Differentiation of Instruction is all about the HOW!
Educating All Students in a Mixed Ability Classroom
PART TWO: Let's Get Down to Some Specific Strategies
By Jeri Asaro
This article is part of a three-part series. Section One covered The Basics.
Forgive me for repeating a small amount of information from the last article, but it is important that we begin in the same place. Getting to know your students is the very first step in being able to differentiate instruction (DI). Once you have accomplished the task of learning student interests and academic levels, and you have created a comfortable learning environment, the next piece of the puzzle is the HOW. Teachers differentiate through their CONTENT. This content is what the teacher wants students to learn. Content is the essential group of ideas that are required in the state standards and the school's curriculum. The middle part is called the PROCESS. This next step includes the activities and lesson procedures that are designed to ensure that students learn the content information. The process includes the procedures/activities/steps to be followed, so that students create their final outcome. The final outcome, and the last step, is the PRODUCT. The product is often used as an assessment vehicle by which students demonstrate what they have learned.
The content drives the process. The process creates the product.
PLACING STUDENTS IN GROUPS: For many of the DI classroom strategies, the PROCESS requires group work to complete the PRODUCT. Allowing students to work in groups and choosing those groups can be tricky classroom procedures. One thing I can say for sure is that you should rarely, if ever, allow students to pick their own groups. Although it may seem the easiest way, there are always students in every class who are not at ease when groups are not picked for them. Your biggest job is to make your classroom a relaxed and controlled learning environment. Allowing students to choose their own groups ruins the comfort level for some students. Facilitating the ability for students to work together well is an essential element within a classroom community, and a life skill. Students must learn to work with everyone, and not just their chosen few. Lastly, any grouping you choose should be temporary. Just like in any strong marriage or friendship, time apart from each other allows students to learn more about themselves and others. Take notes about how different students work together, and save them for future reference, but the mixture of the group should change with each new activity, project or large assignment. Overall, your goal for any school year, especially in a DI classroom, is to create a welcoming community environment. When a group of people work well together, choosing respect over resistance, anything can be achieved.
There are many different methods and tactics to grouping your class for an activity. The first questions to ask yourself are: "What is the goal for these groupings? How do the groups need to work to fill the lesson's objective? What content do I need to teach?" For any activity, groups should be carefully chosen based on your goal for that activity. Here are some basic ideas:
Group by achievement or ability, keeping the strongest students together, and the weakest students together. Some teachers think this strategy raises test scores in the higher level students, but unless there is a specific purpose for a homogeneous grouping, it can really hurt the classroom environment as a whole. It can break down the feeling of community. There are times that this idea can work in the best interest of the class, but only in the short-term. When your "high-flyers" have a chance to work together, knowing that no one is going to slow them down or stop them, they often achieve to their highest level. Allowing these students to work independently lets you, as the teacher, travel to the other groups who need assistance -- and since the students who need special attention are sitting together and working with you, you get the best from these students as well.
Pre-assessing students and placing students with similar ability levels in the same groups is called flexible grouping. One important point about flexible grouping is that students are regularly being assessed on necessary skills, and are moved around in groups according to that continuing circle of assessment (see section on tiered instruction). Group dynamics are in a constant flux with each new assessment, so students are rarely in the same group over and over again. Depending on your goals and objectives, this type of flexible grouping can be very effective.
Group by achievement or ability but mix the students, so the group has mixed ability levels. A heterogeneous grouping can help students learn to respect each other and value the different strengths among their varied classmates. Those higher level students often rise to the occasion in helping others and taking on responsibility. Rotate the roles within a group. Overall, these groupings can promote interesting discussion because of the varied perspectives and the mix of abilities.
