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Differentiate Content Materials We want to be cautious about differentiating content standards for our students. However the types of content materials students interact with might be varied to better support their learning. Here are some suggestions for ways this might be done and some useful tools for doing so.

• Determine the reading level of educational websites and teach students to do this
• Use Microsoft Word to determine the reading level of various digital materials and then match students to appropriate levels. http://rtecexchange.edgateway.net/cs/rtecp/view/rtec_sub/117
• Use other readability graphs http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/fry/fry.html

• Adjust the presentation of text materials
• Use underlining and highlighting to support student comprehension- http://rtecexchange.edgateway.net/cs/rtecp/view/rtec_sub/97
• Change font color, size, location- http://rtecexchange.edgateway.net/cs/rtecp/view/rtec_sub/115

• Use web-based to prepare instructions for assignments- Typing materials with a word processor or putting them on the Web enables you to provide various versions of instructions for learners. It saves time and energy expended to meet students' needs for detail, pacing, structure, etc.
• Web Worksheet Wizard http://wizard.4teachers.org/
• Filamentality http://www.filamentality.com/wired/fil/index.html
• Trackstar http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/index.jsp
• Worksheet Generator http://school.discovery.com/teachingtools/worksheetgenerator/
  
• Vary media format- When possible, provide content information in various media formats. Don't limit yourself or your students to strictly text-only materials. Consider multimedia (on the web), animations, audio, video, etc. Make sure to help students understand the strength and weaknesses of each type of material. For example, take different sources of information about weather. You can use hard copy (almanacs), interactive sites weather.com, news papers, weather databases .
• National Public Radio- http://www.npr.org/
• Weird Physics Videos http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=218220F6C5BD650E
• PBS Nova Videos http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/index.html
• And don't forget about United/Discovery Streaming- a fee based service with a library of k-12 multimedia content materials http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm
• NPR’s Science Friday http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/
• EDUPic http://www.edupic.net/