This document summarizes a presentation on differentiating instruction to advance literacy. It discusses the importance of differentiation given differences between students. Key aspects of differentiation include focusing on essentials, attending to student differences, inseparability of assessment and instruction, and adapting content, process and products. Specific differentiation strategies covered include anchor activities, centers, layered curriculum, tiered lessons, entry points, use of arts, contracts, compacting and strategies for English language learners. The presentation provides examples and tips for implementing these strategies in the classroom.
1. final differentiated instruction workshop ncss 2010
1. Differentiating Instruction to
Advance Literacy: Utilizing the
Past to Perfect the Future
NCSS 2010
Dr. Susan Santoli
Dr. Paige Baggett
Dr. Susan Ferguson
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL
2. Session Overview
• Experiences in Differentiation?
• What is Differentiation?
• Differentiation Strategies
• Tips for Implementing Differentiation
• Differentiation Practice
• Differentiating for ELL Students
• Differentiation Practice
• Resources
4. Not all students are alike!
• Varying background knowledge
• Readiness
• Language
• Preferences in learning
• Interests
• Motivation
5. When you hear “differentiated
instruction,” what comes to
mind??
6. What Differentiated
Instruction IS
• Having a vision of success for students
• Realizing that not all students learn the same way
• Allowing students some choice in their routes to learning
• Providing opportunities for students to demonstrate
knowledge they know and move forward
• Offering lessons of varying degrees of difficulty to meet
the same standard
• Combining whole class instruction with individual and/or
group work
7. What Differentiated
Instruction IS NOT
• A different lesson plan for each student each day
• Assuming that all students learn by listening and
writing
• Assigning more work to students who have
demonstrated mastery
• Only for students who need acceleration
• Giving all students the same work/assignments
all of the time
8. Elements of Differentiation
• The teacher focuses on the essentials
• The teacher attends to student differences
• Assessment and instruction are
inseparable
• The teacher adapts content, process
and/or products
• All students participate in respectful work
• Collaboration between teacher and
student
9. • The teacher balances group and individual
norms.
• Teacher and students work together
flexibly.
11. Assessment
• Assessment is today’s
means of
understanding how to
modify tomorrow’s
instruction
• Think of assessment
for learning vs.
assessment of
learning
• Assessment should
always have more to
do with helping
students grow, than
cataloging their
mistakes
From Carol Ann Tomlinson
14. Content Process Product
According to Students’
Readiness Interest
Learning
Profile
Teachers Can Differentiate
The Access Center. Adapted from The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All
Learners (Tomlinson, 1999)
15. Instructional Strategies that
Support Differentiation
• Anchor Activities
• Centers/Stations
• Layered Curriculum
• Tiered Lessons
• Entry Points
• Use of the Arts
• Academic Contracts
• Compacting
16. What do you do when…
– Students finish work early
and correctly
– Students finish tests or in
class assignments at
different rates
– You need to work with
certain students on specific
information/skills
17. Anchor Activity
• Student activities that are designed to
extend and review already learned skills
• Self directed
• Can free up classroom teacher to work with
small groups or individual students
• Can be used to begin the day, when
students complete an assignment, when
students are stuck and waiting for help
(Tomlinson, 2001)
18. Using Anchor Activities to
Create Groups
Teach the whole class to work independently and
quietly on the anchor activity.
Half the class works
on anchor activity.
Other half works on
a different activity.
Flip-Flop
1/3 works on
anchor activity.
1/3 works on a
different activity.
1/3 works with
teacher---direct
instruction.
1
2
3
www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/enriched/giftedprograms/docs/anchor.ppt
19. Examples of Anchor
Activities
• Journals or learning
logs
• Supplementary
readings
• Learning packets
• Learning/Interest
Centers
• Investigations
• Research projects
• Think-tac-toe
(example to follow)
• Learning Contracts
(example to follow)
• Webquests or web
activities
• Silent reading
20. Examples of Anchor
Activities
Examples of Specific Anchor Activities
Enrichment Activities sites from sources such as
readwritethink from the International Reading
Association (http://www.readwritethink.org)
Others might include:
• Content related crossword puzzles
• A listening center
• A video center
• Learning packets on specific information or a specific skill
ABC Books
21. ABC Books:
ABCs for Baby Patriots
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?m=hd1J&i=108500
23. What are some anchor activities
that you have used or might
use?