Student talents can be used to form groups. As you consider your plan, your content, and your objectives, do not underestimate the talents that will be needed to complete the tasks. Then you can choose groups based on those needed abilities. For example, a creative person in the group would be helpful for interesting narrative writing. An artistic individual as a group member could contribute to the final presentation piece. The organized student would keep everyone on task and be sure everyone is following the directions. These types of talent groupings work well for project-based instruction where students take on different roles. Look at the learning styles of your students, and let those guide you in carefully forming student groups. Other students, whose talents are sometimes lost in a whole group setting, come quietly shining through as their special abilities become apparent. For example: a fine artist, a talented musician, a computer wizard, etc.
Random groupings can work well for short activities, especially with pairs and triads. These can be formed using many different creative ideas. Students choose playing cards and find their partners by matching cards. Students choose half of a picture, and find their partner with the other half. Popsicle sticks can be used. You choose a student randomly by pulling a stick and that student pulls another stick to choose their partner. Or for a bigger group, pull Popsicle sticks for the entire group. This idea works best if all the Popsicle sticks are the same color. A “count-off” can be used as well. This strategy is often used in physical education classes.
Common interests is another great way to form groups. A perfect example of this type of grouping is used when creating Literature Circles. Students choose novels that interest them from a list. Groups are formed by students choosing the same books to read. I personally love this idea because students who may never otherwise group on their own find themselves working together, and find common ground for future relationships.
Forming well-run classroom groups can take additional planning time, but that time is saved in the future when the groups are working well together, rather than hardly working at all. Groupings can enhance any content in the eyes of your students, and if well-managed, they can help the knowledge be learned and possibly maintained. My last thoughts on groupings is that you can never underestimate what students might do to wind up in the same groups. You must watch and plan carefully, so they do not outsmart you! As students approach the middle school years, when life is all about friendships, students go out of their way to be with their friends. It is up to you to control your classroom and outmaneuver them! As any strong classroom manager will tell you, you must think through every process from the students' perspective. When you see your plan from their point of view, you can tweak your procedures, so they always work in your favor.
TIERED INSTRUCTION: Tiered lesson planning is one of the many ways to differentiate instruction in a classroom. Tiered instruction can come in the form of an individual lesson, a group project, or the approach for an entire unit. A tiered activity, no matter the length or type, can address content, a standard, a concept, a key or essential question, an objective, and the like -- but it will offer students multiple conduits for learning the material. Students grasp understanding through activities that consider students' interests, readiness or pre-assessed knowledge range, learning styles, or multiple intelligences. If your tiered activity is based on readiness levels, very often there are three activities created - three tiers: The categories would be 1/ below grade level, 2/ at grade level, and 3/ above grade level.
When a pre-assessment is required because of your content and objectives, you use the results of the pre-assessment to create the tiers and place the students. An example would be a spelling unit. If several students already know how to spell the list of words on Monday, why waste their week? Pre-assess, using the word list, and all students who score a 100 (or whatever score you determine depending on the number of words involved), move on to different activities which use varied levels of critical thinking skills based on the same word list. You are creating a different process for those students. When DI becomes a part of your regular classroom planning, you will find that pre-assessment also becomes a natural event. Students learn the procedures involved in the pre-assessment, and become familiar with how the groups break up afterwards. Since each student is an individual, and has a number of strengths, the groups will likely be different every time because few students are above grade level at all skills.
When you are using learning styles or student interests to tier lessons, you are not modifying your original lesson (i.e. spelling unit) to assist the below or above grade level students, but rather you are offering students choices based on the process they use or the product they create. All students are given the same choices.
There are some steps to get you started:
Identify the standard you are targeting (figurative language).
Choose the key concept that is involved in that standard. What is the specific CONTENT? What is the main idea you are targeting? What specific items do you want students to know when the lesson is done (similes and metaphors)?
Pre-assess if necessary, or at least determine what preliminary information all students will need before you move forward. Address that information.
Decide on what items need to be tiered. For example: You can tier the content, or the process, or the product. It is possible to tier all three, but complicated and not a good place to begin.
