“Activities for Differentiated Instruction Addressing All Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Eight Multiple Intelligences.” This title, by Audrey C. Rule and Linda Hurley Lord sounds too good to be true. I have found similar articles or web pages in the past. They promise to provide lesson plan ideas to create the differentiation of our dreams, only to disappoint with impossible to do activities or little connection to the instructional standard.

However, the above mentioned document is an 83-page gold mine. In the first eight pages, the introduction reviews the basics of both Bloom’s and Gardner’s work. Then it explains the qualities of differentiated instruction, referring to Tomlinson, as well as making the connections to Bloom and Gardner.

After the extensive references, the remaining pages are differentiated lessons, on various topics, that meet every promise with quality and reproducible suggestions for assignments. To make their intended meaning more clear, the authors organized their work by the category of Gardner’s intelligence, then by Bloom’s levels of taxonomy. Within each category the key words are underlined. For example, List, Explain, Graph, Calculate, Design, Create, Compare and Contrast, and 73 pages more.

Although these lesson plans are designed for specific topics, Solar System, Fractions, Ancient Egypt, etc., the use of key words makes it easy to identify the type of assignment, then rework it to fit any lesson plan. For someone struggling to understand what differentiated instruction means, or what it should look like, this is the ideal place to begin.