Heather Cross – 5612137 – 608B Assessment 3 Part B

This essay will be looking at a series of lesson plans that have been differentiated for a group of
learners from a previous practicum placement. Differentiation is a necessary part of lesson
planning to help ensure that all students have their learning needs met, rather than a blanket
lesson to cover all students. Differentiated changes do not need to be dramatic, nor do they
need to take a large amount of teacher time away from other students. The purpose of
differentiated lesson plans is to help students with various needs from being challenged,
extended or built up. The students that I chose to focus on for these set of lesson plans are
students that I feel would greatly benefit from being extended or challenged further. My group
of students all are sitting on the higher end of the curriculum level for their age range, and all
do very well in their school work. The reason I chose to focus on them is while watching them
on practicum, I noticed that they all finished their work earlier than the rest of the class, and
then spent the remaining time milling around, or completely distracted as they had nothing to
do. This in turn lead to other students becoming distracted by them, who still had work to do. I
feel that these students would benefit greatly from more challenges with their work, or even
just extensions of the work that they are currently doing. This will help them to stay more
engaged with their work for the entire learning time and will also help them with pushing
themselves a bit further out of their “good work” comfort zone.

The first differentiated learning experience I focused on was ‘content’. This can be seen in the
4th lesson plan of the series. The reason for this change is that these students bore quite easily
as they tend to get through their work quicker than the rest of the class, or just feel they’ve
already done this specific activity too often and disengage. By recognizing that these students
had already done this specific poem type previously and that they could do it but probably end
up disengaged and bored, I was able to modify the content of the lesson plan to give them
something that would give them a sense of agency over their learning to help bring them back
to engage with their learning. Tomlinson (2014) tells us that “teachers’ need to modify their
teaching so that it allows children to learn and be engaged, it must be “relevant to students,
personal, familiar, and connected to the world they know” (p.52). By giving the students an
opportunity to extend themselves, rather than just simmer with what they already know or can
do it, it gives them the opportunity to stretch their current abilities and knowledge to
Heather Cross – 5612137 – 608B Assessment 3 Part B

something that is more personalized to them. Something to be mindful with this type of change
is making sure that the students are aware that occasions like this are a privilege, and to
monitor them to ensure that they are utilizing their learning time appropriately.

The second differentiated learning experience that I focused on was that of ‘process’. This can
be seen in the 1st lesson plan of the series. The process has been differentiated from each of
the students completing their own haiku in their writing books within inside the classroom, to
going outside the classroom to work in pairs and all contribute their haiku to a page in a
modelling book. This differentiation will help my learners by giving them proper context to their
work and hopefully will give them the scope to provide more depth to their work instead of
leaving it at just a surface-level. I feel this process change would be valuable to my students. It
wasn’t raining, just a bit cold outside so by being out there experiencing that in real-time would
allow for their poems to have a far more authentic feel to them. Tomlinson (2014) tells us that
students find the details of a subject more memorable and important to them when the subject
or topic is interesting to them. It needs to be something that affects them personally, that they
find dynamic and intriguing. By bringing the students to the subject matter, it becomes
personal to them. Keeping them inside and asking them how it feels outside is not going to
allow the students to have a real understanding of the situation and therefore will not allow
them to gain a valuable insight and knowledge of it. This differentiation helps this lesson move
from a static, everyday lesson and allows so many more opportunities for the students.
Tomlinson (2014) also explains that all activities require students to be able to not only apply
but transfer previous knowledge to new situations. By only having the students inside the
classroom, it does not give them the same ability to then apply the knowledge to new
situations. The process of creating a collection of poems instead of just individualized poems
also encourages students to take time, effort and pride into the work that they produce. One of
the students within this group originally wrote 14 different haiku poems, but they were all very
repetitive in their content, and showed that the student had been more concerned with the
quantity of poems that they had created rather than the quality of their work – something that
I feel this process change would help to rectify.
Heather Cross – 5612137 – 608B Assessment 3 Part B

