FROM SEAN HUGHES

This is a difficult time for many of us, and students, undoubtedly, have been intensely impacted by shifts in education over the past year. Our ability to support and differentiate instruction for English language learners has shifted as well. As they've migrated to online classes and navigated new ways of learning, they are likely looking for additional guidance on their language learning journey. 

This resource is designed to help students who are still acquiring English language skills and need extra supports for self-study. Language learning requires extra attention and focus, and this can be exceptionally hard when learning independently or at home. In this collection, we have compiled some of our favorite and most useful resources for guiding and supporting learning both within and outside of the classroom. Links, descriptions, and advice for using each resource are included.

We hope this collection can help to guide those who may be struggling with language learning, especially in the ELA setting. We know how difficult it can be to learn a new language, and hope that these resources can help facilitate an elevated learning environment and a comprehensive approach to leveling the learning environment for all of our amazing learners.
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To access additional free K-12 resources from our team, please visit our Resources page.

TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, RESOURCES, SUPPORTING ELLs SERIES

Differentiated instruction aims to meet the diverse needs of students, but it can be difficult to design lessons that support those who are struggling without restricting learners who are ready for more advanced study.

The Rigormeter’s spectrum approach, which re-envisions Bloom's Taxonomy, offers a straightforward outline of six learning stages, along with suggested actions for student engagement in each phase of the learning process. 

Like an odometer, the Rigormeter measures progress that builds from one stage to another. By de-linearizing Bloom's levels of knowledge, the Rigormeter highlights that learning can occur along a continuum, which can be traveled in more than one direction, with stops along the way. This approach implies that once we’ve reached the end, we might easily begin again.  

The Rigormeter is not just a method of measuring understanding — it can also be a map for planning instruction. If we conscientiously design our instruction to support students at each stage of the spectrum, we have the opportunity to see students thoughtfully engaging in the learning process, finding success at each stage along the way because they were properly prepared. Teachers who aim to challenge their students beyond their initial understandings can utilize the stages within the Rigormeter to design activities and lessons for further depth of study.  

To access additional free K-12 resources from our team, please visit our Resources page. 

TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, RESOURCES

By SEAN HUGHES

English language learners (ELLs) are defined by the National Education Association (NEA) as students who are unable to communicate or learn effectively in English. Many of these learners come from non-English speaking backgrounds, have recently immigrated, or are living in homes with non-English speaking families. Due to the achievement gap between ELLs and non-ELLs, modified instruction is generally recommended for ELLs across all content areas.

We know how difficult it can be to learn a new language at any time, let alone during a global pandemic, and while learning remotely. We've compiled some of our favorite and most useful resources for guiding and supporting learners both within and outside of the classroom, and hope this collection can act as a guide to facilitate elevated learning opportunities and a comprehensive approach to leveling the learning environment for all of our learners. To download these resources, click here. To access additional free resources from our team, please visit our Resources page. 

This is a difficult time for many of us in the teaching community, as we’ve migrated to online learning platforms and are navigating new ways of trying to help our learners.  Our students, undoubtedly, have been intensely impacted by the shifts in education. They need our help and guidance now more than ever.

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​TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, RESOURCES, SUPPORTING ELLs SERIES

By SEAN HUGHES
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English language learners (ELLs) are defined by the National Education Association (NEA) as students who are unable to communicate or learn effectively in English. Many of these learners come from non-English speaking backgrounds, have recently immigrated, or are living in homes with non-English speaking families. Due to the achievement gap between ELLs and non-ELLs, modified instruction is generally recommended for ELLs across all content areas.

We know how difficult it can be to reach all learners in a class, especially when some students are language learners who may need extra attention, and when the challenges of remote teaching and learning have shifted our interactions. Which is why we've compiled a collection of resources, designed for teachers of English Language Arts (ELA), in order to support ELLs in the classroom and at home. Included in this collection are resources for lesson planning, creating materials, and guides and suggestions for teaching new language learners. To download these resources, click here. To access additional free resources from our team, please visit our Resources page. 

This is a difficult time for many of us in the teaching community, as we’ve migrated to online learning platforms and are navigating new ways of trying to help our learners.  Our students, undoubtedly, have been intensely impacted by the shifts in education. They need our help and guidance now more than ever.
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​TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, RESOURCES, SUPPORTING ELLs SERIES

By G. FAITH LITTLE

The sunlight is still Summer while the breeze feels like Fall. Teachers stream in, eager to find their names at check-in and chat with colleagues on their way to hear the keynote speaker frame the day, “It’s not that differentiation is part of the work. Differentiation is the work itself. We all can make progress and we can all grow. Each student deserves a goal that they can work hard to achieve!"
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This excerpt from a previous post about bringing a series of in-person professional development workshops to life evoked memories that seemed to stand in stark contrast against our current teaching and learning situation.