24. – Teacher creates an agenda that will last 2-3
weeks
– A particular time is set aside as agenda time
(each day, each week)
– Students generally determine the order in
which they’ll complete agenda items
– This could also be a choice of projects or
assignments
Agendas-personalized list of tasks that a
student must complete in a specified time
25. Examples of Think Tac Toe
Projects
• East Asia
• 2008 Presidential Election
• American Presidents
• Industrial Revolution
26. Centers/Stations
• Spots for concentrated work on particular
skills or assignments or areas that students
move through that contain different
assignments
• Holocaust Centers
• Environmental Center
27. Layered Curriculum
• Students have a variety of activities from
which to choose
• Choices are presented in layers, where
each represents a different type of thinking
or depth of understanding
• C represents Core Concepts
• B represents Application
• A represents Critical Thinking
29. • Tiered Activities-used when a teacher
wants to make sure that students with
different learning needs work with the
same essential ideas and use the same
study skills
Examples from ss textbook resources
30. • Great Depression Tiered Lesson Plan-
Library of Congress
http://web.archive.org/web/20070316174958/http://www.
primarysourcelearning.org/teach/best_practices/diff_inst
ruct_bulletin_sec.pdf
• Standard for lesson plan: The student will demonstrate
knowledge of the social, economic, and technological
changes of the early twentieth century by identifying the
causes of the Great Depression, its impact on Americans,
and the major features of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New
Deal.
32. • Everyone will answer these questions:
1. Describe what you see in the photograph.
Include as much detail as possible.
2. Compare and contrast your home to the home
you see in the photograph. What is similar and
what is different?
3. In addition to the first two questions, student
pairs will each receive one of the following
questions based on academic readiness level.
33. • Tier 1: If we could hear the people talking
about their life, what would they be
saying?
• Tier 2: From what you see in the
photograph, explain how you think this
room might be used by the family and
why.
• Tier 3: Assess the Great Depression’s
social and economic impact on
this family from the evidence in the photo.
35. • Tier 1: Create a timeline of the Dust Bowl and Great
Depression era. Include the following 10 events with
accompanying visuals and written description.
• Tier 2: Create a scrapbook depicting the life of a child
affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
Include information about where the child lives, his/her
family’s economic and social situation, recreation,
education, and prospects for the future.
• Tier 3: In the role of a political candidate, create a
persuasive speech proposing actions to address the
concerns of the Dust Bowl farmers during the Great
Depression. Incorporate information about the farmers’
economic, social and political problems and propose how
the government can and cannot assist them. Support
your plan with evidence from both primary
and secondary sources.
36. Same task, 3 different
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Choose one of the primary sources below. Examine both
the information about the item and the item itself. Take
notes of important details that will help you answer the
following question:
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL
AND POLITICAL EFFECTS OF THE GREAT
DEPRESSION ON PEOPLE?
41. Academic/Learning
Contracts
Grapes of Wrath
•Written agreements between students and teachers
•What students will learn
•How they will learn it
•Time period for learning experience
•How they will be evaluated
•Usually opportunity for student choice
•Could be tiered activities
•Could be an anchor activity
43. Fandex Masters of
Western Art: Painters
Content Springboard for Academic/Learning Contract
• Written agreements between students
and teachers
• What students will learn
• How they will learn it
• Time period for learning experience
• How they will be evaluated
• Usually opportunity for student choice
• Could be tiered activities
• Could be an anchor activity
44. • Entry points-based on Gardner’s Theory of
Multiple Intelligences
– Begin topic with overview for whole class
– Allow students to select entry points for investigation
Source: http://connect.in.com/gardner-multiple-intelligence/photos-1-1-1-1501aebf4e77af79d3a75ba0a40e8173.html
45. Multiple Intelligences & The Arts
• Write and perform a song to teach concepts
• Creating charts, posters, graphs, or diagrams
• Creating a Web page or PowerPoint project
• Making a videotape or film
• Creating pie charts, bar graphs, etc.
• Making a photo album
• Creating a collage
• Designing a mindmap
• Making a map
• Using color and shape
• Developing or using Guided Imagery
• Understanding Color Schemes
Multiple Intelligences & Social Studies
47. Compacting
• Requires pre-assessment before beginning unit
of study or development of a skill
• Students who do well on the pre-assessment
should not have to continue work on what they
already know
• A plan for meaningful and challenging use of
student time will be developed
• Can also be used in giving homework
assignments
49. General Compacting Example
The Crusades
Web Quests Students complete an online quest
Think Quests Students create an online quest or
complete one posted by other students
50. Getting Started….
• Start small
– Start with your favorite unit/lesson plan
– Begin by teaching all students an anchor activity-
meaningful work done individually and silently
– Early on, you may want to ask some students to work
with anchor activity and others to work on a different
task which also requires no conversation or
collaboration
– Try a differentiated tasks for only a small block of time
– Grow slowly, but grow
51. – Assess students before you begin to teach a skill or
topic
– Try creating one differentiated lesson per unit
– Differentiate one product per semester
– Find multiple resources for a couple of key parts of
your curriculum
– Give students more choices about how to work, how
to express learning or which homework assignments
to do
– Develop and use a two day learning contract, then a 4
day, etc.
