I worked at a school a few years ago that was in the midst of de-tracking its math classes. One of the side effects of that move is that an edu-buzzword became a required practice. One of my super-veteran, super-wise colleagues pointed out that we would need a renewed emphasis on differentiated instruction.
Differentiation/student choice was definitely a “flavor of the month” in the years leading up to Covidtide. Hell, you could build a whole professional development day around it. And as schools gradually return to pseudo-normalcy, folks are starting to pick up where they left off, figuring out which Before Times best practices we can start to re-integrate into our classrooms.
My first exposure to differentiation was maybe 12-15 years ago when I and several of my teacher friends, along with our admin team attended a workshop by Carolyn Coil.
Her theories made perfect sense but I’ll admit it was a little overwhelming. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to differentiate for all the student needs in my classroom. It eventually became somewhat clearer when I attended another workshop in Indianapolis a couple years later. One of the breakout sessions was led by a pair of teachers who combined their two classes and used a flexible grouping technique they referred to as “Island-Peninsula-Land“.
Based on a quick formative assessment (walking around and peeking over shoulders, even), the teacher quickly sorts his students into three groups:
The Island group is completely self-sufficient. These are the “just give me the assignment so I can get it over with” students. They don’t need my help, so they can go off and do their thing.
The Peninsula group can mostly do the work, but might need a boost from time to time. They can send an envoy to the Island group to ask for help with a specific question.
The Land group does not know how or where to start. They need the most help, so I sit with that group for the session.
Yes, I just quoted myself. Sorry.
They made it crystal-clear what “differentiation” meant and I implemented their techniques in my math class, with very positive results.
At about the same time my school and district went all-in on the Rigor & Relevance Framework. We were encouraged to build lessons targeted towards Bill Daggett’s Adaptation quadrant – students solving complex, real-world problems. Which sounds like an ideal goal. Teachers from my district met to collaborate and develop Gold Seal Lessons. And then within a year we dropped it like a bad habit.
But it made a comeback with a couple of teachers in my building (shoutout to Mama C & Kate!) who led the way with differentiation by using a tic-tac-toe board for student choice in their history classes.
Fast-forward a few years and a change of school & district, and back, and “differentiation” is still a buzzword. Part of the evaluation rubric in fact. Island-Peninsula-Land kind of extinguished itself a few years ago when I didn’t have an “Island” group in my classes. My classroom doesn’t look very “differentiated” to an outsider these days.
But our geometry team has been offering quiz re-takes (up to three attempts) all year, as well as building in catch-up days (known as “Amnesty Day” in my classroom) and as part of the agenda for the day I’ve been writing an extra credit opportunity. High school kids gravitate to extra credit like grizzly bears to salmon, and hey, why not use that to my advantage?
First quarter I had my students determine the volume of the largest cylinder that would fit inside my classroom. Next thing you know there are kids up and out of their seats, measuring and calculating and asking questions. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t feel like “extra” credit to me. Just a different way of showing what they know. Thus, “differentiation”.
But I did take things a bit farther for the Amnesty Day scheduled for last week but pushed back by a pair of snow days that created a five-day weekend. Stealing an idea that’s been floating around in my circles for a while, I made a playlist of extra credit options. Here’s the options:
- “The Blind Men and the Quadrilateral” -short story writing in the style of “The Blind men And The Elephant” fable
- Tulsa Black Wall Street Massacre reflection – borrowed from our Black Student Union faculty sponsor
- Quadrilaterals social media profile – inspired by this blog post, using fake SM profiles gleaned from Matt Miller and others
- Design a zipline – a snippet of the Barbie Zipline activity, since we used Phythagorean Theorem when working with rhombi and squares
Students can attempt one, two, three, all four, or zero of the options during classtime. I know, that’s potentially a lot of extra credit points. Some might even say “unfair”. I’ll take a moment to recall the words of a very wise district-level administrator who once asked a math department meeting, “Why do you want to make it harder for kids to get a credit in your class?”
- Is there a risk that students who completely blew off the classwork & quizzes up to now can turn their grade around in a day? Sure.
- Will some of those students try to cheat their way through the playlist assignments? Duh. (Have you met high school kids?).
- Will some kids who already have a 100% average take the day off because they don’t need the points? Uh-huh.
- Will some of the kids who have an A+ do all four and try to break Power School with like a 125% average for the nine-weeks? I’m kind of counting on it. (Again, have you met high school kids?)
- Am I supposed to be mad when kids want to do more math in my class? That question answers itself.
But what I’m also counting on is some kids who aren’t engaged with our day-to-day activities will be drawn to at least one of the options because it suits their personality and skills and interests and show me they kind of get what we’ve been talking about in class and it feels a little bit like isn’t that what a grade is for?
Wait. Am I differentiating differentiation?
Also, I’m apparently now taking teaching cues from Billy Donovan:
If my kids are gonna work to try to get better, I’m here for it.
Tweaking For No Reason 