Adapting our plans

​We began our Spring 2020 workshops series on a cold day in February. At the end of the day-long sessions, facilitators reviewed feedback from participants, noted adjustments they would make to their plans, and tucked away sign-in sheets in folders, ready for their next session — a month away. A few weeks later we found ourselves siloed, setting up spaces at home where we could work, on screens, day and night. It felt as if we were living in a snow globe that someone picked up, shook, and set back down, leaving our environment sloshing around us, debris floating through the air, settling at our feet. 

We moved quickly, collaborating from our siloed spaces, pushing one another to reframe our thinking: 

• Instead of, “Can this even work if we’re not all in the same room at the same time?” we asked, “How can this work while we’re in different places with different schedules?”
• Rather than, “I’ll need to start planning all over again for this to work in a new setting,” we wondered, “What can I preserve from this plan?” and “What’s one way I can get this message across with the tools I have?”
• In addition to using high-tech options, like Canvas as a platform for content, we consistently considered what the low-tech and no-tech options would be.

Through connection and communication, we were able to find ways to support teachers who were going through the same process themselves: expanding their classroom from inside the walls of a school building out in the city, across the state, and around the world.

The phrase we're in this together became a mantra not only when it came to wearing masks, washing our hands, and social distancing, but also when it came to our own teaching and learning. Stay-at-home restrictions created an environment in which we needed to open our minds to as many options to meet as many students in need as possible.

As teachers — from early childhood education to graduate school — revised and remodeled their plans, many began to ask, “Why didn’t I think of this before? I could have a distance learning component for each of my lessons.” At CPET, we realized that we could not only offer each of our workshops in an online space, but we could make all of our offerings available at no additional charge to our participants. The limitation of being in a specific session at a specific time was gone, and what was left was the opportunity for teachers to experience as many of the asynchronous offerings as they cared to.
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Our Spring 2020 asynchronous offerings; view upcoming opportunities here

Utilizing practical strategies

​Of course, after plans are adapted into a new space, the work again becomes customizing to our students. What do our first graders need to connect during distance learning? What about our sixth graders? Our seniors? As our snow globe settles and our vision clears, we see that trusted strategies are a foundation we can still hold on to. We can identify practical and adaptable tips we’ve used in the classroom and integrate them into our remote teaching and learning.

• Discussion Strategy: Provide prompts for students to connect to themselves
  • Pose open-ended questions about a text or topic to help students engage in the conversation
  • Turn your questions into writing prompts
  • Support students in asking their own questions through invitation and exploration

 

• Informal Formative Assessment: Peaks & Pits
  • Students articulate one peak and one pit. A peak is something they are excited they now understand or something new they learned during class, invitation, or exploration. A pit is something that’s still troubling them or that they wish they understood more clearly.
  • Possibilities: Pair share, read aloud, or collect through chat, email, Google Doc, or by uploading a picture

 

• Differentiating the way students engage with information: Introduce a topic, concept or theme
  • Step 1: Quote — students interpret a quote about the concept or theme
  • Step 2: Image — students interpret an image that represents the concept or theme
  • Step 3: Question — students answer a questions about the concept or theme
  • Step 4: In groups of three, students compare the quote, question and image; students identify connections between the three

So, we end where we began: differentiation is not simply part of the work — it is the work.

Each student deserves the opportunity to grow, demonstrate progress, and work hard toward an achievable goal.

Each teacher deserves the same. 

​TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, G. FAITH LITTLE, INITIATIVES, REMOTE LEARNING, RESOURCES

By ROBERTA LENGER KANG


Differentiation can happen in many ways, with varying levels of complexity. Our Differentiating Like a STAR resource, designed to help educators consider entry points to differentiation, offers strategies in four categories: data, task, text, and grouping. Within each category, we outline three levels of instruction — the more stars included, the stronger the differentiation. By identifying pathways to expand differentiation, you can add depth and complexity to your lessons. 

When teaching in person, we differentiate tasks by dividing content material, offering multiple processes to fit students’ learning styles, or varying the product to ensure interest and engagement. Differentiating at a distance may change our communication methods, but it doesn’t need to change our commitment to student choice. In fact, it can enhance it!

Pathways for differentiation

One classic way to differentiate instruction is to create different paths for students to demonstrate their learning. There are three ways that educators can differentiate based on the assigned task: content, process, or product. 

