Students come to the music classroom with different educational readiness, learning styles, abilities, and preferences. In addition to these learner differences, classrooms in the United States are becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse each year. Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching and learning that allows for these individual differences. Differentiated instruction involves working with groups of students and individualizing the curriculum for those within the group. It shares many of the Universal Design for Learning goals for teaching and promoting student learning, with both initiatives established to embrace student differences and ensure that students have every opportunity to learn in ways that best suit their individual needs.