Differentiated Learning

Hello, my name is Matthew Herman and I am an after school program instructional assistant, working with primary school students.  I am planning on going into secondary education, to teach English Language Arts.  I have some 250 hours of experience as a volunteer, from tutor and A.V.I.D., to special education and teacher's aide work, I have been in classrooms across grade levels at the secondary level.  It is interesting to now learn the process that the teachers I volunteered with used to differentiate learning experiences in those classrooms.  These classrooms have included mainstreamed and non-mainstreamed special education students, general education students, struggling and gifted/talented, as well as ELL students at various levels of English proficiency.

I have become interested in the ELL student population over the course of studying education and interacting with students (maybe this has to do with my own interest in learning a second language).  Part of adapting lesson plans to the varying needs of these students involves creating effective formative assessments, starting with a pre-assessment.  One method for doing this with ELL students is to create an assessment with various ways for your ELL students to express themselves and what they know so far.  Teachers might solicit comments in a class discussion or ask for a short response to a question that assumes a certain degree of literacy or English language comprehension.  If your ELL students are having difficulty comprehending the meaning of the question, you might have to alter the language for the instructions to assignments (i.e., use simpler vocabulary).  

If the conclusion of your pre-basement is that the ELL student has only a very basic understanding of English, or is not reading at the level necessary for the lesson, you may consider altering a few variables to ensure learning.  For instance, the teacher could devote more time to pre-teaching with a group of similar students (those who are reading at a similar level).  Another approach to differentiating learning for such a group would involve a type of scaffolding that allows students to do similar tasks to rest of class, but with simpler texts.  The teachers could differentiate by allowing the inverse of this concept, and I suppose that decision would come down to whether the skills or content were more important for the lesson in question.

            There is also the option of scaffolding by using texts in the native language of the ELL, if available.  This approach is consistent with valuing bilingualism and stigmatizing the primary language of the ELL student.  I have picked up a textbook on differentiating for ELL students, Differentiating Literacy Strategies for English Language Learners: Grades 7-12, by Gayle H. Gregory and Amy Burkman.

            There is also a wealth of information on this subject online.  I find however, that many good resources come from the field of linguistics and language acquisition.  Teachers of ELL students need to reflect on the fact that at some level they are second language teachers, that not all language learning is incidental, and that environment (one of the factors that teachers could help control) plays a large role in language acquisition.  Consider this video on the Affective Filter hypothesis.