mixitupdifferentiation

Welcome to the Mixitup Website

Mixitup - where differentiation strategies, activities, resources and research all come together to help teachers navigate away from "one size fits all" practices. Please read the information below to begin your differentiation journey and help all students in your classroom learn, achieve, and be engaged. Thank you for visiting my website.
Jan Leonard, Consultant, Two Rivers Professional Development Center, Edwards, IL
jleonard@peoriaroe48.net

Introduction

What's this website all about?
This website is all about differentiated instruction - tips, activities, resources and, oh yes, a little about the research behind it. If you're a teacher you may find it easy to wrap your arms around differentiated instruction, and then again, it may be a challenge. After all, there are so many strategies, activities, methods, etc... The Internet has so many places to visit and there are so many books in print. How do I start? What are the best resources? Who are the best authors? Where can I find good activities for different strategies? What are some activities that don't take much preparation time? How much time should I be differentiating? The questions go on and on and on! Hopefully you'll get some answers at this website. For starters, here's a link to a glossary of differentiation terms:
http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/CandD/CurriculumAreas/Gifted/GlossaryforDifferentation.htm

Who has developed this website?
My name is Jan Leonard, and I work as a professional development consultant for Two Rivers Professional Development Center in central Illinois. Two Rivers is part of the Peoria and Knox Counties Regional Offices of Education, funded by the Illinois State Board of Education. I taught 5-8th grades for many years in central Illinois, and I've been conducting differentiation training and teaching graduate courses for teachers and school administrators for about seven years. My travels have led me to acquire quite a library and to hear the likes of Dr. Carol Tomlinson (several times), Dr. Robert Marzano (several times), Dr. Richard Stiggins, Drs. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Dr. Robert Fullan, Dr. Willard Daggett, Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs (several times) and Dr. Jonathan Kozol. My library contains books by: Tomlinson, Chapman and Gregory, Heacox, Kingore, Benjamin, Opitz, Northey, Wormeli, Sprenger, Renzulli and Tyner. Wow! So much good reading!! In addition, I've added Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind to the thought process on this website.

How is this space different from all of those books?
From all of these experts there are some common threads I've identified that hopefully make classroom differentiation a little easier to grasp and implement. Also, this space aggregates together the ideas, tips, activities and resources from a variety of sources, so it's a "one stop shop," and it's regularly updated as well. Feel free to look, take ideas, create, modify and enhance your way into a more differentiated classroom.

A suggestion is to begin your tour of the Mixitup website by clicking to read the "Making it Doable Page."