After reading “Teaching English Language Arts in a ‘Flat’ World” by Jim Burke, the article for the Discussion Circle in seminar class, my awarness of the different skills a literate person needs in a “flat” world dramatically increased. In today’s world, teachers need to train students to use a variety of literacy skills. Some of the skills mentioned in the article are synthesis and evaluation, which also happen to be higher levels of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy. (It’s funny how everything in education sort of connects, isn’t it?)
So, my question is, how can I effectively differentiate instruction in my lesson planning in order to activate higher level thinking skills and teach students the various literacy skills they will need?
After reflecting on the article and thinking about the needs of my current and future students, I created a list to differentiate instruction. Feel free to use it or offer suggestions to make it even better.
1. Get to know my students – It sounds simple, but I have decided to create a detailed survey and distribute it to my students at the beginning of the school year. It will help me better understand their needs, instructional preferences, and motivations. For example, in addition to asking students about their likes and dislikes, I can survey students about their previous English classes, their favorite activities in the classroom, and their favorite types of projects, in order to help me determine the best way to differentiate instruction.
2. Student-led discussions – In order to create an authentic and differentiated discussion, I decided to allow my students establish their own rules for discussion, write their own discussion questions, and decide what the flow of discussion should look like. This will allow students to use their unique literacy skills to select what is important in a text.
3. Choice in assignments – Allowing students to choose what types of assignments they submit will also differentiate instruction in my classroom. With each unit, I will create approximately 10 different assignments that require the same amount of work and use different skills. I will allow students to students to select which of the 5 assignments they want to complete. Whichever 5 assignments they do not select, they must do for the next unit, which will help them develop all types of literacy skills over time. Assignments will be anything from character analysis to creative writing.
4. Choice in projects – Similar to number 3, I will allow students to have a choice in their projects. Depending on the unit, I may allow students to choose a novel over which they will complete an outside reading project, or select how they present researched material to their classmates. Students will also be asked to reflect on what style of learning they prefer.
5. Centers – Although it may sound elementary, I believe centers can have their place in the secondary classroom. During any given unit, I will have students complete several different mini-assignments that require them to work with the text in different ways. This will allow students to manipulate the text in their preferred way, but also experiment with new ways.
References
Burke, J. Teaching English language arts in a flat world. In Beers, K., Probst, R.E., & Rief, L. Eds. (2007) Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice (pp. 43-60). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
