Differentiated Reading Instruction

Strategies and Technology Tools to Help All Students Improve

Jules Csillag

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138641211
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317247647
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Learn how tech tools can make it easier to differentiate reading instruction, so you can reach all of your students and help them increase their fluency and comprehension. This practical guide brings together evidence-based principles for differentiated reading instruction and user-friendly tech tools, to help middle level students grow as readers in fun, interactive, and engaging ways. You'll find out how to:

• Use text-to-speech tools to facilitate decoding and fluency development;
• Develop tech-based vocabulary lessons for direct and contextual instruction;
• Get your students engaged in research and nonfiction texts with videos, custom search engines, and interactive annotation tools;
• Differentiate your fiction reading instruction with visualization, prediction, and summarization exercises;
• Encourage students to enhance their reading through using dictation software and diverse Google tools;
• Create your own formative and summative assessments for students at all levels of reading ability.

Throughout the book, ideas are provided for both basic technology use and for more advanced applications--so no matter your comfort level with technology, you'll find strategies that you can implement in your classroom immediately.

1
What Do You Mean by “Differentiation”?

If you’re reading this book, I assume it’s at least partly because you are interested in differentiation. You may have heard the term used (and probably overused), or you may already be a staunch believer in it, and are reading this book for tips on how to use technology effectively to differentiate. This chapter will provide an overview of differentiation and its merits, and the rest of the book will tell you what strategies and technology tools will help you to differentiate. Differentiation helps both students and teachers be more engaged, more effective, and more organized; technology simply makes it all easier.

Long Ago and Far Away, the Greeks Warned Us

I only recently heard the story of Procrustes (and I heard it applied to a non-educational context). The tale goes something like this: weary travelers would stop off at the house of Procrustes (son of Poseidon) on their way to Athens. At his home, Procrustes had an iron bed, and he insisted that all travelers fit perfectly into said iron bed. If a passer-by was too tall for the bed, Procrustes would chop off a part of his limbs. Likewise, if travelers were too short to fit his bed perfectly, he would stretch them out until their limbs fit into the bed.

The terrifying story of Procrustes can be used as an analogy for any stringent requirements. Often, these requirements are seen as arbitrary, and likely they are viewed as not benefiting anyone involved (although my sympathy primarily goes to the travelers, chopping limbs and stretching bodies does not sound like easy work, so I reserve a little empathy for Procrustes, himself, while I must admit I do not fully understand his motives). In education, the metaphor is clear: most students will not fit into our “iron” curriculum, and we should not be (metaphorically) torturing these students so that they do fit. Instead—to extend the metaphor—why don’t teachers have multiple “beds” or adjustable “beds,” so that all of our weary students may “sleep” comfortably? Our job as teachers and educators is to teach students in a way that will help them learn, and ideally, become lifelong learners. Our job shouldn’t be to mold students to following a standard or unit, or simply to be compliant. As teacher and author Pernille Ripp says, “If we are chained to a curriculum map based on other people’s students, then we are not teaching the students in front of us” (2015).

Differentiation vs Tracking

Differentiation is a means of planning and implementing a curriculum that allows for diverse learners to learn in diverse ways in order to maximize their progress. In the past, it had also been referred to as “multilevel instruction.” Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson, a leading educator and researcher on differentiation, defines the term succinctly as “tailoring instruction to meet individual needs” (Tomlinson, 2000), though do note, that meeting individual needs is not synonymous with “individualized instruction.” Tomlinson also stresses that the ultimate goal of differentiation is “to maximize the learning opportunity for each student in the classroom.”

