Introduction

It was back‐to‐school night, and I was busy greeting the families of my soon‐to‐be kindergarten students. A couple approached me and introduced themselves as Heidi's (not her real name) parents. “She's so excited for kindergarten,” Heidi's mother told me. “And she's actually already reading, probably at a second‐ or third‐grade level. We'll send a book to school with her so you won't have to worry about finding her something to read.”

My eyes widened. A kindergartener reading at a second‐ or third‐grade level? As a relatively new teacher, I hadn't experienced anything like this before. “Wow,” I said to Heidi's mother. “That's amazing. Thank you for letting me know, and for sending the books!” I mentally filed this information away and continued greeting the other families.

On the first day of school, Heidi greeted me with enthusiasm and was ready to dive right into learning kindergarten procedures and expectations. And, just like her mother said, she arrived with a book to read, which she eagerly opened during quiet time. As the days and weeks went on, Heidi continued to impress me. Not only was she an avid, skilled reader but she was also incredibly articulate and seemed to possess the maturity of a much older child. I worried about Heidi feeling bored at school, but she seemed perfectly content to finish her work quickly and read the books she brought each week.

Heidi is an adult now, and I still think of her from time to time, even though I haven't seen her in years. I also can't help but feel a tinge of regret when I think back to her time with me in kindergarten. Although Heidi seemed to enjoy her days in my classroom, at that time, I didn't have the knowledge that I needed to adequately challenge her. Up until then, I'd only taught prekindergarten and kindergarten, and I didn't have a sense of what skills came next. As a result, I did not deliver the same quality of instruction to Heidi as I was able to provide to the other children who were working at a kindergarten level. Sure, I met with Heidi and discussed the books she was reading. My assistant and I added extra challenges for her within the daily work that all students completed. But did I teach her the skills she'd need to decode challenging multisyllabic words? Did I instruct her in how to use comprehension strategies to elevate her thinking? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

During our careers in education, I think most of us rack up a list of regrets like this, some big and some small. On our mental lists are the names of students we felt we could have helped more. Honestly, it makes sense that we feel this way! We chose teaching as a career because we want to make a difference in students' learning and in their lives. We take this job very seriously, and we want to do the best that we can.

I believe that the job of a teacher requires us to forgive and facilitate: to forgive ourselves for what we did not know or were not able to accomplish, but also to facilitate our own learning and growth. In my case, I needed to gain a deeper understanding of what phonics skills should be taught after kindergarten, how to teach students to decode multisyllabic words, and how to foster higher‐level thinking skills. If I had only known then what I know now, I'm confident that I could have helped Heidi achieve more growth that year. At the same time, I forgive myself for my lack of knowledge. I can't go back in time and fix it. I choose to focus instead on what I can currently control: giving my current students (who now also include educators) the best instruction that I can.

All of this said, even when we do have the necessary knowledge to effectively support our students, there are still many aspects of teaching that are very much out of our control. For example, there were 24 other students in Heidi's class that year, including children who began school without any alphabet knowledge. The amount of time I could spend working individually with Heidi was always going to be limited, even if I had had more complete knowledge of how to help her. The confines of the school day, coupled with the fact that each teacher is only one person, mean that we will always be restricted in the amount of personalized attention we can give each individual student. This is the differentiation dilemma.

The Differentiation Dilemma

Many teachers struggle to effectively tailor their instruction to meet the individual needs of students (usually referred to as differentiating). Sometimes, this struggle results from a lack of knowledge about content, like in my story about Heidi. Sometimes, it stems from a lack of knowledge about practical strategies that make differentiation feasible for a busy teacher. Many times, however, this struggle is rooted in the limitations of the educational system itself.

Here's why: most schools are set up to “educate the masses” through standardized processes. Classroom teachers are given curricula to teach and sets of skills to cover. Regardless of what skills students have and have not yet mastered when they begin the school year, they will (for the most part) be taught the same content. Certainly, some parts of the school day are designed to meet students' unique needs (e.g., small‐group instruction). Students who qualify for special education services are given extra support, or even different content to learn. Gifted students might also receive special instruction. However, the education system as a whole is not designed for fully personalized learning that takes into account the unique strengths and needs of each individual child. If it were, we would need far more than one teacher for every 20 to 30 (or more) students.

I point out this information not to discourage you from differentiating your instruction, nor to imply that the system is broken and there is no hope. Rather, I mention it because I want you to release yourself from the burden of any stress or guilt you might feel from not being able to do “enough” for your students. Many teachers are perfectionists in their instruction, and understandably so. We get to know our students and their academic needs very closely. After all, this is what we are told to do! However, once we are acquainted with students' needs, we naturally want to provide instruction that's just right for each student. But there's only one of us, and the large number of students we work with often have a wide range of needs. This can lead to feelings of frustration. Sometimes our own frustration can even leave us feeling a bit paralyzed. In the dark corners of our minds, we think, “This is impossible,” because we can't personalize our instruction to the extent that we would like to. Instead of differentiating when we can, we feel inadequate and helpless, and our disempowerment leads us not to differentiate much at all. Or perhaps the opposite happens: we feel so much pressure that we try to differentiate every single minute of the school day! But that only leaves us feeling exhausted and ultimately leads to the realization that our current differentiation practices aren't sustainable.

If you struggle with differentiation, I'm here to tell you that you're not alone. You are, more than likely, working within a system that is not designed to support you in fully meeting all students' unique needs. However, when you have the knowledge and tools necessary to differentiate where and when it matters most, this leads to tremendously positive outcomes for your students. The information in this book will empower you to effectively differentiate in an extremely important skill area for young students: phonics instruction.

Why Differentiation Matters in Phonics Instruction

Phonics—instruction that teaches the relationships between letters and sounds—is an essential component of early literacy instruction (National Reading Panel, 2000). Phonics knowledge plays a key role in students' ability to decode (read) words. Being able to decode words helps build students' reading fluency. Fluent reading, in turn, contributes to reading comprehension (e.g., Fuchs et al., 2001). Phonics, therefore, serves as an important foundation of reading success. Plus, phonics knowledge contributes to students' spelling and writing abilities. Although writing involves many skills beyond correct spelling, being able to fluently spell words helps our students more easily get their thoughts onto paper.

Research on children's spelling and reading knowledge indicates that students tend to master phonics patterns in a relatively predictable order, but at different rates. This holds true even for students with diagnosed learning disabilities and dyslexia. (Bear et al., 2016). Picture a group of children proceeding up the same staircase (where each stair step is a set of phonics skills), but they are all standing on different steps on that staircase (see Figure I.1). In a third‐grade classroom, for example, you might have some students still learning long vowels with silent e, while other students are learning to decode multisyllabic words with the schwa sound.

FIGURE I.1 The phonics staircase.

Our instruction needs to guide each student up the phonics staircase, one step at a time. Differentiating our phonics instruction helps us accomplish this. When we differentiate, we create...