MIXED-ABILITY AND DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING

The term “mixed-ability classroom” refers to a group of students Who are different in terms of levels of…

• Attention
• Interest
• Motivation
• Learning styles
• Types of intelligences 
• Physiological needs 
• Psychological needs 
• Speed
• Maturity - not every 8 year old is the same
• World knowledge
• Knowledge of and about English 

Teachers can differentiate at least four classroom elements based on student readiness, interest, or learning profile: 

1. CONTENT - what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information.
2. PROCESS - activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or master the content.
3. PRODUCTS - culminating projects that ask students to rehearse, apply and extend what they have learnt in a unit.
4. LEARNING ENVIRONMENT - the way the classroom works and feels.

HOW CAN MIXED-ABILITY BE TACKLED?

PROCESS

• Using tiered activities through which all learners work with the same important understandings and skills, but proceed with different levels of support, challenge, or complexity.
• Providing interest centres that encourage students to explore subsets of the class topic of particular interest to them.
• Developing personal agendas (task lists written by the teacher and containing both in-common work for the whole class and work that addresses individual needs of learners) to be completed either during specified agenda time or as students complete other work early.
• Offering manipulative or other hands-on supports for students who need them.
• Varying the length of time a student may take to complete a task in order to provide additional support for a struggling learner or to encourage an advanced learner to pursue a topic in greater depth.

PRODUCT

• Giving students options of how to express required learning (ex. Create a puppet show, write a letter, or develop a mural with labels);
• Using rubrics that match and extend students’ varied skills levels.
• Allowing students to work alone or in small groups on their products.
• Encouraging students to create their own product assignments as long as the assignments contain required elements.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

• Making sure there are places in the room to work quietly and without distraction, as well as places that invite student collaboration.
• Providing materials that reflect a variety of cultures and home settings
• Setting out clear guidelines for independent work that matches individual needs.
• Developing routines that allow students to get help when teachers are busy with other students and cannot help them immediately.
• Helping students understand that some learners need to move around to learn, while others do better sitting quietly.

AREAS OF ACTIVITY

PAIR AND GROUP WORK - PROJECT WORK - HOMEWORK

Differentiated Instruction Strategies: 

TIERED ASSIGNMENTS

• Many teachers use differentiated instruction strategies as a way to reach all learners and accommodate each student’s learning style. One very helpful tactic to employ differentiated instruction is called tiered assignments, a technique often used within flexible groups.
• Much like flexible grouping and differentiated learning, tiered assignments do not lock students into ability boxes. Instead, particular student clusters are assigned specific tasks within each group according to their readiness and comprehension without making them feel completely compartmentalised away from peers at different achievement levels.
• There are six main ways to structure tiered assignments: Challenge level, complexity, outcome, process, product, or resources. It is the teacher’s job, based upon the specific learning tasks they’re focused on, to determine the best approach. 

Challenge Level

• Tiering can be based on challenge level where student groups will tackle different assignments altogether. Teachers can use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guide to help them develop tasks of structure, or questions at various levels. 
• For example:
• Group 1: Students who need content reinforcement or practice will complete one activity that helps build understanding.
• Group 2: Students who have a firm understanding will complete another activity that extends what they already know.

Complexity

• When assignments are tiered by complexity the needs of students who are at different levels are addressed using the same assignment.
• The trick here is to vary the focus of the assignment based upon whether each group is ready for more advanced work or simply trying to wrap their head around the concept for the first time.
• For example, students can create a poster on a specific issue (recycling and environmental care, for instance) but one group will focus on a singular perspective, while the other will consider several points of view and present an argument for or against each angle.

Outcome

• Tiering assignments by differentiated outcome is vaguely similar to complexity - all of your students will use the same materials, but depending on their readiness levels, will actually have a different outcome.
• It may sound strange at first, but this strategy is quite beneficial to help advanced students work on more progressive applications of their learning.

Process and product

Process

• This differentiated instruction strategy is exactly what it sounds like - student groups will use different processes to achieve similar outcomes based upon readiness.

