Different By Design offers differentiated curriculum units that challenge and engage all learners. You will find our differentiated curriculum units to be rigorous and engaging, helping all learners to be successful.

Components of Different By Design

Different By Design is a research-based, differentiated curriculum designed to help educators meet the needs of all learners in the classroom.

Each unit will provide differentiated activities so that all students will be engaged and challenged throughout the unit of study.

Many activities are differentiated by readiness so that one option may be more advanced than another. There are also many activities that are differentiated by learner profile so that educators can allow students to select the activities that appeal to their strengths, learning style, and interests.

All of our units are designed around state and national standards. We outline these standards in each lesson and at the end of the unit we summarize the standards that are covered in the unit.

Our concept-based curriculum will help educators connect learning to “big ideas”. These concepts are abstract, timeless and universal. They will challenge to students to higher levels of thinking and will help them to connect new knowledge and information in the future.

Our curriculum appeals to multiple intelligences - providing ideas for those who are verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, etc. Students can select options that most appeal to them or the teacher can assign students the activity most appropriate for each individual student.

Students are challenged to use creativity and critical thinking.

Different By Design challenges students to think critically by learning to

• compare and contrast ideas,
• provide reasoning for their thinking,
• evaluate situations,
• evaluate other's ideas, and
• think independently.

Creativity is encouraged by asking students to

• apply ideas to different contexts,
• create exciting products,
• develop stories and personal narratives,
• use their imaginations to answer mind-boggling questions,
• think of unique ideas, and
• think of inventive ways to solve problems.

Each unit of study ends with a final project where students are asked to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned throughout the unit to develop a product. This project will help educators to assess the understanding and knowledge that students have gained throughout the unit.