Differentiated Literacy Instruction in Grade

Tobin, R., & McInnes, A. (2008). Accommodating differences: variations in differentiated literacy instruction in Grade 2/3 classrooms. Literacy, 42(1), 3-9. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9345.2008.00470.x

Accommodating differences: variations in differentiated literacy instruction in Grade 2/3 classrooms Ruthanne Tobin and Alison McInnes Abstract Although teachers are acutely aware of variance in students’ literacy needs, many are unsure exactly how to support these needs in the dynamic classroom. This study reports on compelling evidence from Grade 2/3 classrooms in which teachers differentiated instruction in a variety of ways to benefit all students. In particular, teachers provided additional scaffolding for struggling literacy learners by offering a menu of tiered work products, expert tutoring and additional supports. At the base of instruction were common essential understandings grounded in best literacy practices: shared reading and writing, guided reading, excellent texts and literacy centres. The article emphasises the critical importance of responding to the needs of diverse and at-risk learners in the regular classroom. Differentiated instruction is suggested as a powerful organising framework in the language arts classroom. Key words: differentiated instruction, literacy learning, diverse learners, at-risk learners, language arts instruction Introduction Students learn in different ways and require responsive teaching based on these differences, especially in the area of literacy learning. Increasingly in Canada, elementary teachers are expected to take the primary role in accelerating the literacy skills of struggling students, a shift fromthe previous reliance upon special education teachers. Teachers understand the need to pay attention to variance in student literacy needs; however, many are unsure of how exactly to carry this out in the dynamic classroom, and report that this is one of their greatest challenges (Baumann et al., 2000; Jordan and Stanovich, 2004; Tomlinson, 2004). In this article we report on a study from a small city in Central Canada from Grade 2/3 classrooms (children aged 7–9 years) in which teachers differentiated instruction in a variety of ways, to benefit all students including those who find reading and writing challenging. There are several significant reasons as to why differentiated instruction (DI) is necessary for struggling primary students. Various school districts use different criteria to establish which students qualify for support services. Subsequently, many of the students who are challenged in developing reading and writing skills do not qualify for such support. Also, those who do qualify still spend the majority of their teacherdirected reading and writing time in the regular classroom (Cunningham and Allington, 1999). Many small-group intervention programmes that have proven to be effective are designed to support limited numbers of students (Duffy-Hester, 1999). Through differentiating instruction, teachers create different levels of expectations for task completion, and environments where all learners can be successful (Waldron and McLeskey, 2001). DI addresses the ‘how to’ question for teachers and calls upon educators to be responsive to learners. Examples of differentiating in language arts include: _ using reading materials at varying levels; _ using literacy centres with varied tasks designed to match students’ readiness, interests and/or preferred modes of learning; and _ meeting in small groups to re-teach an idea or skill (Tomlinson and Cunningham, 2003). At the heart of differentiating instruction in language arts is the need to provide learners with choices about what they read and to design their work products so that they are a better match for learners. This is particularly important for struggling students who can most benefit from additional supports, tailored activities and explicit and extended instructional time with the teacher. In DI all learners focus on the same essential understandings, but are provided with multiple access routes to make sense of and demonstrate these understandings. Struggling students are those who find learning to read and write highly challenging tasks. Many students have not had the shared book reading experience with adult guidance that would have helped them acquire concepts about the conventions of print, phonemic awareness or expressive and receptive language for talking about stories (Reutzel et al., 2002). Other students come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, but do not find a match for their own language, dialect or culture in their classrooms. Still Literacy Volume 42 Number 1 April 2008 3 r UKLA 2008. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. others have learning disabilities, and often find reading and writing particularly difficult (Vaughn and Klinger, 2006). For the purposes of this article struggling students refers to all three categories: those who lack the appropriate background, English language learners and those with learning disabilities. Evidence supporting differentiated literacy instruction The theoretical framework that supports differentiated literacy instruction is based on responsive literacy teaching and use of a variety of organisational formats. Responsive literacy instruction is aligned with cognitive theory and focuses on a type of cognitive apprenticeship to model, guide, coach, scaffold and fade strategies and prompts, to accelerate independence, while the students read and write authentic texts. It has been shown to play a critical role in the success of diverse learners (Mathes et al., 2005; Vaughn et al., 2000). The objectives of day-today instruction within responsive literacy instruction are determined by the observed needs of the students. The teacher attends to behaviours that indicate the constructions that each student is forming and responds contingently through