Applied differentiation: Secondary language arts

After reading about and discussing differentiation, my task now is to come up with my own ideas of how I can differentiate my language arts classroom for my middle- and high-school students. I remember in eighth grade language arts, my teacher allowed us each to pick a book from a number of choices at different reading levels. We were able to read a book that was comfortable for us—or even challenge ourselves, if we wanted to. And because the teacher didn’t decide our reading level for us, none of us felt singled out as “stupid”. I value the idea of providing students with choice in the classroom. If we are examining literature set during World War II, students could pick a relevant book from a selection of 3-4 different texts. Older students could even be given the opportunity to research and choose their own text, given a set of guidelines and subject to teacher approval. Students could be offered several projects to choose from to assess their comprehension, and each group or individual could share with the class the perspective on the war that their book provided.

Another way to differentiate would be to group students by interest rather than ability. For example, students who are interested in sports could be in a group together to create a newspaper sports page, while students who love music or art could be in a group and create an arts section. Each group would be of mixed ability, but assignments with many parts would provide an opportunity for every student to succeed. Assigning students particular roles and tasks would ensure that every student plays a part in the project. I could also make sure to give directions in a variety of formats to accommodate the needs of different students—for example, writing them on the board, providing students with checklists to complete, using visual aids, or recording the directions.

One of the ways I could differentiate for individual work is by allowing my students the freedom to work at their own pace on demonstrating certain skills—for example, spelling and vocabulary. Because students can have a wide range of abilities in this area, it would be valuable to allow students to pace themselves. I could provide them with a packet of the words they either needed to spell or define, with the understanding that those words needed to be mastered by a specified day. Periodic checks with each student would allow me to see who is struggling and why. Skill attainment would be assessed with a computerized test they could take on their own that would allow me to see their progress. Students could be given time in class each week to work on these assignments and could take the assessment at any time. If students need more structure, I can work with them to create plans and checklists. Those who are working slower could work with me once a week, or work at home, or get extra help after school. Those who finish quickly could choose to either help another student or work on another project—as long as they are working during class time. In this situation each student could have the same word list, or I could provide lists of varying difficulty. I could provide pictures, audio recordings, or videos to aid students who needed them. Most importantly, allowing students to work at their own pace gives them the control over their own learning.

Teaching Digital Natives, Ch. 4: Making education real, not just relevant

When I was in school, it seemed like the question that was constantly at the back of my mind was: “Why does this matter?” I didn’t see any real world connection to what I was learning—except for in one middle school math class. In this class, we did projects like designing golf courses, creating an aluminum can that would hold more liquid using fewer materials, planning for stoplight placement in a city, and following a budget in “family” groups. My teacher helped us use our math skills to do things that were related to our lives outside the classroom, and I have never forgotten it. I was more than willing to do my math because I could see that math was the tool I needed to use to accomplish something real.

Prensky (2010) draws an important distinction between being real and being relevant. He notes that while there is much talk in education about making learning relevant, being relevant only means that students are able to relate something they are learning to something they already know. Being relevant isn’t enough, he argues. One must also be real and allow kids to see how their learning will be useful in the real world (Prensky, 2010). My math teacher made learning real to us by providing the opportunity to use geometry and algebra to accomplish real-world tasks. Other teachers gave us learning that was relevant, allowing us, for example, to choose modern songs as a soundtrack to the book Farenheit 451, and that was fun. But it wasn’t real.

Relevance helps students understand material, Presnky (2010) acknowledges. But he goes on to say that kids today have a greater ability to make “real” connections than kids in the past, and those connections should be utilized. Technology can help students make their education useful now, “unlike in the past, when kids really did have to be patient and wait to grow up in order to use whatever they learned” (Prensky, 2010, loc. 1772). This chapter was full of ideas for how to make learning useful for students, from publishing blogs to interacting with experts via the web. I am not that long removed from my high school days, and as I read those ideas I kept thinking about how exciting it would be to participate in any of those activities. What better gift can we give our students than the tools to use their knowledge to make a difference in the world right now!

