How exactly does differentiation work?

Differentiation is a teaching concept which focuses on meeting student needs. Classroom teachers can differentiate for their students in 3 areas: content,process, or product. To differentiate content a teacher uses different leveled texts to meet student needs or different formats of texts other than a textbook. Process is differentiated by the mode in which you learn, like learning content in small groups or pairs.  Process differentiation moves beyond “giving back information” to seeing how things work and why they work as they do.  Product differentiation is changing the way a student demonstrates learned content like through challenge tasks, multiple intelligence products, or something as simple as student choice in an assignment.