Young learner and teens expert Chris Roland talks to us about giving differentiated support to students. We discuss which students we are trying to help when we differentiate, which students teachers tend to forget about when they plan and how to differentiate without needing to spend twice as long preparing materials as usual.
Differentiated Support - Transcription
Ross Thorburn: Hi everyone. Welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." I'm Ross Thorburn.
This week we are going to take about differentiation. To help us with that, we have Chris Roland.
Chris is a young learner teacher. He's based in Spain. He's also a tutor on the Trinity Diploma in TESOL course. He's also an author. He has got a couple of books out about teaching young learners, and he's also published a few articles about differentiation in the classroom.
I always found as a teacher trainer, that one of the things that teachers have one of the hardest times with is just having students of different levels in the same class. So if that's a challenge that you have wherever you work, then listen on. Chris has got lots of interesting and practical ideas. Enjoy the interview.
Ross: Hi, Chris. To start off with, what is differentiation? Which students are we aiming to help when we differentiate?
Chris Roland: We've got the classic Carol Anne Tomlinson definition. We're helping the weaker students, we're helping the stronger students, and everybody in between get to a common goal.
In a nutshell, everybody, and it is sometimes quite easy to overlook the middle ground because our attention is often drawn to the people who are struggling and the people who have completed a task easily. Not necessarily most quickly, but easily, and our attention is, in terms of behavior, easily drawn to the students who are not doing what we want, to the students that are doing exactly what we want.
Against this middle ground which we often just ignore. Also, when we talk about differentiation. I think people immediately hear it and sort of inwardly cringe and think, "Oh no! Is that talking about preparing seven different worksheets of all slightly different capabilities?"
I like to reduce differentiation down to helping the kids who are stuck get unstuck, and pushing anyone who finds the material too easy, pushing them so that they learn something as well. You can do those things in your lesson with very little preparation. Just maybe a little bit of thought that you don't have to produce your seven different worksheets.
Ross: You mention there on‑the‑spot differentiation. Can you tell us a bit more about that kind of differentiation that doesn't involve making seven versions of the same worksheet?
Chris: I wrote an article with Daniel Barber. In fact, we wrote a couple for "Modern English Teacher" a few years back, and we came up with two ideas. One was structured differentiation, which would be where we're planning in different levels of an activity.
The other one, we called it differentiated support, and that, basically, is the differentiation I do now for an activity, but you can also plan for it. You're planning exercises. What am I going to do for the people that don't get it?
So many times in a lesson when I'm observing, I'll see a student say, "Teacher, I don't understand," and the teacher will just repeat the explanation they've previously given. In that sort of situation, I think the best thing we can do is actually just shut up and ask the student why don't you get it? Then for a few seconds, enter into that student's world.
We'll probably realize that they're coming at it from a place where something that they've learned previously is blocking what we're explaining. If we don't stop and listen and let them explain, then we can't enter into that world.
The problem is, as a profession ‑‑ I say this being somebody who's ranting into a microphone ‑‑ teacher's can't shut up. It seems like when you give the student talking time in a class, especially to explain something, it seems like forever. Especially because, on an event management level, everybody else has to be quiet and suppressing themselves in order for that student to explain themselves.
So, on the spot differentiation, and we can do that for the advanced learners. The class starts an exercise, and we see that two students are completing an exercise quickly, but more importantly, easily, and it's not stretching them.
One of my examples that I use regularly is a vocabulary exercise where they have to match pictures from [inaudible 4:27] picture to a list of words. If we've got students who can do that and they complete that very easily, we don't have to wait until they've done it in order to complete the task.
Say, "You two guys, I know you know these words already, so have a quick look. Then I want you to close your books, and I want one of you to do a spelling dictation to the other, from those words."
Immediately we've moved it from just recognizing to being able to spell the words, or work your way down the words and mark up the stress on each word if it isn't already marked in the book. We're moving from just recognizing the words to knowing how they'll sound.
Or if the others are still matching the words together, "You two guys, I want you to write five questions including five of those words." Then they can do something with those questions at a later point. We don't have to wait until everybody is finished to give people extra challenge to push them, to give them something that will take their learning forward.
Ross: That was pushing the stronger students further. Do you want to tell us about helping the students who are maybe finding the material the hardest?
Chris: Yeah, if they run a speaking test, for example, and they're going to be asking each other questions from the book, if you've got...At the end of each double‑page spread, you'll often have two, three, four questions, or those questions might appear as the lead‑in.
Teachers complain to students, "You're not speaking in English," but if they don't actually have the language to formulate the answer, then it's very difficult for them to do so.
If we know some students are going to struggle, we could provide four or five, I call them sentence stems, just the start of how to answer the question, or we could get them to practice writing the answers. Then we correct them.
Finally, when they've got the full answers correct, we say, "Now you're going to ask the questions as they appear in the book. You're going to read your answers," and so you've layered up that speaking activity for them, but we've put them in a place where they can take part in the dialogue successfully.
Last time I was doing passive, I was going to do passive voice, it came up in our curriculum, and I knew that my students didn't know the vocabulary for the exercises we were going to be doing. This was a low‑level class. It was at variance with the level of material I was giving them.
It was all about inventions and where rice is grown. Where various products and different types of clothes are worn. I thought they're not going to get this. They're not going to get this because they don't have the vocabulary.
