#differentiation by process

Differentiation by Modality

So how do teachers differentiate by modality?  First, we have to consider what modalities teachers use most often.  Mostly, we talk. 

If you consider the structure of the human head, you can immediately see a problem.  A dog takes in information primarily through scent; this is why most dogs’ noses are out in front.  This is something that believers in evolution and intelligent design can agree on.

On a human head, the eyes are in the front.  The ears are waayyyyy off to the side.  Yet we talk incessantly and use very few graphics.  PET scans of people asked to encode pictures show far greater brain activity than those of people encoding words (Grady, McIntosh, Rajah, & Craik, 1998).  The simple act of adding pictures to your PowerPoint presentations can increase retention.  If you further encourage your students to draw cartoon representations in their notes—even those who cannot draw—they will be apt to remember the concept associated with the picture.  Encourage them to use colored pencils or fine-tipped markers.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dr. Deb.  Get to the good stuff,” I hear you cry.  Okay, let’s talk kinesthetic modality.  There are infinite ways to employ movement in your instruction.  The links below are for videos of teachers using Whole Brain Instruction.  One is a kindergarten language arts lesson; the other is a high school mathematics class.  Notice that the technique is the same for both groups; only the content changes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMDvD_Ewf0U&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6WJdsb0dfM

You need not become WBT certified to use movement.  You can have students do something as simple as partner up and stroll from one side of the room to another while they discuss a concept.  The act of moving while talking in the classroom is novel and, therefore, it forces students to pay attention.  In addition, the concept may become fused with the mental image of the spot where the students were standing when they discussed it.  I can remember taking a geology test in college. (Rocks for Jocks.  Science was not my strength back then.)  As I struggled to arrive at the answer on our final, the first thing I recalled was an image of myself standing at the lab table.  As that picture solidified, my lab partners and what we were discussing gradually came into sharper focus until I was able to answer the question.

For review purposes, you can take the standard study guide and repackage it in moving form.  Take two cube-shaped tissue boxes and cover them with colored paper.  On one, write numbers from one to six.  On the other, write things you expect students to know.  For example, an upcoming test in a sixth grade science class (I’m trying to redeem myself from my Rocks for Jocks days) might focus on the structure, classification, and physical properties of matter.  So the six sides of the cube might have the following items written on them:

·         Name of elements

·         Ways to identify a substance

·         Things that happen to a substance as it is heated

·         Things that happen to a substance as it is cooled

·         Liquids that are lighter than water

·         Atomic numbers of elements

Student toss both cubes and then provide X number of examples (noted on the number cube) of whatever turns up on the other cube.

Fill-in-the-blank or very short answer questions can be turned into the old fortune tellers we used to make by folding paper.  Some folks call them cootie catchers.  You can purchase or download pre-made fortune tellers, but I prefer to have students create them for homework and then quiz each other during class.  I’ve provide a link to a blank template below.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cootie+catcher+math+facts&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Bon2UcHDFI-08QTIoYCYDA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1147&bih=882#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=TuQEH6ztuL1fqM%3A%3B3iZhXwDTfrrAEM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flessons4now.files.wordpress.com%252F2013%252F06%252Fcootie-catcher-template-low-tech.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flessons4now.wordpress.com%252F2013%252F06%252F25%252Fteaching-with-cootie-catchers%252F%3B802%3B602

Back to differentiation by modality.  Whether we believe in learning styles is really a moot point.  There are several good reasons to differentiate this way regardless.

Reason #1: Novelty

If a stimulus has any chance of becoming a memory, you have to pay attention to it.  Novelty is possibly the best way to gain attention.  We have all experienced driving to work on autopilot, arriving at school with no recollection of the 30 minutes that got us there.  This can go on daily—until someone puts up a new billboard.  “Hey! That’s new.  Oh, look; I’m driving,” you think to yourself. 

The same principle applies in the classroom.  If every part of every day is pretty much like the one before it, your students are apt to go on autopilot, some more often and for longer periods than others, lowering the likelihood of creating a memory of your instruction.

Reason #2: The brain stores information in multiple areas.

We’re all familiar with the generalization that left-brained people are logical and systematic while right-brained folks are creative and artsy.  Our cognitive quirks and aptitudes go well beyond which hemisphere dominates. 