Differentiation is different from tracking in two crucial ways: Differentiation is flexible and differentiation necessitates regular, valid, reliable assessments to monitor progress and design groups. Tracking refers to the idea of putting students in groups (often based on a single assessment, which may or may not be valid or reliable), and teaching them in those groups for a long period of time. This can be done within-classes or between-classes. Many groups, including the National Education Association (NEA) have decried its use since tracking doesn’t work. Research on tracking has also shown that students who were from marginalized groups by race, class, and/or gender tended to be overrepresented in the lower “tracks,” which suggests that the way students were grouped were based on subjective or discriminatory criteria (NEA Resolutions B-16, 1998, 2005, as cited in National Education Association, n.d.). Ultimately, however, tracking served to widen the gap between students who have traditionally done well in school, and those who have not (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2006). To read more about the negative effect of tracking, read research by Boaler et al. (2000) about its academic and social-emotional toll. While that study was focused on math ability groupings, the negative impact of tracking can readily be extrapolated to include all types of permanent ability groupings.

When “ability” is used in this book, it is used to refer to a flexible, ever-progressing skill, and it has no reflection on potential (how do you measure potential, anyway?). Research also supports being as specific as possible with your assessments since research

suggests that a more fine-grained approach that focuses on individual differences in underlying cognitive processes, rather than general aptitudes, and implements instructional methods that target those processes may be more fruitful in producing robust interactions between learner ability and learner-directed activities.

(Pasher, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork 2008)

Types of Differentiation

Differentiation can be done by many categories (Tomlinson & Cunningham Eidson, 2003), the most popular being: by interest, by “learning style,” and by readiness. Throughout the book, I will recommend using an alternative classification which aligns with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) categories (discussed in the section on UDL).

Differentiation by Interest

Probably the easiest way to differentiate for students is by interest. The formative assessment phase of grouping students according to interest requires simply asking students what they prefer the most. For example, if you have a math activity that uses different types of sports statistics, you can have students select the group or assignment based on whether they will choose to work with baseball statistics, basketball statistics, or football statistics. Interest can also include the type of product a student will produce (interest in making a poster or interest in making a movie), or in the way a student will learn the information (interest in working in a group vs individually; interest in learning by reading a magazine vs. reading an infographic). Students may be swayed by their peers, and some students may not be interested in any of the sports that you have selected, but the idea behind this type of differentiation is to increase student engagement by providing them with choices, and to have students recognize that there are diverse ways of grouping students (which helps steer teachers away from tracking students). The interest categories (e.g. movie vs. magazine) may happen to align with other types of differentiation, but the key element in differentiating by interest is that students are empowered to make choices. While differentiation by interest is powerful, it does not necessitate an entire book. In addition to learning about their skills, many of the activities in the formative assessment chapter can be used to learn more about your students’ interests.

Differentiation by “Learning Style”

Another type of differentiation that has gained popularity in recent years is differentiation according to learning style. This one is ultimately a misnomer. Learning style may reflect interest (e.g. I am more interested in making a PowerPoint than making a speech, or I am more interested in reading an article than watching a movie). In this case, see the paragraph above.

Otherwise, I caution educators against using learning style as a way of grouping students for three reasons: 1) the term is too broadly used (Coffield, Moseley, Hall, & Ecclestone, 2004 identified 71 models of “learning styles”); 2) students do not always have an accurate perception of what type of learner they are; and 3) learning styles are not an effective or evidence-validated way to teach (despite their popularity). Multiple studies in the last decade (and further) have discounted grouping students by “learning style.” A meta-analysis by Pashler et al. (2008) states that “there is not a compelling argument to support the predictive validity of measures of learning styles on learning outcomes.” Most studies on learning styles fail to follow adequate experimental conditions (e.g. students are not randomly placed, or there is no control group), and many studies fail to support the hypothesis that students learn best when being instructed in their preferred learning style (or even contradict the hypothesis).

Pashler et al. (2008) also revealed the danger of grouping students by learning style: not only does it not appear to help students learn, it prevents educators from teaching in evidence-based ways. Ultimately, “learning style” is less relevant to students than the content (i.e. subject). For example, science labs tend to be best done kinesthetically, i.e. when students go through the steps and perform actions in order to validate or invalidate hypotheses. It is less effective to read the steps and the conclusions, or even to watch someone else go through the steps (though of course there are times when—for safety or due to resources—one of the latter two are acceptable substitutes for the “real thing”). More importantly, however, all students tend to benefit from having multiple ways of learning about a topic, so restricting students to only one medium of learning is limiting and not educationally sound (Hattie, 2011).