scaffolding (Mathes et al., 2005). Ultimately, students are enabled to apply literacy strategies independently. Responsive literacy teaching is also informed by the theories of Vygotsky (1978), in that the social dimension of learning is paramount and the teacher is called upon to create learning situations that are sufficiently engaging to prompt problem solving without frustrating individual learners. Another underpinning of differentiated instruction is the use of a variety of organisational formats. The literature clearly indicates that it is the small grouping and individual context in which optimally desirable reading and writing behaviours are most likely to occur (Greenwood et al., 2003). Also documented are the required elements of literacy instruction (although not specific procedures) that need to take place in literacy groupings (Mathes et al., 2005). Flexible small groups and a focus on student interest as a means of maximising acceleration of reading have shown very positive results (Cunningham et al., 1998; Vaughn et al., 2003). The latter researchers found small-group instruction (three students) to be just as effective as one-to-one instruction in developing reading skills such as phoneme segmentation, fluency and comprehension, while the former study documents the success of mixed-ability groupings (four to five students) to achieve fluency and comprehension in reading at the primary level. As a further incentive to work in a variety of organisational formats with young literacy learners, a longitudinal study of primary students found that desirable reading behaviours occurred most often in the presence of peer tutors, reading partners or teacher-led one-to-one, smallgroup or independent instructional arrangements, as compared with the entire-group, teacher-led instruction (Greenwood et al., 2003). Another critical finding suggests that the instructional emphasis needs to address phonological awareness, phonological decoding, fluency in reading connected text and comprehension of text. However, the specific ways of intervening in small groups are relatively unimportant (Mathes et al., 2005). Also, it has been well established that in-class small-group instruction effectively reduces the number of struggling readers to 4.5% or less of the school population (Mathes and Denton, 2002; Torgesen et al., 2003). In summary, this critical combination of responsive literacy teaching, using a variety of organisational formats, calls for differentiated literacy instruction. In addition to a strong body of evidence to support differentiated literacy instruction, there is also a small number of studies that specifically address various aspects of differentiated literacy instruction.Werderich (2002) reports on differentiations made through personalised interest reading instruction and individualised teacher responses to students’ journal entries. Her study documented students’ engagement and personalised learning related to the teacher’s role in providing specific and personal feedback. Betterton and Ensworth (2006) report on a small but promising study of a group of Grade 1/2 students in which they used thematic literacy bags at a variety of reading levels, connecting these to engaging activities designed to encompass various learning modalities. The authors reported success in putting themed books at the right level into the hands of students who found them predictable and engaging. The props to support creative responses to the literature were reported to have generated enthusiasm and interaction with the books and peers. In addition, differentiation through individual learning contracts with literacy learners has also been shown to be effective in getting students motivated and in increasing fluency in reading and writing (Greenwood et al., 2003). In summary, the literature not only points to the merits and possibilities of differentiating instruction in literacy but also leaves many questions unanswered regarding the ways that teachers may actually implement differentiation in the primary language arts classroom. This ‘how-to-differentiate’ gap is addressed in the current study, which focuses on how teachers come to understand and address the literacy needs of academically diverse learners in the regular classroom. Research context The research context is one in which teachers were initiating differentiated instruction in Grade 2/3 mixed classrooms, and specifically focuses on two 4 Variations in differentiated literacy instruction r UKLA 2008 successful differentiators, Cynthia and Margot (pseudonyms). Cynthia and Margot were part of a larger study of 10 teachers. Other findings from this study, documenting the differentiated efforts and difficulties experienced by the other eight teachers, are summarised in a separate article (Tobin and McInnes, 2007). Ten teachers from Aberdeen School District (pseudonym), who were assigned mixed-grade classrooms, took part in the study. The researchers provided two 3-hour workshops to ensure that all participants had some level of common involvement with key principles and practices of working with academic diversity. The goals of the workshops were to: _ assist teachers in developing a framework for thinking about instructional differentiation; _ invoke thinking about the nature and needs of diverse students; and _ provide teachers with materials and helpful strategies to meet the literacy needs of academically diverse learners in language arts. Key emphasis was placed on meaningful reading tasks, flexible grouping, and ongoing assessment and adjustments for all students. Also, teachers were introduced to the practice of using a variety of texts with struggling readers, in order to provide more systematic and intensive instruction in word-study strategies, increased opportunities for repeated readings to build fluency and more explicit and systematic instruction in comprehension strategies. In addition, teachers reviewed guided reading practices and ways to engage the