52. You cannot differentiate everything for
everyone every day!
Differentiation is an organized yet flexible
way of proactively adjusting teaching and
learning to meet kids where they are and
help them to achieve maximum growth as
learners.
53. Differentiated Instruction
and ELL Students
• Differentiation benefits all students and is
especially effective for ELL students who
may have difficulty with
– Understanding the material they are hearing
or reading
– Communicating their knowledge of the
material
54. Social Studies can present
special challenges for ELLs
• Use of higher level thinking skills required
for reading and writing
• Lack of familiarity with historical terms,
government processes, and vocabulary
• Amount of text covered and ELL’s inability
to tell what is important in the text and
what is not
55. • Difficulty understanding what is said by the
teacher and being able to take notes
• Differences in educational system
• Lack of experience in expressing personal
opinions in class
• Concepts that do not exist at all in some
cultures
Haynes (2005) in Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners by Cruz
and Thorton
56. Strategies
• Books on CD
• Open book quizzes
• Alternative projects
• Fill in the blank before essay
• Essays that relate to the students
• Accessing prior knowledge
57. Making Content
Comprehensible
• Use illustrations/pictures
• Act it out
• Enlist the help of a bilingual dictionary or
word for word translator
• Use scaffolding to build up to new
concepts
• Check for prior knowledge
58. Inviting ELLs to Achieve
• Plans some lessons/activities that are
relevant to the lives of ELL students
• Provide hands-on lessons with activities
that will allow for early success for ELLs
• Communicate individually with ELLs as
much as possible
• Give students sufficient wait time
59. More classroom tips
• Avoid forcing students to speak
• Emphasize key words and concepts
• Use lots of repetitions
• Check often for understanding
• Provide graphic organizers to aid in study
• Set reasonable study goals
• Help them find key concepts
60. Questioning Strategies
• “Point to the answer” strategy
• “Yes-no” with visual aid
• Break complex questions or tasks into
steps
• Ask simple “how” and “where” questions
62. Advance Preparation
• What vocabulary will be difficult
• What connections can I make to other
knowledge?
• What strategies does my ELL need to
develop?
• What assessment will realistically test the
knowledge of my ELL without penalizing
his/her level of learning?
63. • Clearly defined and written objectives
• Organizers, outlines, labels and pictures
• Supplementary materials
• Make it relevant
• Links to past experience and potential
experience
64. Resources
Social Studies Activities and Handouts
Including English Language Learners in Social
Studies (ppt) presented by Cruz and
Thorton at NCSS 2008
To access this ppt, go to: http://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/
Departments/seced/Faculty/Thorton.html
65. • Making Social Studies Meaningful for ELL Students: Content and
Pedagogy in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms
http://www.usca.edu/essays/vol162006/ahmad.pdf
• Teaching the English Language Learner in the Social Studies
Classroom
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/teaching_ell.ph
tml
• Resources to Help ELL Students
http://www.mcsk12.net/SCHOOLS/peabody.es/ell.htm
• Teaching Social Studies to ESL Students
http://www.suite101.com/content/teaching-social-studies-to-esl-
students-a129303
• Passport to Learning: Teaching Social Studies to ESL Students by
Barbara’ Cruz, Joyce Nutta, and Jason O’Brian. NCSS: 2003.
• Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners by Barbara’Cruz
and Stephen Thorton, NY: Routledge, 2009.
66. Understanding the WIDA English Language
Proficiency Standards: A Resource Guide,
2007 Edition
http://www.wida.us/standards/Resource_Guide_web.pdf
67. Questions or Comments?
Dr. Susan Santoli
ssantoli@usouthal.edu
Dr. Paige V. Baggett
pbaggett@usouthal.edu
Dr. Susan Ferguson
ferguson@usouthal.edu
Editor's Notes
Do scenarios of:Shoe stores now selling only one size shoeGoing to dr’s office with a variety of illnesses and only one medicine
Often, we think only of summative rather than formative assessment.
We’ve selected eight areas that we want to discuss with you. There are certainly other strategies. We’ve tried to make these broad enough to include lots of examples, but specific enough so that you can think of how you might use them. Please chime in and let us know any that you have tried.
Can differentiate virtually anything through agendas-materials subjects, topics within subjects, teacher support, pacing. Allow students to work on long term products in class where teacher can monitor and coach their planning, research, production.Can alwo allow for differentiation by readiness or student interest.
Sometimes teachers correlate the activities to grades of A,B, C but that’s really not the basic idea