It is like layers, as you say. I thought OK, and I started stripping it away like the layers of an onion. First they need the vocab. Then they don't know the verbs. They don't know all those words, and they definitely don't know them in the past participles.
Then I looked at the different verbs in the exercise, so we started the lesson playing about with the verbs, all the verbs that were going to come up later. Then we moved to actually making the passive sentences.
It is stripping away, looking at the end task and asking ourselves, "What would a student need in order to be able to do this task?" And ordering those skills in order of complexity.
Some of them are not going to know the verbs. Some of them are not going to know the basic vocabulary, and then some of them are not going to know any of it. For those students who don't know any of it, I'm just going to give them sentences to read that are actually in the passive, and I'll explain what they mean, and they can familiarize themselves.
With students who don't know the words, but they might be able to cope with the rest, you know, some of the more complicated vocabulary, we'll teach them the vocabulary and cover that, and then move forward with them.
Ross: Chris, I know that you're also a teacher on the Trinity Diploma in TESOL. Something I find sometimes happens on that course is that teachers will write a different aim for either every student in the class or for groups of different students in the class.
Do you think that's an effective way of planning? Or do you think that's introducing too much complexity into the process?
Chris: The idea of having different aims for different students is very sweet, but I can imagine how it would translate into a cognitive nightmare for a diploma or a delta candidate. Because you start that lesson, that observed or evaluated lesson, for instance, you're only at 90 percent of yourself anyway because 10 percent is being diverted away, to watching yourself through the observer's eyes.
You say something, and you think, "Oh no, how will that look?" Immediately, you're operating 90 percent efficiency to start with. Then we add in the nerves, and the unfamiliarity, and the fact that you've done a lesson plan probably for the tutor, but you've also got a lesson plan for yourself, which I recommend not doing actually.
You're oscillating between the two, but then you remember you have to do some monitoring, and you've probably not made your learners aware of their progress, or some of the many things that need to be ticked on the boxes. Having different aims for different students, that's great in your day‑to‑day teaching, but in an observation situation that could be adding to the stress.
There is a counter‑argument that you should risk. You should try and teach as you would teach, and the observation becomes second. But, on a diploma or a delta, to go with your conviction to do something regardless of the evaluation criteria would probably be...I'm not sure that would be advisable.
In terms of aims, I would say one aim for the class, but getting there in different degrees.
An example that I often use is if our aim for the class is to have students using regular verbs in past simple to talk about last weekend, then some of the students, they'll get there. Some of the students will be able to go beyond and use irregular verbs in the past about their weekend.
Then some students won't get there at all because they're lacking the basic vocabulary, so we can help them. We can give them the few verbs; five verbs in the past simple, and say, "Can you make sentences about these to talk about last week? Try putting these in a sentence."
By the end of the lesson, they've also used the past simple of regular verbs to talk about the past. To a lesser degree, but the way was always open for them to go further.
If you've got that one aim, you can travel at different degrees, varying degrees. Remember we've got different aims for different students. We're sort of closing the door, maybe.
Ross: I think of the most common practices I've seen for teachers trying to differentiate is pairing stronger students with weaker students. Can you tell us a bit about that?
It feels almost like a default way of teachers differentiating. What do you think some of the disadvantages and advantages of pairing say, strong students with weak students?
Chris: Doing that, I think, is a valid differentiation measure, but often teachers are doing it without really knowing why they're doing it. What pairing weak and strong students does is it makes life easy for the teacher because the strong students will help do some of the teacher's job, and it homogenizes the class.
Yes, you can set up a situation where a weaker student is learning from a stronger student, but when you do that, it's much more difficult to do it in a way where the stronger student also benefits. It can be done. I'll try and give you an example.
Let's say we have a weaker student and two stronger students in a three, and we've got conversation questions, and we want them all to practice.
What we can do is we can give the weaker student the stop‑watch or the timer. "You are the examiner and you're going to ask Stronger Student A the questions. You're going to stop them when they've been speaking for a minute on each question."
What they're doing is they're benefiting because they are getting to listen to the stronger student's answers, and they're getting to familiarize themselves with the questions and actually figure out what the questions mean because they're hearing the stronger students' answers.
Stronger Student B can be the marker. They can be listening and then writing down any words that they think that the other stronger student gets wrong, and then they feed back.
Then we reverse the roles, so we have the weaker student asking Stronger Student B. Stronger Student A is the examiner, so again the weaker student is getting to hear the answers. At this point, they've not done any speaking themselves apart from reading the questions, but they're getting practice reading the questions.
Finally, then we get one of the stronger students to question, the weaker student gets to answer. The other stronger student, they're not writing down the errors, they're acting as a helper so they're helping the weaker student.
Within that dynamic, it's quite a complex one, but you've actually got stronger students benefiting by having the weaker student working with them. The weaker student is fulfilling a useful role, but you've also got the weaker student benefiting from the examples and the guidance.
If you compare that to just putting a weaker student and a strong student together to do an exercise, you've probably just got the stronger student done quickly and showing the answers to the weaker students, who just writes down a,b,a,b,b,b,a,b,c.
We need to know what the rationale is, and it's a complicated thing, having mixed groupings but it can work.
Ross: One more time, everyone. That was Chris Roland. If you're interested in finding out more about Chris, check out his book, "Understanding Teenagers in the ELT Classroom."
Thanks for listening. If you're interested in listening to more podcasts, check out our website www.tefltraininginstitute.com.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.