rest of the class in meaningful and manageable literacy activities. Two special education teachers were assigned to support the project by providing in-class coaching and modelling of differentiated lessons. Method For these case studies, we used qualitative research techniques, appropriate for exploring and interpreting educational phenomena in a real-life setting in which ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions were the focus of the study (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). The following questions were addressed: _ How do teachers come to understand and address the literacy needs of academically diverse learners? _ How may differentiated instruction address the needs of struggling literacy learners in the regular classroom? The university researchers gathered data in the following ways: _ observational field notes that described any aspect of instruction relevant to a teacher’s understanding of, or attempt to address, the needs of academically diverse learners; _ video recordings of each classroom; _ audio recordings of interviews with the teachers; and _ collections of student assignments, and literacy centre materials, when possible. There were three 45-minute visits to each classroom and two of the visits were followed by an interview with the teacher. The visits were spread throughout the winter semester (January–May). Interviews were guided by a semi-structured interview protocol, but exploration of interesting aspects of the immediate or past observations also occurred. Each interviewran for approximately 30 minutes. Data analysis proceeded inductively (from the particular to the general) by searching for patterns of meaning related to the key research questions in both the videotapes and the transcribed interview audiotapes. In initial readings of the dataset, frames of analysis were identified that contained a single idea, episode or piece of information. As with all qualitative data analysis, a search for patterns and relationships across each frame was conducted and then patterns were named and subsequent frames categorised by their semantic relationships (Yin, 2003). Each of the categories and emerging theories – about both how teachers differentiated for literacy learners and how they came to understand differentiation – was evaluated for its explanatory power, which included a search for counter-evidence. Examples of such categories were: _ organisational formats; _ teacher-led adaptations; _ materials-driven adaptations; and _ scaffolding techniques. ‘Member checks’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p. 108) were conducted by giving teachers an opportunity to view videotapes and to offer their interpretations, which were then folded into the analysis. The interpretation of the data was also influenced by analysing the relationship between the study’s findings and the principles regarding responsive literacy teaching (Vaughn et al., 2003) and models of differentiation (Tomlinson, 2004). Results in general Aberdeen School District was an attractive research site because of broad leadership support for differentiation, skilled teachers and plentiful resources. While all 10 teachers practised some differentiation, the two teachers highlighted in this article consistently practised differentiation in ways congruent with the research literature (Lawrence-Brown, 2004; Tobin, Literacy Volume 42 Number 1 April 2008 5 r UKLA 2008 2005; Tomlinson and Cunningham, 2003) and provided strong support to their struggling learners. Two successful differentiators: alike and different Cynthia and Margot shared some key characteristics: both having a reputation in their school district as skilled, creative teachers who went the extra mile for their students, and who accommodated students with exceptionalities. Both were known as life-long learners, as demonstrated by their professional development record. Each of their classrooms was equipped with a large number of children’s books. Their teaching approach included a propensity towards student choice, organisational variety and validating discourse with their students. Cynthia and Margot also differed in significant ways. Margot was a seasoned teacher with 25 years’ experience, whereas Cynthia was only in her sixth year of teaching. While Cynthia enjoyed tangible support from her principal, Margot’s principal was, at best, indifferent to her efforts, hence she turned to the district learning support teacher for help. The two teachers also were dissimilar in the ways in which they differentiated their instruction in language arts. Cynthia used guided reading and literacy centres, while Margot opted for book bundles and a menu of work products as a basis for differentiation. Margot’s classroom – quality text and a menu of work products ‘‘[In my classroom] children are all over the place, sitting on the desks, some are focused over there [on the carpet]. The thing is, I get them talking as much as possible, they’re all working with books and I get them to help each other . . . They have lots of choices.’’ Margot’s class looked as much like a library as a classroom. She had collected over 300 books and under her guidance, every week students created a book bag reading a bundle of five or six books – each bundle was different for each student and included both narrative and informational books. Her teaching revolved around high-quality children’s books. She would showcase a piece of text and then offer a menu of work products, some of which were differentiated through tiered activities (Tomlinson, 2001). Tiered activities can focus all of the students on the same essential understandings or skills, but at different levels of complexity, abstractness and open-endedness. By keeping the focus on the same activity, but providing routes of access at varying degrees of difficulty, the teacher maximised the likelihood that each student was appropriately challenged. For example, after a read-aloud of a book such as Something