Based on 1-4, decide how many tiers as needed, and begin the planning. Each tier should be doing challenging and interesting work.
Develop a final assessment to see if students have mastered the skill.
An easy example I can provide, that I have actually used in my classroom, involves similes and metaphors. I teach similes and metaphors through short stories, but I choose three different short stories based on the three levels of reading ability in my classroom. The actual content is the same, but the materials I use in my process are different. The final product, which is a simple paper-and-pencil graphic organizer, is also the same. I adjust or tier my process to achieve maximum learning.
There are many example of tiered lessons available online; simply search the phrase. To get you started, this link offers four examples of tiered units. Each example is on a different grade level from elementary through high school. http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/bestpractice/tiered/examples.html
ANCHORING ACTIVITIES: Anchoring activities are pre-planned and often ongoing activities that are tied to your units of study (content), whether past or current. These activities are particularly important in a tiered instruction setting. If students are working in a DI classroom, there are many instances when they may need to keep themselves occupied with the curriculum and work independently, without your assistance. Idle time in a classroom is never positive. Consequently, in a well-managed classroom, anchoring activities provide the students with meaningful work that is engaging, and offers practice, critical thinking, or extension of a skill. Let me make it very clear; anchoring activities are not busy work. Puzzles can be great, but word searches are not likely adding much enrichment quality to your lesson unless students require familiarization/memorization with a list of words (like prepositions, for example).
There are a number of ways that anchoring activities can be used. The most common is for teachers to provide mini-activities for students who finish their work early (and the original work is a good quality). Another common usage is for one or several groups of students to work on anchoring activities freeing up the teacher to work with another group of students in a small-group instruction setting. Sometimes teachers use these activities to begin a class. Students go to different stations or centers as part of the regular classroom procedure, and the teacher is stationed at one center to work with students as they rotate around the room.
Students must feel that these activities "count" in some way, and the activities must also be engaging, or the students simply will not do them. One idea that works well for me involves blogging, which students love. I pose an engaging question on my classroom blog, and students are allowed to use one of the few classroom computers to reply to my questions, and to reply to other responses. This blog is one of a number of different anchoring activities available or required. Classroom management, once again, plays a big role in the use of anchoring activities. If you do not set your expectations for independent and quiet work, students will take advantage of the activities and your class will become unruly.
SCAFFOLDING: Scaffolding should not be confused with tiered instruction. At construction sites, scaffolding is a support device that is used temporarily to complete the project. In education, scaffolding is the same thing. Early assistance is provided to students as they complete difficult tasks, but as their knowledge and familiarity increases, the support diminishes. Scaffolding helps to lead the way toward optimal learning for all students. Eventually, the students take on the responsibility for their learning. At the beginning of the year, a really simple scaffolding idea might be to provide all students with an assignment checklist for doing certain types of activities. The first two or three times they do that same type of activity, they receive the checklist, but eventually, the checklist goes away but the expectations are exactly the same. If students do not meet those checklist expectations on their own, they lose points on the final product. Another easy example is to show students a few modeled examples of final products before they begin the process. This idea provides upfront assistance, so goals can be reached.
There are a wide variety of scaffolding strategies you can use in your classroom, and you may already be using many of them without even knowing it. From teaching key vocabulary words prior to the reading to help students with comprehension, to offering visuals through graphic organizers; from providing mnemonic devices to enhance memorization, to facilitating "predictions" at the end of the novel chapters, scaffolding can take on many different forms. The end result of scaffolding is to enable the students to meet the new task with success, and to take ownership of the responsibility for their learning.
In my final article on DI, I will continue provide specific strategies that can be used in your classroom, and ideas for different age levels. Reaching all students is difficult, but it is ultimately the goal of any good teacher. Students have different needs, and teachers have varied styles, but no matter what, a well-run classroom that uses DI strategies benefits all students by providing numerous ways for students to learn, show their progress, and work towards being self-sufficient human beings.
