HTH GSE Conceptual Framework: Inquiry and Design
* Develop curricula, policies, and learning environments based on the HTH design principles.
* Draw upon students' diverse backgrounds and learning styles to enhance teaching and learning.
* Conduct scholarly inquiry that enriches practice and contributes to the larger educational community.

 

Differentiation: Breaking the Mold of One Assignment for All

HTH 240: Implementing Inclusive Classrooms

 

Prior to taking this course, I have always approached differentiation only within my instructional practices and not with student assignments or projects. Once I was exposed to looking at my assignments with differentiation in mind, change started to happen. Allowing students to have multiple access points within the content specific concepts just made simple and plain sense. I’d just never really practiced designing my assignments with that mindset. With a new focus, I set out to apply my learning to a current project we are working on with our Core Literature.

Currently we are reading The Adventures of Ulysses by Bernard Evslin. This novel is a revision of Homer’s Odyssey, containing vignettes of Ulysses’ battles with monsters and gods. I use this novel to teach students about literary devices and varied sentence constructions, and as a culminating application to what we are learning, the students create Point-of-View (POV) summaries for each chapter, one assignment for all students. After learning about the RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, and Topic), I decided to change my one assignment approach to providing my students with a RAFT for each chapter. After teaching a lesson on POV, I introduced the RAFT that I created for the Cyclops’ Cave chapter, and almost immediately I received positive reactions from my students.

 

The following table contains samples of RAFT projects:

Their reactions have been centered on the fact that they were given a choice. One student stated, “Choice and variety makes our work exciting, we get to go away from the same type of summary over and over again. It makes it fun.” A few students commented about the idea of being “forced” to work on certain assignments, and that when they are given choice, it’s easy for them to come up with fresh ideas. For the most part, my students agreed with each other that when I gave them choice of how to report out their learning, their quality of work took a turn for the better.

I have a wide range of students, from Celdt 2 ELLs to extremely high functioning GATE students. The problem that I have always experienced with writing POV summaries with students, is the lack of vocabulary and language experiences from my ELLs. This obstacle hinders them from really opening up, and applying what they have learned about the choices authors make. With the introduction of the RAFT, students who were frustrated with struggling to write a full POV summary were now given the chance to practice their learning in other means where language acquisition isn’t a roadblock. Our short experience with the RAFT has been eye opening for me and an equalizing experience for my students.

For the most part, differentiation at my school, and in large part within my district has been centered on instruction and reading. Every staff development on differentiation dealt with guided reading groups. I am sad to admit that for the most part, I have only designed assignments that were used to apply for all my students. I am excited to start creating avenues for my struggling students to apply and report their learning in our class. Natalie and I have even taken the next step. We will be facilitating our next staff professional learning day, concentrating on differentiating assignments and activities. Our initial conversations with staff members have been positive and fruitful, energizing us to seek other resources to bring and provide our staff with a meaningful make-it-take-it type of professional learning. I have used
choice before in assignments and activities, but they have never been aimed to meet the needs of my wide variety of learners. Using differentiation with this type of application has allowed me to assess students in an entirely different way, and it has allowed students to demonstrate their learning without the constraints of language and experience.