Product

• Tiered assignments can also be differentiated based on product. 
• Teachers can use different areas of work to form groups that will have particular skills. For example, one group would be bodily/kinesthetic and their task is to create and act out a skit. Another group would be visual/spatial and their task would be to illustrate.

Resources

• Tiering resources means that you are matching project materials to student groups based on readiness or instructional need.
• One flexible group may use a magazine while another may use a traditional textbook.
• As a tip, you should assign resources based on knowledge and readiness, but also consider the group’s reading level and comprehension.

How to Make Tiering Invisible to Students

• Also, it’s important to make each tiered assignment equally interesting, engaging, and fair in terms of student expectations. The more flexible groups and materials you use, the more students will accept that this is the norm.

• Tiering assignments is a fair way to differentiate learning. It allows teachers to meet the needs of all students while using varying levels of tasks. It’s a concept that can be infused into homework assignments, small groups, or even learning centres. If done properly, it can be a very effective method to differentiate learning because it challenges all students. 

Let’s see a real example of a tiered assignment activity…

FINISH THE CARTOON

This activity is designed for 1st Grade of Primary. The students have an A1 English level. The main differences between them are in terms of reading and writing: some of them have a better understanding of simple written phrases and can produce some writing, and others still struggle with reading.

The main aim of the activity is developing the sense of narrative sequence (sequential structure of a story) through reading and writing. GROUP 1 is the group that’s still working on reading comprehension, while GROUP 2 has a fair understanding of simple sentences and can write.

• We would like to do a pre-task to know their levels, interests, but we don’t know how. 

Tasks:

• GROUP 1: the students are presented with a cartoon, but the pictures are in random order. They have to order the events chronologically to make the story make sense.

• GROUP 2: the students are presented with the same cartoon. The first picture has a brief description of it, but the rest do not. They are also provided with a series of stickers that have other descriptions, and they have to choose the one they like for each of the remaining drawings.

• GROUP 3: the students are given the same cartoon. The first picture is the same, with the description. The others have blanks to fill and a connector to begin the sentence. The students have to fill the blanks with their own sentences.

Regarding the elements we are differentiating…

• CONTENT: group 1 is more focused on the sequence, group 2 is balanced between reinforcement of reading comprehension and sequence, while group 3 works on sequence through writing.
• PROCESS: group 1 should use strategies to uncover order clues, group 2 should use decoding, comprehension and matching strategies, while group 3 should evoke creativity and writing strategies.
• COMPLEXITY: this task is tiered by complexity too, since they’ll be using a similar assignment and material but with different focuses. The outcomes are the same for the students in group 1, but not on the others, because students in group 2 don’t have to choose a strict set of stickers, and group 3 will come up with their own ideas.

Assessment: three rubrics will be created, once for each group, that in general terms will contain…

• GROUP 1 will be assessed based on whether they ordered the pictures correctly or not.
• GROUP 2 will be assessed according to whether they placed the correct sticker in its cartoon (they shouldn’t put a sticker that has “in the end” in the third one, for example) among the options. It will also be checked whether someone chooses the itinerary of stickers that rhyme.
• GROUP 3 will be assessed according to the writing strategies that they choose, whether their vocabulary is correct according to the moment of the story, the scenarios they come up with,…

REFLECTION

There is a quote by Albert Einstein that reads: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid". While science has proven that actually not everyone can be defined as "intelligent", it is true that everyone has potentialities and have more capacity to develop certain areas over others (not to be confused with multiple intelligences, which have been proven to not be real). 

I believe school should focus on a series of essential skills to develop like mathematic logic, linguistic abilities, general knowledge, etc. But it should certainly get rid of its "class system" that puts certain students above others when it comes to their results. Everyone should have grades, but we should also take into account their capacities. Maybe a 7 for a student who often struggles took more work than a 10 for a more intelligent child, and the latter should not be disregarded either, but the difference behind both processes should be noted.

I found the suggestions in this lesson helpful to build units in mixed ability classes. However, I still would like to learn more about the logistics behind the implementation of differentiated learning in a class, since I think if not done correctly, it can undermine the confidence of students who are placed in the "lowest" level.