from Nothing (Gilman, 1992), some of Margot’s students responded to evocative pictures and noted in their own words or through drawings some of the feelings that the pictures evoked. They then discussed the reading in cooperative groups, using guiding questions to sequence the events of the story. Other students who needed more explicitness had a repetitive verse from the story to aid them in retelling the events. They were then asked to change a single event that would affect the story’s outcome. Still other students staged a tableau of the scenes from the text. Providing a menu of work products along a continuum of complexity focused on a key piece of literature and one or two essential understandings resulted in high engagement in her classroom. As students were beginning and ending at staggered times, to develop their skill and comfort with jagged time frames, Margot collaborated with students using a variety of work products. To support their understanding and completion of the work, she used an intentional traffic pattern, by checking in first with what she termed reluctant starters and nudging them along by scribing the first idea, or echo reading the first sentences. She also worked alongside students on their products, listening to them read from their bundles or from their writings, in order to monitor their comprehension. She also encouraged rereading of sentences and phrases and motivated revisions of predictions based on text information and use of graphic features to help them decode unknown words. Her students were also well acclimatised to wraparound activities – interesting reading, writing and representing activities that they could work on independently when they completed their work products. A few examples of wrap-around activities included the following: _ Reading Bundle; _ Dual and Triple journal entries (the first column was for the children to write a meaningful quote or an event from their readings, the second for their thoughts or feelings and ideas and the third for feedback from the teacher or a classmate who had also read the book); _ Top Ten List – list your top 10 (animals, friends, favourite foods, sports, things at recess) and then (a) write two words to describe them; (b) put your list in ABC order; (c) categorise your list; _ Basket activities – word study activities, such as semantic maps. Figure 1 sets out some of Margot’s work products and tiering strategies that she provided for struggling students and eventually became part of their work menu. To summarise, Margot’s differentiation revolved around showcasing a children’s book, and creating 6 Variations in differentiated literacy instruction r UKLA 2008 reading bundles for children, using these as a basis for a menu of work products. The students were given choices about how they would connect and respond to text. She used tiered activities and designed ways to keep struggling readers close to the text. She intentionally planned for ways for them to receive more frequent direct instruction. Consistent with best practices for struggling readers (e.g. Allington, 2002; Chard and Kameenui, 2000), Margot provided the explicit scaffolding and comprehension monitoring they needed to understand how to use effective strategies, and guided them in their responses to a variety of texts. Cynthia’s classroom: guided reading and literacy centres ‘‘I’ve always done centres . . . but I have learned centres are not necessarily differentiating. Last year . . . we would work on mini-lessons daily and then go to a centre rotation . . . each one going to all centres and doing the same work. Now, I provide the centres with choice. We still do mini-lessons . . . there are different activities for their levels, groupings are different and flexible . . . ’’ Cynthia’s classroom environment was rich, inviting and relaxed. Her language arts block involved three components: _ shared reading and writing instruction; _ literacy centres; and _ guided reading groups. Her classroom was set up in cabaret style, with students at round tables in groups of six, one rainbow table at the back, where she conducted Guided Reading and a carpeted area at the front where students gathered for Shared Reading and Shared Writing activities. Guided Reading was organised in an equitable fashion. Of 28 students, she identified 21 who needed guided reading and these were divided into four groups (three groups of six, and one group of three). The group of three was made up of students who were in most need of support. Each group received four halfhour sessions of guided reading every week. Cynthia spent the first 10 minutes listening to them read, gently tapping her finger on the table in front of the person whose turn it was to read. Sometimes she would ask them to frame particular words with their fingers, and she encouraged phrasing and fluency. In the next 10 minutes, she would focus on working with words, for example, studying some of the onset or rime patterns and building sight vocabulary. During this segment, children had ample opportunities to manipulate words and word parts through the extensive use of a small whiteboard, a mini pocket chart, letter tiles and ‘sticky wickies’ (thin velcro strips used to underline tricky or interesting words). Children were also encouraged to carry out word-stretching activities, whereby Cynthia had students ‘stretch out’ the sounds in the unknown word to figure it out and then pointed out similar words. In the final 10 minutes, students were introduced to a new book, or section of a book, through prediction activities, vocabulary building and comprehension strategies. While these groups were participating in guided reading, the rest of the class was engaged in literacy centres. In the literacy centres, Cynthia maintained the students’ engagement through her effective use of choice, organisational variety and knowledge of their readiness for particular tasks. In one of the weekly sessions, for example, children could choose one of the