Educators have known for a long time that students learn in different ways.  To be truly responsive to the needs of every student, we must acknowledge those differences and build structures accordingly.  

Differentiation by learning style means giving students the choice of how they will learn.  This may mean offering activities that appeal to different learning styles, including:

Visual, auditory, or tactile-kinesthetic learners

Some students learn best by seeing; others by hearing; and still others by doing something physical with their bodies.  To learn about the law of inertia, for instance, physics students might watch and analyze videos of crash test dummies, listen to a lecture or discuss something they have experienced that involves inertia, or perform hands-on experiments with carts and dolls to physically simulate collisions.  During open work time, all three types of activities can occur simultaneously.

Deductive/inductive learners

Some people learn best by getting an overview of a new concept or skill and then working through examples of how it is applied in the real world.  Such a student, a deductive learner, will therefore want to start a new unit by having the big picture explained to him. He will want to then test the pattern by studying how it can be specifically applied in various situations.    

An inductive learner, on the other hand, prefers to build a pattern himself through an exploration of details.  He will choose to begin a new unit with experiences that allow him to put together a number of observations and come up with a synthesis—the big picture—on his own.  

It can be difficult to balance these two approaches in a single class.  The deductive approach tends to be more teacher-directed, and therefore may be experienced as a more traditional structure.  The inductive approach, on the other hand, will often begin with a student-directed exploration of ideas.

The key is for the teacher to initially provide the minimum guidance so that a deductive learner can begin his exploration of applications as soon as possible and an inductive learner can still discover a more complete overview for himself.   

Providing differentiated activities for inductive and deductive learners is particularly important in the introduction and exploration phases of a learning sequence.

Differentiated note-taking

Since taking notes during lectures or when reading new material is a commonplace activity, it’s important to recognize that different students need to use different techniques for taking those notes.  Of course, they may not know this about themselves, so they need to be introduced to as many options as is practical and given the opportunity to use each option multiple times before deciding for themselves which is most effective.