepts or something that can encourage and invite curiosity
or cultivate wonders among students. Nowadays, it seems that our educational system was
getting worst day by day. The old traditional system seems not relevant anymore. What is the
point of pushing our students to memorizing the facts instead of understanding the facts?
Seriously, thus reminding me about our education in this country. Our education system tends to
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more emphasized on students results. We are hungry of the grades of A in order to maintain the
performance level either from individual parties or the school itself. In my opinion, from the
students perspective, this type of classroom setting is boring and giving too much pressure to
success either to the teacher or to the students. These can contribute into two consequences. One
is in a positive way and another is negative. The positive thing is, the school may produce many
students that are capable of memorizing lessons and gain an excellent results. By the way, the
worst consequences is, too much pressure towards teacher can lead to the leak of examination
papers. For the example, the current issue regarding to the UPSR paper. According to Deputy
Chairman of the National Professors Council (NPC), Datuk Dr.ShamsulAmriBaharuddin on 13
September by The Sunday Daily newspaper, the pressure to succeed may have led some people
to leak two question papers of the UjianPencapaianSekolahRendah (UPSR) examination. So, I
would like to ask all of us to rethink about this type of classroom setting. It is still relevant or we
should move on and not depends too much on this traditional concept.
Regarding to the Mrs. Baker classes, I am actually quite attracted with his approaches
skill in the class. I do agree with this author which saying that this type of teaching is more fun
and can engage students a lot. However, I am disappointed because the activities or projects that
have been done by Mrs. Baker were lack of clarity and explanation. The learning outcome cannot
be achieved. In addition, Mrs. Baker give a freedom to her students to choose any topic regarding
to their interests. Mrs. Baker should wake up from her blurring vision. She should set up a clear
objective. She should know the different between differentiating instruction and differentiating
the activities or material. Differentiating according the Connors is what happen when you teach
the students and not a curriculum.
For the next teacher; Ms. Cassel, the author told us that this is the best way of how we
should teach students. So I do agree with this opinion because, I think, this type of teacher is
really having a passion. She has equipped herself with a perfect information, skills and she know
where to start and where to stop. Her success in developing the curiosity among her students
regarding to the subject and she is good at making clarifications. There are lots of fun activities
also included in her lessons.
As a conclusion, I would like to suggest that we should do the best as a future teacher.
The ability of each of us is different, but all of us have a same potential or a chance to be an
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effective and differentiated teacher. I am totally agree with the author concept in where the
differentiated of curriculum, instruction will only be achieved if the level of students
involvement and understanding is stressed in learning method. However, dont think too much
about how to be a differentiated teacher because overthinking may ruin our teaching and learning
and we tend to lose our contents during teach our students. Be a teacher, which full of wisdom
and determination so we will always aware about teachers responsibility. Last but no less, the
most important is always practice on how to teach students either by visually, audio or by doing.

References

Chin, A. (2007). The authentic Confucius: A life of thought and politics. New York: Scribner
Pappano, L. (2011). Teachers Weigh the Value of Multiple Lessons, Differentiated
Instruction Re-examined, 27, 3.
Pressure to succeed may have led to the leak in UPSR papers. (2014, September 13). The Sunday
Daily. Retrieved from http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1168611
Tomlinson, A. C., (1999).Mapping a Route toward Differentiated Instruction. Education
Leadership, 57, 12-16.