(There's a tl;dr list of tips at the bottom in bold for anyone who doesn't want to read the narrative!)
Yesterday, I was in my classroom wading through my perennial pools of marking (ah, the life of an English teacher) when a colleague came in to ask for advice.
"I'm running a session on differentiation tomorrow for the NQTs and trainees," she said, "and [AVP mentioned in my previous posts] said you're really good at it. Can you help?"
"What, me?" I replied, taken aback. (I've been a Lead Teacher for 9 weeks now and still haven't grown accustomed to the whole 'being an expert' thing.) "I don't really do anything special."
Colleague looked confused. "Maybe she's seen you do something good."
"Or has seen some resources I put on the system. Let me think."
"I'm really sorry to bother you..."
"No! It's no worries at all. Hang on."
So I trundled over to my computer where the PowerPoints of the day were still open because...well, see the title. Lazy.
"Well, there's this," I said, "that I used with Y11 today. It's just success criteria colour-coded - green is the basic stuff they need to get to the Grade 5...we think. It's a little like throwing darts at a board while blindfolded at the minute with the new exams. The red stuff stretches them beyond. That way they can self-assess or peer assess, and the ones who do all the basic stuff can stretch to the harder skills, or if they 'finish' early they can edit their responses."
"Oh," she said. I think there was a little surprise in her voice. Who can blame her? She'd come for some advice, and... "That's really good."
"Huh. I guess so."
Was that differentiation? Really? That's not how I imagined it...
(Imagine the Scooby Doo sound effect and the wavy-line-flashback effect here.)
In my head swam memories of lessons I delivered as a trainee and an NQT with four different sheets of help available - writing frame, sentence stems, key words, an extension challenge - all fluttering together in a pile of confusion and frustration. (I'm not a naturally organised person; I have to work very hard at it. I'm going to try and get 'Seriously can't cope with loads of bits of paper' listed as a psychiatric condition in the next version of the DSM. Thank you, Bill Gates, for Microsoft Outlook and its reminder feature.)
Anyhow, to me, that was differentiation. "Here ya go, Jimmy-Joe-Bob, you'll want to use this to help." "Susie, you'll want...wait, no, you want this one...." "Oh, you're finished, Penelope? Here's a sheet with some advanced vocabulary on it; use that to rewrite your - oh, wait, no, that's the writing frame again."
Time consuming. Frustrating. Expensive. And not very good for the kids, for three reasons:
1) The kid who needs the sheet with the most help feels singled out and doesn't want to use it - and it heightens the stigma some pupils with DSEN feel.
2) It's actually not that great for their learning. Sure we can give them a zillion writing frames and key words sheets and sentence stems...and then we send them into an exam that's a question and a giant, unending sea of blank pages.
3) When the kids have come to rely on it, you can guarantee that you'll have that one day where you've been marking Y11 mocks until the owls are telling you to go to bed; you're being observed with your Y9s; you've been running a club after school and you just, simply, don't have the time to make four different sheets for your Y7 class because they MUST know how to write a PEE paragraph by now, right? And the kid who has never had to write on a blank piece of paper is suddenly ping-ponging back and forth between staring at their book like it's a snake - and staring at you like you just strangled their puppy.
(Scooby Doo sound effects, flash back to the present and my conversation with my lovely, patient colleague.)
"Okay," she said. "So, what do you do for the weaker kids?"
"Well, the Y11 stuff is for a middle group and a mid-low group. But for Y7s I do a lot of oral rehearsal," I explained.
"What's that?"
So I pulled up a PowerPoint from the Scheme of Learning I wrote on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. "Basically, they talk it before they write it. They have an oracy frame, two different ones, so if they finish the first, they go on to the second."
It looks something like this (from a Week 3 lesson):
“Edmund is presented as _____ because he…,which makes the reader feel... whereas Lucy is presented as _______ because she…, which makes the reader feel...”
Extra challenge: Edmund is presented as ________ because he ________ which we can see in the quotation “…”, which makes the reader feel _________ because..., whereas Lucy is presented as _________ because she ________ in the quotation “…,” which makes the reader feel ________ because..."
"So, they read it out before they write it down," she said, "and fill in the blanks with a partner."
"Yeah."
"I need to do more of this...and what's your display?"
