Content

Content can be described as the knowledge, skills and attitudes we want children to learn. The teacher may differentiate the content by designing activities for groups of students that cover different areas of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Differentiating by content does not mean that some students will be learning LESS than what the objectives of the lesson involve. On the contrary, the essential objectives of the lesson may be at a lower to mid-level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Differentiating by content means that you "raise the bar" for your students, so that students have the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge at a higher cognitive level. You may have determined this by the results of your pre-assessment, which would indicate that you have students in your class who already demonstrate some content mastery, even before you have taught the lesson.

Example:

In a unit about ocean life, some objectives differentiated by content may be reflected below:

**Describe** major threats to ocean life. (basic Bloom's) **Apply** use of the ocean’s resources to help meet needs of an ever-increasing world population. **Evaluate** methods that reduce threats to ocean life. (higher-level Bloom's)

Example using Technology: Utilize Scholastic.com resources (http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/explorer/oceanlife/main.asp?template=mission) to Apply the use of the ocean's resources to help meet the needs of an ever-increasing population. Meet experts, read field reports, watch videos and listen to audio files about ocean life in Costa Rica and New Zealand.

Resources:

Bloom's Taxonomy- Verbs, Cues (PDF)