two writing centres (fairy tale writing or adventure writing), or any of the other centres (listening post, reading, drama or creative connection). The fairy tale centre required children to write an apology letter (modelled during shared writing) to the three bears. Before their writing, they had the option of reading the fairy tale on their own or listening to it at the listening centre. In one of the literacy centres (drama), two Grade 3 girls who Cynthia described as advanced, were responding Figure 1: Work products Literacy Volume 42 Number 1 April 2008 7 r UKLA 2008 to the task of picking a fairy tale and writing interview questions for one of the characters. The nature of their assignment was somewhat different from that of another student, James, who was on an individual educational plan (IEP), yet working towards the same understanding. The teacher helped James formulate some of the questions, which were fewer and less complex than the ones the two girls had written. Instead of writing the interview questions, Cynthia suggested that James and his friend Philip make an audio recording of the interview. All of the students were working towards the same essential understandings of formulating questions and developing an understanding of the characters, but they were provided different access routes to this understanding. In another literacy centre, the adventure-writing centre, students were writing a story about their recently transformed pet monster. This art project, made in the creative connection centre, involved drawing a pet monster the same size as the children, then cutting it in thirds and swapping parts to make a curious-looking pet. Cynthia’s shared writing session about an adventure with the pet was sufficient instruction for the majority of students to begin their stories. However, Callie, who had a learning disability, and two reluctant writers who consistently struggled to start their writing, needed instructions that were more extended and explicit. Expert tutoring (ET) and additional supports (AS) Support for reluctant and struggling writers was provided in two distinct ways in Cynthia’s classroom: through ET and through AS. In the adventure-writing assignment, Cynthia gave students a prompt sheet with the same questions from their shared writing session, scribed their initial thoughts and provided them with a three-part story frame (physical description, pet’s problem, solution). Later, in the writing centre, when students were assigned a choice of written response activities, Cynthia was proactive in anticipating the needs of her struggling students by planning AS to supplement the core activity. Figure 2 shows an example of response activities and the AS for the struggling students. Students chose one activity from each row. Cynthia had managed to differentiate instruction for the struggling learners while engaging the rest of the students in meaningful literacy experiences. She worked with the whole group to demonstrate how print works through shared reading and writing activities. Students worked in small groups for a variety of purposes. Cynthia matched pupils to texts and pupils to tasks in several ways: by giving them choices, by making choices for them and by scaffolding instruction. She also provided interesting topics, choice and collaboration, and recognised the power of the reading and writing reciprocal connection to foster engagement and learning. She nudged them along, celebrating their approximations of fluency in reading and writing and fully expecting them to participate in the public display of their accomplishments in the learning community. Constructing a differentiated classroom Differentiated instruction helps students understand and apply content and processes in their literacy learning and to have choices about their different learning experiences. Just as students need a variety of ways to represent their understandings and make sense of literacy, so also teachers need variations on differentiated instruction that match their own professional profile, curriculum focus and school resources. A DI approach can be a powerful organising framework in the language arts classroom because of its broad evidential and theoretical base, drawing on sociocultural perspectives (e.g. Vygotsky, 1978). DI also emphasises flexible instructional groupings known to facilitate reading comprehension and fluency (Vaughn et al., 2003). DI provides opportunities for students to work independently and with others on authentic literacy tasks, while providing explicit instruction on reading and writing strategies, and creating a motivating and supportive literacy environment. It is also of critical importance for teachers to have an understanding that, if they are to learn how to use reading and writing strategies, struggling students Figure 2: Example of response options and additional supports 8 Variations in differentiated literacy instruction r UKLA 2008 often need explicit, direct and extended instruction beyond what is provided in the whole-class setting. A DI approach assumes difference at the outset and proactively sets out to assess, accommodate and celebrate difference in creative ways for the benefit of all learners. Such responsive teaching bodes well for literacy learners across the ability and diversity spectrum. References ALLINGTON, R. L. (2002) What I’ve learned about effective reading instruction from a decade of studying exemplary elementary classroom teachers. Phi Delta Kappan, 83.10, pp. 740–747. BAUMANN, J. F., HOFFMAN, J. V., DUFFY-HESTER, A. M. and RO, J. M. 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CONTACT THE AUTHORS: Ruthanne Tobin, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Faculty of Education, PO BOX 3010 STN CSC Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3NH. e-mail: [email protected] Alison McInnes, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4. e-mail: [email protected] Literacy Volume 42 Number 1 April 2008 9 r UKLA 2008