I laughed. "That one," I said, indicating right, "is a wall of words that can be used to describe characters, and this one-" I pointed left this time "-is a collage of mood and effect words."
"So if they aren't sure what to put, they can look at the displays to help them. They're pretty advanced words."
"Yeah," I said and laughed. "My top Y10s look like they're watching Wimbledon at the minute while they're writing up essays. And there are key terms all over the room in case they're not sure if something is a noun, verb, simile, whatever."
She sat back in her chair and looked at me. "It all seems really easy."
"It involves a bit of time the first time you teach something - but now that I've got it, I won't have to make it from scratch again; I can just edit it based on the feedback from the exam board after this first year. And the stuff I've done for Y11 can be used for Y9 and Y10 as it goes all the way from Grade 1 to Grade 9."
Cocking her head, she asked, "So when you teach, do you teach to the bottom, then?"
I paused and thought for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, I do." I remembered attending differentiation training as a GTP student with a lovely, passionate SENCO who advised us to "Teach to the bottom and then stretch up - otherwise you'll lose a third of your class and have to re-teach everything again."
Wise words.
So, I've had a thought about things I do / have done in my classroom. Here are some tips for lazy differentiation, for those of you who - like me - detest zillions of bits of paper floating about.
1) Stair-stepped success criteria that starts at Grade 1 and ends at Grade 9. Obviously, use your judgement - your bottom set Y7 isn't going to need to see what a Y11 Grade 9 looks like, but it won't hurt for your middle Y9 to have something to aspire to. I use an adapted-for-EdExcel version of the targets developed by the very talented "Learning from My Mistakes" found here - http://learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/targets-targets-and-more-targets.html (His are for AQA.)
2) Oral rehearsal using an oracy frame for new exam structures. This is just like a writing frame - except with no writing! Display it on the whiteboard. Put a basic and a challenge version up if you like. Kids practise orally with a partner before writing. As my old headteacher used to say..."If you can talk it, you can write it."
3) Displays of key terms and other advanced vocabulary that will help them to write responses. I'm happy to send you through my ethically-pilfered-then-made-pretty display stuff if you like (effect words and character words) - email me at Mel.E.Gold2063 @ gmail . com and I'll send 'em through. Emotion wheels work well for writing about characters' emotions and effect on the reader / personal response - a Google image search will turn up dozens.
4) Teach to the bottom and then stretch up. I'm lucky enough to work in a school with very tight setting (1-9) so there aren't massive gaps - but this was still true for the Y7 class I had as an RQT with kids from a reading age of 6 to 16. It's easier to put some extension instructions on the board than it is to print a gajillion sheets.
5) Easily differentiated group work. At my current school, the desks are in rows (through necessity due to the types of desks and layout of the classrooms), so I've not used it here - but in schools where group work is an expectation, this is a super-easy way to differentiate without stigmatising the kids. At my old school, where groups (except top set) were mixed ability, my tables were in groups of four and I stuck a picture in the corner of each kid's book - tea, coffee, milk, or sugar - which is in descending order of ability. This made it very easy to say things like, "Teas, write a sentence of personification to describe this image. Coffees, use a metaphor. Milk - a simile. Sugar - three challenging adjectives. You're going to do a group description and will need all your ideas!" It also meant that if I wanted single-ability groups, I could put all the 'Teas' together, all the 'Coffees'...eh, you get the idea.
6) Questioning using Blooms. This can go one of two ways - either in quizzing, or orally. Orally, know your kids - who will just about cope with finding you a quotation or remembering what the Ghost of Christmas Past looked like? Who will be able to critique Dickens' style? In quizzing, I start with knowledge and then work up with a very tight time limit - the more able kids will naturally work through more quickly, and the less able will benefit from their answers in feedback. Example:
Scrooge is described using a semantic field of cold in Stave 1.
1) Find the words that describe Scrooge and also have to do with the cold. (Knowledge.)
2) What impression does this create of Scrooge? (Understanding.)
3) Explain why Dickens has used this semantic field. (Application.)
4) Choose the best word. Explain two different possible effects and give reasons. (Analysis.)
5) Can you make connections between this description and anything else you've read? (Synthesis.)
6) What criticisms can you make of Dickens' portrayal of Scrooge in this way? (Evaluation.)
What lazy differentiation tips do you have? Let me know in the comments!