Content
As you develop your curriculum, you may identify a series of content strands that students should be familiar with, and that are representative of a larger concept or theme within your instruction. When we differentiate content, we can identify some concepts and examples that are necessary for all students to know deeply, and other concepts that students should be familiar with, but may not be required to know in-depth. Differentiating this content allows educators to present a wide range of examples or scenarios as a means to teaching towards a larger concept. When differentiating content, every group takes the same steps to complete the same final product — but they begin with different content information. For example: 

• English: the whole class studies characterization; students break into small groups to read different books or short stories and share the unique perspectives of each text with the class. 
• History: the whole class studies the French Revolution; in small groups, students explore other revolutions — Cuban, Russian, Chinese, etc. — and come together to gain insight into what makes a revolution successful.
• Math: the whole class is engaged with formulas; students in small groups put formulas to use using real-world scenarios, in order to deeply examine the concept and connect to practical examples. 
• Science: the whole class studies food chains; in small groups, students engage in an in-depth exploration of various habitats and present their findings to classmates.

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Product
Sometimes, it is in students’ best interests to focus on the exact same content, particularly when content strands are essential to students’ understanding of a discipline, or are represented on mandated assessments. In these cases, we can keep the content the same, but invite students to represent their learning in different ways.

By giving students choice in how they demonstrate their learning, we help them to tap into their natural creativity, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation. When differentiating products, it’s important to develop a scoring guide that focuses on the key content concepts that need to be represented, and to align each product outcome with those expectations. For example, you might present your students with three project options: a three-page essay, a PowerPoint presentation consisting of 10 slides, or a three-minute video. Each project can be evaluated based on the same content information and should demonstrate the same application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, or collaboration skills.

Process
When preparing students for rigorous, high-stakes assessments, you may not have the freedom to pick and choose the content or the final product. In these cases, you can look at opportunities for differentiating students’ processes.

Consider differentiating through process by providing various supports for students. Perhaps some students receive a glossary of key terms & definitions, while others receive a word bank, and others receive no vocabulary assistance at all (because they don’t need this additional support to make sense of the content).

You can also use student notes to support process differentiation — consider inviting some students to make use of outlines, while offering two-column note taking, webs, and bullet points to others. Whether they’re working individually or in small groups, giving students a choice of how to engage in their learning process can feel highly personalized, which will enable them to walk with their best foot forward. 

Making the most of online learning

When working in the world of remote teaching or blended learning, our typical teaching strategies may seem difficult to translate, which leads to defaulting to whole-class instruction that does not leverage student choice or differentiate based on student needs. But the online space offers just as many — if not more — opportunities to differentiate the task. 

High-Tech
Many educators working in communities with on-demand access to technology are able to differentiate a task through content, process, or product using their online platform. Whether you’re using Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, or your own website, you can offer options at key points along the learning journey. In fact, it’s even easier to provide task options through distance learning, since there are no printing requirements! Within each lesson, we can create opportunities that maximize student choice. In high-tech spaces, we can post multiple assignments, graphic organizers, or focus topics and invite students to choose which they’d prefer to work with. Students can even work across class periods and be grouped with students who have shared interests, levels, or thinking processes. Students can also meet virtually through video conferencing, create small group videos, or share their process notes through pictures, video reflections, and digital artifacts. 

Low-Tech
Some students have access to technology, but experience limitations due to time on their device, internet access, or support with using advanced features of applications. In these situations, the differentiation of content, process, or product should be made clear to students in their assignment. They may benefit from having their assignment personalized for them, and they may need flexibility if they are able to mix online and offline work. This can mean posting the task so it can be downloaded for later use (rather than just existing on a website), and creating materials that students can complete using their computer, but that don’t require internet access.

No-Tech
Students in the “no-tech” access category likely have less than one hour per day to access the internet, and may be logging on from a phone or tablet that isn’t connected to a printer or scanner for managing hard copy printouts. 

Teachers can offer entry points for these students by creating custom materials using picture models or short videos that explain what and how to complete a task with the materials they have on hand. Keep in mind that no-tech assignments can ask students to write out their responses by hand and submit assignments using photos. These assignments might also include packets of strategies or resources that can be picked up at school (and for convenience, can be picked up/dropped off during the same hours as food distribution), phone calls or text messages to students, or the option to send/receive materials by mail. 

​Differentiating tasks is one way we can increase student interest. Students are drawn to tasks that are personally relevant and challenging — creating multiple pathways for students to approach their learning (process), demonstrate their learning (product), or customize their learning (content), will allow them to deepen their understanding and increase their personal and academic engagement. 

​TAGS: DIFFERENTIATION, REMOTE LEARNING, RESOURCES, ROBERTA LENGER KANG