The third differentiated experience focuses on ‘product’. This can be seen in the 3rd lesson of
the series. Something else that I noticed with this group of students is that they all like to show
off their work, and enjoy performing, but don’t have the opportunity to very often. I want to be
able to give them that opportunity to present the work that they have done in a new way, in
this instance by video recording their performance of their piece of word. Video recording their
work allows for them to look back at their work from a different perspective – it’s not just
another piece of writing in their book – which really helps to bring it to life. Showing the videos
to the other students can help them with seeing just a range of creativity and how people can
approach the same task from different viewpoints. The following quote from Tomlinson (2014)
speaks to diversity, “diversity is normal and valuable. Every life is different from every other
one, and every life is of immense worth” (pg. 26). I feel that this change in product really
exemplifies this diversity, by allowing the students to present their work in whatever form they
feel best suits it (whether it be a rap, a song, or just spoken out loud). I feel that students must
be given the opportunity to try something new, regardless or whether it works out the way
they intended or not. It’s instead the act of trying something new that is the most valuable part
of this, something that Strickland (2007) tells us is so invaluable for a differentiated classroom,
“thus, the differentiated classroom must also be a place where students feel that they can take
chances, try new things, learn from their mistakes, and celebrate honest attempts, whether or
not they end in success” (pg. 12). The videos can be added to sharing hubs like Seesaw that will
then also allow for parents to view, or even during something like school assembly.

The fourth differentiated learning experience focuses on the ‘learning environment/affect’. This
can be seen in the 2nd lesson plan in the series. This group of students sometimes feel like they
do a lot of individual work that doesn’t then get shared very often which can be quite
discouraging for them. Instead of having the students work individually on their poems, the
students instead would be going into groups with other students. This gives the opportunity for
not only flexible grouping but also for a chance for these students to learn to work co-
operatively with other people, making them mindful of being respectful of other people’s
opinions and ideas, as Strickland (2007) tells us, “It is imperative that each student feels equally
valued and fairly treated” (pg. 11). Coming back and sharing their work as a class allows the
Heather Cross – 5612137 – 608B Assessment 3 Part B

students a chance to give feedback/feedforward in a safe environment without judgement. As

the groups are mixed, the range of thoughts about each piece is going to be varied and provide
opportunity for each student to feel their work is valued, something that Tomlinson (2014)
stresses as being important for a differentiated classroom as it “actively supports the growth of
its members” (pg. 27).

The final differentiated learning experience focuses on ‘assessment’. This can also be seen in
the 3rd lesson plan of the series. A lot of the time these students get teacher-feedback as their
assessment. What I experienced was that these students did not very often get the chance to
self-assess their work, which I feel is a valuable tool to improving work. The students being at
the higher end of their curriculum levels often means that their work is automatically accepted
as being a higher level by the teacher, but I feel that a self-assessment gives them the chance to
honestly look at the quality of work that they created and whether it is something that they are
truly proud of (something that has been addressed in first differentiated learning experience).
The students will be given an exemplar of a performance so they can then understand what
success in this type of work looks like, which is something that Davies & Hill (2009) tell us will
give the students a better chance of being successful themselves. We want these students to
extend themselves and help guide them towards producing work that they will feel proud of –
giving them the chance to self-assess I feel will help with that goal.

Overall, I feel that the differential changes that I have made to this series of lesson plans will
greatly benefit my group of students. The changes have been made with them in mind, play to
their strengths but also helps them to push themselves further. These changes will not be
beneficial for every student within my classroom, which is why it is so important for the
differentiated classroom to be so flexible and provide students with options that suit them and
their learning. This understanding of differentiated learning will be incredibly beneficial for my
future classrooms.
Heather Cross – 5612137 – 608B Assessment 3 Part B

Bibliography

Davies, A. & Hill, M. (2009). Building the foundation for classroom assessment. In Davies, A. &
Hill, M. (Ed.), Making classroom assessment work (pp. 15-25). NZCER Press.

Strickland, C. (2007) Tools for high-quality differentiated instruction. In Strickland, C. (Ed.),

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (pp. 11-21). Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. (2014). Learning Environments that Support Differentiated Instruction. In

Tomlinson, C. (Ed.), The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All
Learners (2nd Edition, pp. 45-59). ASCD.

Tomlinson, C. (2014). The Underpinnings of Differentiation. In Tomlinson, C. (Ed.), The

Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (2nd Edition, pp. 14-
28). ASCD.