Differentiating the Process

The process refers to how the learner engages with the content to be taught, in order to acquire or demonstrate the concepts, skills, facts and principles taught [3]. The process is synonymously thought of as the activity. Effective activities are always aligned to a learning goal. In relation to the unit of work, each activity is designed to enable students to develop knowledge or a skill. Learners in your mainstream classroom will have different interests and background knowledge; therefore it is important to modify the activity so that it is assessable as well as engaging for them.  

Strategy: Varying questions

You can vary questions based on learner’s readiness, interest and learning styles. The examples below will illustrate how Bloom’s taxonomy can be used to generate different forms of questions. Low levels of questioning such as knowledge and comprehension involve lower order thinking skills compared with processes of application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, which involve higher order thinking skills. This disparity should not not imply that low ability students cannot benefit from higher order thinking skills. In some cases, they need additional support in order to attempt the question. For example, studies have shown that individuals with an intellectual disability can make meaningful connections between pictures and an action or task. Hence, question (F) which requires a higher order thinking skill could also be attempted by a student with issues of memory retrieval given that they are provided with a visual comparison between a landscape and a portrait [11]. A visual stimulus in this case would be used in conjunction with bloom’s taxonomy.

Figure 1.3

Depths of a Landscape

A tiered approach to varying questions:

Question	Level of Questioning
A) What are the elements of a landscape?	Knowledge
B) Explain how Dali’s work Persistence of Memory is a landscape?	Comprehension
C) Do all landscapes need to have a foreground?	Application
D) What elements in Dali’s work ‘Persistence of Memory’ suggests that he has taken an imaginative approach?	Analysis
E) If we weren’t given the title, how else could Dali’s work Persistence of Memory be interpreted?	Synthesis
F) Explain why the Dali’s work Leda Atomica can be considered both as a portrait and a landscape?	Evaluation

Figure 1.4

Salvador Dalí, Leda Atomica

1949

Oil on canvas

Strategy: Flexible grouping

Depending on the activity, flexible grouping is an effective strategy where learners can collaborate with each other, practice their social skills and exchange ideas. Cooperative group teaching is a form of grouping that encourages learners to work as a team and where everybody has something to contribute [12]. Learners of different ability levels can benefit from flexible grouping. Pairing is another way of using cooperative teaching.

Example of how cooperative group teaching can benefit different learners:

Students are allocated into groups of 6 with mixed ability students. For this activity students are asked to create a class presentation that looks at one surrealist artist. Students from an ESL background may find the content-specific vocabulary challenging, as well as the discipline of art, which may not be a significant part of their cultural background [6]. Through group discussion using informal social interaction, the other students in the group can make the content more assessable for students from an ESL background. For example, linking the activity to an activity from another subject: “David this is just like what we did in English, except this time we are looking at an artist’s life and his work rather than an author’s”. David, a student from an ESL background, could then carry out the research component of the activity as he has done a similar activity recently in another class.

Williams model can be used to explain how a number of students can benefit from this activity: [13]

·      The student who made the link for David activated his prior knowledge through the use of an analogy

·      David would be practicing the skill of search and attribute listing

·      The other students in the group could be responsible for putting the presentation together using the process of visualization

Strategy: Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers provide a visual representation for organizing thinking and ideas. It is important to involve students with visual material as well as text based instruction as you may have learners in your class who are visual/spatially smart according to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences [14].

It is widely purported that graphic organizers are effective for a variety of learners [15]. For example, students with a learning difficulty can benefit from semantic organizers; an approach that allows a word to be made meaningful by looking at its features, characteristics and associations. [16]

Figure 1.5

Layout of a semantic organizer

Figure 1.6

Deconstructing the word ‘subconscious’

A Venn diagram is an example of another visual organizer, which allows students to see the similarities and differences between two subjects. For example, a simple Venn diagram below makes a link between Dada and Surrealism.

Figure 1.7

Venn diagram comparing Dada to Surrealism