It has been a joy to work with the GWATFL mentoring program, and it has also been helpful to hear concerns and questions that teachers have. We plan on having a variety of sessions to respond to these questions- and the first theme is differentiation which will happen tonight. I realize that I haven’t written a lot about how I differentiate my class- so here we are!
First, I have to say that I learned SO much originally from Deb Blaz’s differentiation book. I will say that I only have the first edition- but I read it multiple times when I was starting to teach. Typically, we divide differentiation into three categories: content, process and product. Differentiation by content is to offer different options which address what students learn or how they learn the information. For example, we could offer a variety of videos or articles for students to use to learn the information. Or we could consider offering one video and one article that discusses similar information and let students choose what they would like to watch or read.
- Most recently, I have started using literature circles in my classroom. I unsuccessfully attempted literature circles before (but we also ran into the pandemic, so I will blame that!). I set out to try literature circles again- and honestly Amanda’s post made all the difference in the world! With literature circles, students get to choose the novel that they want to read from a selection that I have used in my library. I set all the books out and let students choose which books they liked after reading the back and the first few pages. Then, I broke them up into groups. I made sure that there were at least 2 people in each group, so they could work together. After this, I relied on Amanda’s notes and tasks to guide my lessons. I really appreciate the literature circles because they start with the choice option and differentiation. I was also able to incorporate some harder and easier books from my library to help my students. And as we know with differentiation, I have seen some of my students who are tackling the hardest book really rise to the occasion!
- If you are doing Free Voluntary Reading in class- you are already differentiating! Free voluntary reading consists of students having time to read either books, magazines or articles that are interesting to them. At the end, we plan a quick share out. Some of the ideas include if students recommend the reading, facts that they learned or new words that they noticed. My colleague and I have started doing this for whole classes. This has allowed students to become more invested in the book that they are reading. Other people do this as a warm-up activity. If you are interested in learning more, Mike Peto has written extensively about FVR.
- I have included this before, but with over 90 articles each year in El mundo en tus manos, it has been incredibly easy to differentiate by content! When we start a unit about a new country, I pull up 4-5 articles from current and previous years to offer students a variety of topics to learn about. Then, at the end, each group briefly discusses what they learned as a whole class discussion. If possible, we also make comparisons between the articles that we are reading. For example, before a unit on Peru, students could read about the balloon game world cup tournament, mummies, the Nazca lines and a singer who combined quechua music with K-pop music. This allows students to learn about what they want to in a country even if the topic that they are interested in is not covered during the unit.
- EdPuzzle has also been a game changer! Many times, I have wanted to use a video to see that one has already been created- which lowers my prep significantly. This is helpful especially if you want to use multiple videos to provide differentiation. Specifically if you are thinking about how to use this in your classroom, if you are starting a unit on travel- there are so many travel videos that you could find on YouTube. Some students may want to look at a tropical place whereas others want to look at a city and others look at a mountainous area. You could do this in different countries or even the same country. I have a collection of EdPuzzles that I have used in class, but if you find a video that you like on YouTube, many times you can see the EdPuzzles that are already created. If you scroll down, you will see how many other versions there are of that video and then you can look through those! Then, you can copy them to your classes, and you are ready to go.
- You can also differentiate with videos without an EdPuzzle if you have a good graphic organizer! For example, many of these graphic organizers that I have made through Jamboard could be used for any article or video. Students could then jigsaw what they learned with other groups with the goal to write a summary together. You could also offer two videos and two articles where students could choose one to determine how they want to learn the information.
I would love to hear other ways that you have found to differentiate by content especially low prep ways to do so. You can message me or share below in the comments!
Maris Hawkins 