Today I want to talk about having high expectations, differentiation in a meaningful and stress free way, and adaptive teaching: the new differentiation in the classroom.
When I trained in 1999 differentiation was already a hot topic and I remember extremely well how I had to provide evidence of specific and different tasks for at least three levels of learning in the classroom. I basically planned the same task in three versions corresponding to levels: high, medium, low and would pre-determined who would fit each level, hence the adaptation of my worksheets. It was a nightmare to run and to photocopy!
We have moved away from this philosophy and over the years I have stuck to the concept of Anchoring in Challenge (from Making Every lesson Count) meaning, pitching high and expect ALL the students to reach the top of our expectations. To achieve this, we must provide scaffolds for those who need it and lifts for the more able students, making it clear that the expectation is that everyone reaches the top at their own pace.
How to manage a mixed ability classroom in practice?
They key is to check for understanding constantly, and adapt our teaching accordingly within the lessons, using our repertoire of scaffolds and lifts. This means preparing one activity (not multiple versions of the same task) but leading students to the top, skilfully, through our scaffolds via the use of questions and whole class involvement. It’s about spinning the plates, reacting to what you see and changing our lesson plan if needed, on our feet.
Having Sentence Builders in a booklet format (for the whole academic year) has been instrumental in providing me with the tool to easily scaffold and lift any task.
Let me show you how I adapt my teaching using scaffolds and lifts with different activities.
Dictation activities
I always carry out these activities with MWBs, an easy way to check for understanding at all times. I start dictating small sentences, repeated very slowly and gradually move to longer utterances at increased speed. When checking for understanding with MWBs, I can see at a glance, how many students could carry out the dictation easily and who struggled. Based on this information, I continue dictating sentences, but will direct some students to have their Sentence Builders booklet in front of them while I will ask others to take it away. I go back to shorter sentences after two longer ones and back to a challenged utterance. After increasing my speed of dictation, I go back to short utterances again and back to longer sentences at different speeds. I do this as a response of what I see in the MWBs. I adapt to what students produce, constantly.
I may start with a gapped dictation (only some words are missing, basically a fill in the gaps type of activity) to move to a fill in the gaps without gaps (words are missing but without gaps and students have to listen carefully for the word missing in specific spots) and back to fill in the gaps again to be back to dictation without gaps, all in the same text.
I can also dictate deliberate grammatical, lexical or pronunciation mistakes and can use cold calling to ask students if they spot something dodgy.
When carrying out dictation activities and some of my students finish quickly while others are still writing, I may ask the faster learners to translate the sentence into English or to extend it using vocabulary from a past topic. I will do this on the spot, adapting to each child’s needs at that moment.
Scaffolded output practice
When carrying out language activities involving scaffolded production of the learned topic, I normally start with simple translations from English into TL, again using MWBs, wheel of names works wonders for this and students will get points (they keep a tally on their MWB) for each correct sentence they translate. I give them thinking time and writing time, then I will check answers: I may have to ask some students to revise their sentences: can you spot a mistake? If all correct I can ask students to extend their sentence with something they can think of on the spot. I may use initials in the activity and after a while just initials without the English support to go back to short translations. I may ask some students to stop writing and tell me the sentence orally while others write it.
Another strategy is to give prompts and students to write/say a sentence based on this. Some students may write something short, others something long. I can push all students to include different tenses and one or more magical powers, we have 5! See this post for the Magical 5 Powers.
In oral, pair work activities I move around the classroom, I redirect students where needed, to our Sentence Booklets, while I remove the booklet from others. I can ask challenging/reinforcing questions to different students while moving around: why did you choose that ending? How would you say....? Can you extend your answers so you speak for an en extra 10 seconds? While moving around, I take notes of mistakes, answers and we analyse them, reflecting on the students' work at the end of the activity. While walking around, I may decide that students need extra practice with verbs in the past or the future or in pronouncing specific sounds and will plan a subsequent lesson accordingly.
Fluent Practice (Mastery of concepts: spontaneity)
At this stage, I can push students to speak faster and faster and more spontaneously: talk 2 minutes about a topic with your partner/or recording yourself. Then, say the same information now in 1:30 minutes finally in 1 minute. Speed dating, Relay Races and any oral activities with time limit are great! Again, I would be walking around, directing students to their SB booklets if needed.
If doing written creative practice, I would model the thinking process first and we would write a model answer together, then on their own or in pairs using our 5 Magical Powers sheet as a scaffold, where needed, but wouldn’t allow the use of their SB booklet: think, think what you can say instead or what you actually can remember!
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