Differentiating differentiated instruction

The assignment that I worked on tonight for my Writing Part 1 course featured a webcast called Differentiated Writing Instruction. This webcase may be short (just over 3 minutes!) but it has some amazing ideas. I have made some inferences to figure out exactly how the unit of study featured in this video worked, but here are my thoughts after watching this clip.

I love how the teacher in this classroom has designed a unit of study that begins with a reading focus. The students learned about biographies, analysed them to find the elements of a well-written biography, and learned about Terry Fox. They then moved into the written portion of the unit. When students began writing their biographies about Terry Fox, the teacher differentiated in a few different ways.

Differentiation in the video:

- students could add details to their biography from memory
- the teacher had created a quick fact sheet that students could refer to
- students used magazines in the classroom to add further detail to their biography
- students could broaden the vocabulary in their biography by using books in their classroom as resources
- the teacher circulated around the classroom as the students worked and pulled groups that needed the same feedback to work together at their guided reading table

The most interesting part of this webcast was how the teacher began by giving students the same topic and differentiated the resources that students could use to enhance their writing. She also differentiated the support they were receiving.

At the end of the video, they mentioned that the culminating task for the unit was going to involve choosing a person to research and write a biography about. This means that they have moved from differentiating the instruction and the scaffolding to differentiating the product. By allowing students to choose a person to write about based on interest, she will be improving the student engagement. Ideally, after moving through the balanced literacy model with students in regards to biographic texts, students will apply what they have learned when writing the Terry Fox biography to their final culminating task.