Consider encoding and decoding of words in early grades.  Many reading specialists recommend having students spell words by saying the letters while “writing” them with their fingers across a piece of sandpaper or a carpet swatch.  Does this work?  I don’t know; I work mostly with adults.  If it does, its efficacy would seem to be predicated on the fact that one area in the brain recognizes tactile sensations while another processes auditory stimuli while another comprehends language and so on.  The student is storing the memory of the way a particular word is spelled all over the brain. 

It may be useful to think of the brain as a house and whatever you teach as a lint roller.

Trust me.  You’re gonna love this analogy.

I have two dogs and two cats.  Nary a day goes by that I don’t need a lint roller.  I used to keep one in my night stand.  Some mornings, while I was putting my coffee cup in the sink, one of the cats would rub against my leg.  If I was running late, I didn’t want to run all the way back to my room to get the lint roller, so I got another one and put it in the junk drawer in the kitchen.  Of course, then I’d get in my car and arrive at the office covered in dog fur.  I began keeping another lint roller in my glove compartment and one in my desk at the office.  I’m covered.  More accurately, I am NOT covered—in animal fur—because I’ve got lint rollers wherever I might need them. 

The more places your students can store their memories, the more likely they are to be able to retrieve them when needed.

Differentiation by Process: Alternative Modalities

Before I move on to differentiation by product, I wanted to touch on differentiating instruction through the use of alternative modalities.  Modalities are ways of conveying information.  Those of us old enough to remember Schoolhouse Rock learned the Preamble to the Constitution through a musical modality. 

Differentiation by Process (continued)

My last substantive post provided an example of how you might differentiate the reading process in science through the use of a Jigsaw.  Today, we’ll be looking at another means of differentiation by process through tiered assignments and flexible grouping. 

Picture this.  You’re a middle school or freshman English teacher in the midst of a unit on figurative language.  The essential question guiding this unit is “How do writers use figurative language to describe the indescribable?”  Daily learning objectives leading toward this goal included definition and identification of such figurative language as similes, metaphors, and personification.  Your students have been at this for about a week, and their achievement shakes out into the following categories:

·         Group 1 has 5 members.  They can sight a simile like a special ops sniper.  They can further deconstruct the simile and tell you that the tenor is “sight” and the vehicle is “a special ops sniper.”  They can further explain how the comparison of these two very unlike things is both appropriate and edifying.  If you give these kids one more worksheet, they will rise up in revolt and beat you to death with a Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.

·         Group 2 has 16 members.  They can accurately identify the various types of figurative language.  Their ability to analyze the meaning of figures of speech, however, is weak.  “’Hope is a thing with feathers . . .’ That’s a bird, right?”

·         Group 3 has 7 members.  Unless the figure of speech is incredibly obvious, these kids have trouble noticing, and they regularly confuse similes, metaphors, and personification.

Now, before I go on, I must tell you that I have an awesome idea for differentiating this lesson by content, and if you're a middle school or freshman English teacher, I encourage you to send me a message. But today, we're all about process. 

In addition, if you're NOT a high school English teacher, it's up to you to figure out the analagous tasks for your subject matter and age group.  Feel free to shoot me a message, though, if you want to brainstorm some ideas.

There are a couple of ways you might approach the next class with these students.   Here’s one:

First, divide the class into seven teams.  All the students in Group 1 will have 1 pair and 1 trio.  Group 2 will have 8 pairs.  Group 3 will have 2 pairs and one trio.   Never allow students to work in groups larger than five.

Next, distribute the lyrics to Katy Perry’s “Firework” to every student.  As a class, listen to the song and, if students are able, begin annotating the lyrics.  If you don’t like this song, or think your students won’t, find another one that is equally metaphor-laden. 

Group members then accomplish the following tasks:

Group 1: Work individually to identify what abstruse or ephemeral quality the songwriting team is attempting to illuminate by comparing it to a firework.  Then, with partners,

·         Debate the relative merits of this metaphor.  Is “firework” the best comparison?

·         If not, select a more apt metaphor and write four lines of that song.

·         If so, evaluate the use of onomatopoeia in the song.  Revise the “boom, boom, boom” portion to be less clichéd but still rhyme.

Group 2: Working in pairs, complete the task that Group 1 accomplished individually.  Upon completion, check in with the teacher.  Meet with pairs to discuss their findings and redirect them if they have gone off the rails.  Portion out the remaining tasks as Group 2 pairs demonstrate their understanding of figurative language.

