Differentiation Tools for Home and Remote Learning
Differentiation can be a daunting aspect of teaching and learning. In a classroom, a teacher has to figure out how to reach every student no matter their level of learning, and that takes differentiation. So what is it, and how do we differentiate at home when our kids are remote learning? Let’s get into it.
I learned to differentiate the tools, not the task. Think of differentiation as a buffet you put out at a party that includes appetizers and foods that cater to all of your friends and family, from the vegan, to the plant-based and everyone in between. That’s what differentiation is, but with learning tools.
As a teacher in New York City, I used Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (http://udlguidelines.cast.org) to create lessons on a daily basis. Universal Design for Learning helps to anchor teaching and learning in guidelines for learning that are easy to follow and help differentiate the work students will be doing.
When thinking about how you will help your child at home, it’s important to think about what kind of learner you have. Is your child self-motivated? A fast learner? Easy to engage? If the answer to these questions is ‘no” - then you need to differentiate your teaching and learning tools. Let’s focus on the section titled: Recruiting Interest, under the Engagement portion of the UDL guidelines. I have written in a previous post about minimizing distractions so I won’t get into that here. I want to discuss the value of providing your child with autonomy rather than giving them one way to learn and share about something.
For literacy lessons one easy way to differentiate the material is to give kids a choice on what part of the lesson they want to focus on before they actually start working on the task. For example, your child may be learning all about persuasive writing. Let’s pick my favorite topic - dessert! Rather than asking your child to write an essay on why they prefer chocolate chip cookies over strawberry shortcake, provide some prompts that allow them to choose how they write and what they will write about. To differentiate the work we can begin small.
Create some engaging warmup prompts your child can choose from to get those writing juices flowing. Sticking with our chocolate chip cookies vs. strawberry shortcake example, you can create individual prompts on sticky notes or cut strips of paper that ask one question on each piece. A pink sticky note can ask, “How would you describe the texture of a strawberry vs. the texture of a chocolate chip when held in your hands? Picture both in your mind and be as detailed as possible.” A blue sticky note can ask, “Both chocolate and strawberries are sweet, but in different ways, for example, when biting into a strawberry it is syrupy and juicy, but when biting into a piece of chocolate it is sticky and sweet. Picture both in your mind and describe the taste of both; be as detailed as possible in your description.”
The two activities above give your child a mini menu from which to choose the warm up question that appeals to them before they decide how they will write an essay persuading people on the better dessert. Both are engaging and challenging in different ways. If nothing else, your child knows how to smell and how to taste, and those are the only skills they need to get going. It also gets them thinking about all the different things they have to say about a subject, drilling down on their schema and sensory skills and really challenging them to think deeply about everything they know about the topic.
Using parts of UDL for differentiation has worked wonders in my classroom. My most fervent writers were always the ones who started out saying they didn’t know how to begin writing. With Universal Design for learning you can zero in on any one section and make that the section you use to differentiate literacy work for your child.
Now let’s discuss the second section of UDL and that is Representation. What does this mean? Representation is how the work is presented. For example, you can enhance the activity above by providing pictures of strawberries and chocolate chips, or you can provide the real thing along with the question prompts above. Definitions of words can come in handy, so having a dictionary nearby to look up abstract words like ‘juicy’ and ‘sweet’ can be helpful. You may want to watch videos with your kids about different kinds of foods and their differences. When I was a classroom teacher media such as YouTube was banned and disabled in public schools and that was a real impediment, but at home, YouTube for kids can be monitored and watched together to enhance learning. There is also a platform called YouTube Kids that can be helpful.
The last part of UDL is Action and Expression. So what can you do to vary navigating the steps to the final goal? You can take action of course! Here you can take things to the next level of differentiation. It’s time to lay out the desserts and eat those chocolate chips and that strawberry shortcake! I would suggest having your child create a graphic organizer for themselves such as a T-chart to document everything they taste, feel, see and smell when taking a bite of both desserts. Each side will have the dessert title at the top, and on one side they will write everything they learn about both. Another graphic organizer I love to use is the Venn diagram. Here they can write the differences on the outside, and the similarities of both in the middle.
Finally, using all of the research gathered utilizing the above differentiation strategies, you will see your child jump right into the lesson and complete the activity with such gusto you’ll wonder how you survived without these strategies before. These differentiation tools can be used over and over again and can be applied to any lesson. Check out my website: elementaryreadingandwriting.com for great lessons to enhance your child’s literacy skills at home.
Check out these helpful links below to differentiation tools:
Differentiation for elementary school kids
How to Differentiate Instruction
Universal Design for Learning in Action: 100 Ways to Teach All Learners
With lot’s of love for your little one’s learning, Lexx