All students have the capacity to learn and achieve if they have the opportunity to access, process, and demonstrate knowledge of content and skills in ways that are personally meaningful. The ultimate goal of differentiation in the adolescent classroom is to empower students with the cognitive strategies and personal efficacy to manage their own learning. Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a model, Differentiation for the Adolescent Learner introduces a differentiation framework for adolescent-centered learning that incorporates research from the field of neuroscience on the developing and learning adolescent brain. The book pays close attention to adolescents' developmental needs for personal connection, appropriate intellectual challenge, emotional engagement, guided social interaction, metacognitive development, and a supportive learning environment and incorporates these developmental considerations into a six-point differentiation model:

• Evaluation: Diagnostic, ongoing formative, and culminating student assessment
• Expectation: Curriculum designed around age-relevant themes and essential content understandings
• Engagement: Authentic and relevant learning experiences that motivate by building on students' knowledge and preferences
• Exploration: Structured and flexible social interaction that promotes collaborative inquiry
• Extension: Explicit instruction to promote learners' metacognitive development, self-regulation, and learning transfer
• Environment: A classroom learning community responsive to adolescents' physical, social, intellectual, and emotionaldevelopment

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Glenda Beamon Crawford's experiences with young adolescent learners span nearly thirty years. She has taught in grades 4—12 and currently coordinates the middle grades program at Elon University, where she is a professor of teacher education. She has authored three books, including Managing the Adolescent Classroom and Sparking the Thinking of Students, Ages 10—14, as well as articles on structuring classrooms for adolescent thinking and learning. She consults and presents regularly at state, national, and international conferences. Her research and teaching honors include the 2002 North Carolina Award for Outstanding Contribution to Gifted Education, the North Carolina ASCD Outstanding Research Award, and the Teacher of the Year Award.

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