Group 3: Provide each pair with a graphic organizer that has a check list for accurately identifying similes and metaphors, as well as two columns labeled SIMILE, METAPHOR.  Working in pairs, find no fewer than twelve similes and/or metaphors and place them in the appropriate columns.  Upon completion, Group 3 pairs check in with the teacher.  You evaluate their findings and coach them if there are mistakes.  If the pair has been successful, ask them to collaborate in writing an explanation of what abstruse or ephemeral quality the songwriting team is attempting to illuminate by comparing it to a firework.

You should circulate constantly.  Part of what makes this differentiation by process is the amount of teacher support provided.  Students who need you should have you, while students who can work independently should be encouraged to do so.  Another element that characterizes this as differentiation by process is that students are enabled to work within their respective zones of proximal development (ZPD) and, as their competencies increase, the relative sophistication and difficulty of their tasks increase.

Previously, on the Know-it-All Tell-All, we had established that differentiated instruction (DI) had to be preceded by assessment and that it could be accomplished in at least three ways: content, process, and product. We also learned the term “crap ton." See yesterday’s post for further edification on that subject.

As promised, today we’ll take on the second type of DI, differentiating by process. To differentiate by process, you first have to ask yourself, “What is the goal toward which I’m pushing my students?" This might be answered quite simply by looking at the upper right hand corner of your white board and seeing the day’s learning objective, or it may be a broader, essential question (another of those oft-used, seld-understood edu-terms that I’ll take on in another post).

Let’s keep it simple, though, and say that your learning goal is that the students can explain both orally and in writing the functions of the organelles in a cell. It is only important that the students arrive at this goal you have set; how they get there is immaterial.

That is where differentiating by process comes in.

Sample Option 1: Jigsaw

This is an excellent way to cover a lot of written material fairly quickly with a failsafe for ensuring accurate comprehension. Let’s say organelles are covered in Chapter 5 of the science textbook, which is 20 pages long. You can be fairly certain that if you assign Chapter 5 for homework, a good portion of your class will not finish (another portion will not begin), and a portion of those who do the reading will fail to understand it.

If you do the reading in class, you will lose an hour of instructional time that might be better spent discussing why anyone should care what each organelle does (At some point we’ll get around to addresssing the So-What? factor of lesson planning). Additionally, you will be doing all the work. A good rule of thumb is that whoever is talking the most is also learning the most. If you want your students to learn, you have to make them work harder than you, which reminds me of another good title you may want to add to your professional library, Never Work Harder than your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson.

But I digress.

Step 1: Break up Chapter 5 into four sections and assign them appropriately. This is the trickiest step. You want to give your strongest readers the most challenging and/or longest portions, but you don’t want to be obvious about it. Allow graphics and other text features to help you. If pp. 78-84 have 2 ½ pages of graphics, you can assign them to your lower-achieving students, and your class will see only that this group has to read six pages. No one is stuck with the nail-and-hammer stigma I noted in yesterday’s post.

Step 2: Explain that each individual will be responsible for reading and reporting out on the assigned portion of the chapter. You may be tempted to threaten them with the entire chapter if anyone fails to do his/her part. You know you kids better than I, but I’d refrain from this until and unless it became necessary.

Step 3: Gather students who read the same portion together and allow them to debrief each other on what they believe the essential information from this reading was. This step is crucial. It is your opportunity to discover and correct your students’ misunderstandings. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP!

I can hear some of you chewing your lips. “But what about the kid who didn’t do the reading? Isn’t this letting him off the hook? How can teach my students responsibility if they can get away with not doing their homework?”

This is not a problem.

First off, you’re not going to do jigsaws for every reading assignment, so this can’t become a habit. Second, the kid who doesn’t do homework on a regular basis will probably end up doing poorly in your class regardless. Third, your learning goal was that the students be able to explain the functions of organelles, not demonstrate responsibility. This is not to say you shouldn’t encourage responsibility in your students, only that there are times when you have to pick your battles. Pick those that are big enough to matter and small enough to win.

Step 4: Place one student from each “expert” team in a group and allow them to explain the main ideas from their reading assignment.

The process is differentiated in several ways. First, during Step 3, you should spend more time with your lower achieving group to support their understanding of the material. Circulate to all the groups, but your lower group will need you more. Second, you have structured the activity of reading so that lower achieving students are given fewer steps and simpler tasks while higher achieving students are not forced to endure a slower pace, as they would if the reading were done in class.

There are other ways to differentiate by process. Tomorrow I’ll take on tiered assignments.