I can’t help but connect this chapter with our topic of discussion from my multicultural education class last night: differentiation. Creating learning experiences that involve real-world activities would help differentiate instruction because I don’t know of any real-world task that involves just one set of skills or processes. Think about the “simple” task of writing an editorial: information must be gathered, either about other views on the topics or expert opinion to back up your point of view; the actual letter must be written, edited, and rewritten carefully with a consideration of the audience; the letter must be published by being sent to a newspaper or posted to a blog. Students who are not proficient at writing can dictate their thoughts to a partner, record an audio file and post it to a blog, or shoot a video and upload it to YouTube. They can research using the web, library, or by talking to other students. In short, such an assignment involves numerous skills that could be shared among a group and many opportunities to tailor the assignment to individual interests and abilities. When we seek to make education real for our students, we are automatically creating experiences that help us accomplish our task of providing quality, individualized instruction to every kid.

As I was reflecting on what I should share about my Kindle experience this week, I realized that the Kindle itself could be useful to differentiate instruction. You can increase the text size on it, which could be useful for a student with poor eyesight, and it presents fewer words per page than a regular book, which might benefit kids who are easily overwhelmed. Also, it has a built-in dictionary that automatically gives you the definition of any word you place your curser on, and I could see that being helpful if a student was either reading a bit above their level or if English was their second language. My main gripe with the Kindle this week is that it is a piece of technology, not a composition of paper and ink, and as such it exhibits mysterious habits. This morning, I realized that the bookmark I had placed kept moving around. First it was on the right page, then it wasn’t, then it was back again. I also get annoyed when I type a note or highlight and the directions box pops up on the bottom part of the screen, blocking any text at the bottom of the page until I move my curser all the way off the page again. These aren’t deal-breakers, but it does remind me that technology is far more unpredictable than a paperback.

Highlights and notes made public by readers of this book can be viewed here, although they don’t appear to be working for this chapter.

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Differentiated instruction and transformative multicultural education

This week, our multicultural education class was asked to reflect on how differentiating instruction addresses the goals of a transformative multicultural learning environment. Such an environment is constructed to facilitate the transformation of the student and their attitudes toward diversity, encouraging students to move beyond a tacit acceptance of differences to the recognition of diversity’s power and value. A transformative multicultural learning environment challenges the stereotypes and prejudices of the students, leading them into a greater understanding of cultural sensitivity and inspiring them to work toward social justice.

These are quite lofty goals for a classroom, but differentiating instruction provides tools to create just such an educational community by recognizing differences while not condemning students for them. Differentiating instruction takes into account each student’s abilities, interests, and learning style to create experiences that allow them to master the content. However, a teacher who practices differentiating instruction does not let these differences be associated with value judgments. For example, students who are at a lower reading level are not continually and obviously segregated from the rest of the class and pointed out as below their peers. A teacher utilizing differentiated instruction might instead occasionally discretely create reading groups by reading level and give each group a book on a similar topic, but sometimes choose to create mixed-level reading groups for an activity that all levels can make valuable contributions to. Tomlinson (2003) calls this providing students with “respectful” work that ensures “each student is assigned work that looks as inviting and important as that of his or her classmates” (p. 8). By doing so, the teacher ensures that students are having their needs met, but are not being criticized or excluded because they are different.

Differentiating instruction is key to creating a transformative multicultural learning environment because it demonstrates not only an acceptance of differences, but also an appreciation of their importance. A teacher practicing differentiating instruction intentionally plans his or her lessons with student differences in mind. They create an environment that is made for students of all levels and all types to succeed. Students cannot help but notice the difference between a classroom where they are made to fit the material and one in which the learning experience has been expressly designed with them in mind. When students spend time around a teacher who does not judge one’s differences but understands that they are crucial to each person’s identity, treating them with care and respect, students will come to understand that this is a far superior way of thinking. They, too, will adopt an attitude of understanding. And while differentiated instruction seems at first to address only differences in learning style or readiness or intellectual ability, it carries with it an attitude toward diversity that is transferrable to diversity of all forms. Teachers who create classrooms that respect individual differences in abilities will also create classrooms that respect individual differences in race, ethnicity, religion, gender, family unit, socioeconomic class, and sexual orientation. If the teachers and the classrooms embrace diversity as normal and important, the students will learn to view it that way too.

References:

Tomlinson, C.A. (2003). Differentiation in practice. ASCD.