Response to Units in Differentiation in Practice, 9-12

I selected the historical fiction unit (1) and the Macbeth unit (2).

I connected with these two units because they both address things that I attempted to do in my student teaching. I used a personal interview of a family member to connect with a compare and contrast essay and I taught Macbeth.

Macbeth

The first thing that I noticed is that both of these units, when there are two learning goals or lessons within a day have this section clearly broken off. This was a challenge I faced when working with Macbeth because I wasn’t sure how to help the students appreciate all that goes into Shakespeare. By having them perform the second half of the play as a class, I actually limited their creativity by not scaffolding performance skills enough. In short, my one size fits all approach did support student growth.

I was also deeply interested in the way that this unit primed the pump, by addressing some of the themes of the play within the students own lives. How I attempted the same thing was by introducing the material first, then having the students seek connections to their own lives. I see now that this limits their exploration of the topic, as they are now looking for a “right” answer, where there isn’t one. The model unit allows them to have the setup without having to immediately connect it to Macbeth.

The other area with a lot of self-selected (the best kind) differentiation was the writing assignments which spoke writing of a specific type (like the personals ads) to a specific audience. This allowed the students to explore writing in an entertaining way and have something to share.

I would integrate this with a blogging exercise, in my version (I did something like this, translating Shakespeare to a new setting and rewriting a scene) I did this and found it to really support the “publishing” section of the writing process.

Another aspect that really spoke to me was how much the teacher shared their own writing, visions and experiences. This interests me. On one hand, it provides a model, on the other, it provides a model. Which is an upside/downside kind of thing. It also builds trust, which is important to this lesson, especially considering how obvious the differentiation is in this set up.

Speaking to that, I liked the plot development being placed in the hands of the struggling readers. This gives them a very important role to play that is very accessible. This makes me ask the question, how many “simple” concepts can I farm out to students? This is an easy, helpful form of differentiation that can work with all ability levels.

Historical Fiction:

When I attempted to use interviews as a portion of a writing assignment, it flopped horribly. The assignment was to compare a relative’s view/experiences with war to the depiction of war in The Things They Carried. I shouldn’t say that it flopped, exactly, I just think that there was a lot more stress about the assignment then there needed to be.

The big difference between these lessons was having the interview stand on its own as a step, to be shared with the class. Then, the interview is summarized or otherwise used to inform another piece of writing. I like how this decreases the tension associated with trying a new kind of writing.

On the differentiation front, this is another place where student choice helps differentiate in the classroom.

What I see with both of these examples is how often there are different products that can be produced, a number of ways of meeting the goal. The assignments aren’t especially different, but it makes it so that everything is more interesting to everyone. I would rather read five compare/contrast as opposed to thirty, which means I’ll be giving better feedback.