Differentiating in Baby Steps, Part 2: Getting your feet in the Differentiation Kiddie Pool

You may want to read Part 1 on Differentiating in Baby Steps first, here.

The main books on differentiation are by Carol Ann Tomlinson; she stresses that you must enter into differentiating your classroom slowly, and trying one small thing at a time.

The problem with this very true statement is that, well, it’s sort of like the first time I went out for Dim Sum as a 17 year old. The adult friend of my parents said, “You can’t try everything, so just pick a few things and see what you like.”

But everything looked scary. I needed a place to start.

So to with that great, mysterious Dim Sum Dumpling of Differentiation in the Classroom: I’d like to offer you a great way to start.

Differentiate by Pace – Solve Behavior Problems at the Same Time

Here’s the scenario: students have an assignment in class. It might be solo, it might be in groups. What do they do when they’re done?

Here’s what I used to do: tell the students that they must tell me when they’re done with their assignment. Then, while supervising their work, I’d try to drum up some extra work for them to do if they finished early. Invariably, however, a couple of students would finish their work way too fast, and initiate WWF-style wrestling matches in the back of the room.

Me-as-beginner-teacher: “I told you to tell me when you were done!”

Student: “But there were only 18 minutes to the end of class.”

Me-as-beginner-teacher: “You can learn a lot in 18 minutes!”

Student: “You can’t learn anything in 18 minutes.”

Me-as-a-beginner-teacher: “Oh, you need to meet my friend TED. TED would totally disagree.”

It was a lost battle. The student had unplugged. Net result: I disciplined the student. The student sulked for a week. Lose-lose.

More problematic than Sulky-Student-Syndrome is the fact that this student who finished early a) might have burned through the work early as an incentive to slack off for 18 minutes, and b) Might have gone on to learn (or produce) great stuff if I’d planned ahead.

ANCHOR ACTIVITIES

Tomlinson speaks about “Anchor Activities,” in her books: specified, ongoing activities that students can start class with or return to after completing work. It keeps them “anchored” in learning – preventing drift and preventing back-of-class-melee-combat.

As you can imagine, it needs to be interesting enough to draw idle students to it, but it must be educationally sound.

The IDEAL and the REAL

Ideally, the anchor activity would be deeply meaningful, build a skill-set, and engage the student in a long-range product. BUT…that’s sending a new teacher back to burn-out-territory. Let’s find a balance between anchorwork that’s easy to create, fun to do, and that will not require you to design two units instead of one.

My suggestions:

1. When you design each unit, comb YouTube for thoughtful videos thematically related to that topic. Assemble links to videos in a Googledoc or in a binder (you can use bit.ly or tinyurl.com to rename the links with helpful titles instead of URL gobbledygook). Students can pick and watch videos and can choose from the activities below (which you can set up, based on what you have the bandwidth to supervise / teach)

a. Write a short editorial on what you saw. For example: what resonates with you? What do you object to?

b. Use provided art supplies to create a poster, children’s book, or collage on the theme of the video.

c. Use an online source like Pixton, Toondoo, Powtoon, or GoAnimate to share your thoughts or experiences on the theme.

2. Comb blogs related to popular-science magazines for articles thematically-related to the unit; bonus points if the article is a little controversial. I teach literature, so I look for Pyschology Today articles, making for interesting reading – especially when the articles are about teenagers, and students may vehemently disagree with the premises! Here are some ideas:

a. Student reads the article and writes a response to the author: do you agree or disagree with certain claims the author makes? Thank the author for helpful ideas, and suggest alternate ways of understanding teens’ experiences in areas where you disagree.

b. Each student keeps a blog in which s/he writes editorials on the articles s/he reads.

c. Student keeps a journal – written or comic strip form – and writes about his/her own experiences in regards to the topic.

3. Homework incentive

Finally, if I don’t have time to arrange anchorwork or I choose not to, students can move on to homework when they finish their classwork.

On the one hand, this was always my preference (certainly over WWF wrestling), but here’s the catch. I used to just say (over and over, in fact), that when students were done, they should do homework.

But before, I didn’t use a lesson-plan template like this: I post this template each day on the class calendar, and if there is no anchorwork, I write, “See homework.” (For more on how I use templates, read my post here,)

Now, students see it. It’s real.

Finish your work early, and you’re are accountable for the next step. Even if it’s just homework.

No more WWF.

This is part 2 of a 4 part series. Read part 3, here.