Differentiation by Readiness

Readiness or ability is the third common way in which teachers can differentiate. As aforementioned, there is mixed research about how effective ability groups are across subject areas; for example, research by Boaler et al. (2000) demonstrated that students in mixed-ability math groups showed greater gains than those in single ability math groups. Many of the strategies we will focus on in this book have to do with “readiness,” which refers to where students’ skills are, developmentally. The research on readiness is mixed due to the permanence associated with readiness and due to the vague way readiness has been defined in many studies and classrooms (see “Differentiation vs. Tracking”).

“Ability” has become a dirty word and rightly so; as an alternative, I will occasionally use “readiness” throughout this book, but instead of thinking of readiness as one skill or aptitude, I will use “readiness” as a term for something that is multifaceted and dynamic (hence the focus on flexibility). The differentiation view I adopt is inspired by the UDL guidelines.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiation: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Universal Design for Learning is “a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn” (National Center on Universal Design for Learning, 2014). It is a set of principles that abhors “one-sized fits all” and stresses flexibility in the curriculum. UDL guidelines say that students can differ in what they learn, how they learn, and why they learn it. Each of these processes has a neural underpinning (i.e. brain networks devoted to them), and since our brains are as diverse as our fingerprints, each student will have a slightly different way of learning.

I really appreciate the separation of the what, how, and why since I have had many students who learn more slowly than other students (this is the “how”), but who then really understand the concepts (the “what”). I’ve also had students who are not initially highly motivated (this is the “why,” or for them more of a “why should I?”), but have mastered the content nonetheless (the “what”). All three interact with each other within one child, and therefore, our teaching should be sensitive to each element.

I am not the first to recognize how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiation (or Differentiated Instruction, aka “DI”) go hand in hand. Their basic principles—that every child must be taught in a way that they can learn—are identical. The UDL Center notes their intersection by stating that “both the UDL and DI frameworks recognize that each learner is unique (DI) or variable (UDL). Setting clear goals and matching assessment to instruction, especially through ongoing, formative assessment is essential for students to reach the goals” (Cast Inc., 2013). Given these underlying similarities, I’m making this marriage even stronger by applying the UDL view of brain-based research for differentiation.

UDL and DI do not only share the recognition of each child as being unique, but they share their fondness of variety, and the notion that students should be given multiple ways to access content and demonstrate knowledge. Tomlinson (1995) states that differentiated instruction

uses (1) a variety of ways for students to explore curriculum content, (2) a variety of sense-making activities or processes through which students can come to understand and “own” information and ideas, and (3) a variety of options through which students can demonstrate or exhibit what they have learned.

Variety may be the spice of life, but it is the main ingredient of the differentiated classroom.

Differentiation by UDL Categories

What types of variety is a teacher supposed to offer? The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework can be useful here. Table 1.1 summarizes the various elements of the UDL guidelines that are most relevant to reading.

Table 1.1 UDL guidelines adapted to reflect reading-relevant suggestions for reaching all learners. The chart is organized by type of d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Meet the Author
• Introduction: What Is Reading, and How Can I Help?
• 1 What Do You Mean by “Differentiation”?
• 2 What Do Your Students Know? Formative Assessments for Differentiation
• 3 What Does This Say? Differentiating for Decoding and Reading Fluency
• 4 What Does This Mean? Part 1: Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction
• 5 What Does This Mean? Part 2: Differentiating During the Research Process and Reading Nonfiction
• 6 What Does This Mean? Part 3: Differentiating During Fiction Reading
• 7 Can You Tell Me About It? Differentiating Writing (to Help Reading Comprehension)
• 8 How Much Do You Know? Differentiating Summative Assessments
• Epilogue
• List of Referenced Technology Tools