Activity: Differentiation Strategies

As the previous activities, I chose three strategies to summarize and use in my planner, but in that case, these are differentiation strategies, in which you have to establish different tasks or groups in the same activity:

The strategies that I have chosen to develop different activities related to my planner topic 'Living in society' and the age of my group (Primary 3) are the following:

First of all, a strategy that I found interesting to use is 'Tiered activites'. I consider it a good strategy because it takes into account the different learning needs of each student. It consists on using the same topic or activity but in different complexity levels, so the activity is adapted to the skills and capcities of each child. In that way, the activity is appropriately challenging for each one and we avoid that students feel overwhelmed or bored. The steps to prepare this type of activity are the following:

Firstly, the teacher has to establish the general topic, concepts and skills that all the students have to achieve with this activity. After that, we choose a common material or activity and we adapt it in three different levels:

Low level: students who are struggling with the activity (it requires less difficulty or a low level of abtraction)

Medium level: students who are average learners (use concrete concepts and abstracts concepts)

High level: students who are advanced learners (It is focus on abstract concepts and open-ended questions)

To know how to establish each student in one of the three levels, it is important to take into account previous information that you know about each of them from previous activities and also, doing an introductory activity to be aware of the knowledge of each of them about this topic.

It could be useful draw a ladder to represent the activity and its different levels of complexity and the position of each student that can vary depends on its progress.

Moreover, It is important that each child would be situated in the correct group, so the activity has to be beyond their confort zone, but accesible for them.

The activity that I propose using this strategy is focused on something that affects society nowdays: gender violence.

Firstly, to start working about this topic, the teacher will do an introductory activity based on a debate through asking different questions that vary on their complexity level, from concrete ideas to more abstract concepts.

What are the similarities and differences between men and women? (Here we can see which children focus on appearance or more abstract concepts such as personality, behavior,etc)

What things can just men do and what things are just for women? Why? ( Here we are asking about specific examples but they have to reflect about it)

What is gender violence? Is it something good or bad? What can we do to change this situation? (These questions are about an abstract concept and requieres a high level of thinking)

While children are answering and discussing about it, the teacher should take notes about their answers and start situating them in each level.

When we have clear the level of each student, each children is situated in the part of the class for each level. The material that all the groups will use is the tale 'Arturo and Clementina' (Adela Turín, 2012) We will read the text together and after that, each group will start to work in a different activity about this tale.

Low level activity: This group of students will have to find the positive and negative phrases and expressions that Arturo says to Clementina and answer the following questions:

How do you think Clementina felt with each prhase?

How would you feel if someone says to you each prhase?

Middle level activity: In this activity, students will reflect about specific pages of the tale, through more abstract questions but still using concrete situations.

P. 26-33: What does Clementina ask to Arturo? What does he do? Why does Arturo think that Clementina would be happy with all these objects? How does she really feel? How does she feel when she goes out her shell?Why does she feel better?

Advanced level activity: this group will reflect about the pages 34 for 39. They will write an explantion to help Arturo to understand why Clementina wasn't happy with all these presents.

As you can see, the activity vary from more concrete situations and questions to activities that requieres a larger range of thinking, creation, imagination and capacity of expression.

The following strategy is called 'Stations'. Here we can find diferent stations around the classroom where students work in different tasks simultaneously. They can decide the topic of each station and the time to spend there, but it can vary depends on the teacher's choice. Moreover, the contents of all the unit are around the different stations, so instead of introducing the material progresively, students can find all the contents of the unit around different activities that they can choose around the class.

The activities that I propose related to this topic would be and they would be presented around the different corners of the class would be the following:

Cultures and diversity corner: they will find a map, some characters thar represent members of different cultures (Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, English and African) and sentences in which appear elements of the different cultures. Children in group will have to decide which character is with each country and the sentences related with that culture. Consequently, children will learns about aspects of different cultures.

Civic rules corner: children will write in a poster positive rules that are necessary to live in society.

Values corner: they will find words that are values such as love, respect, etc. Each of them will choose one and paint a picture that represent that value for him/her.

Positive relationships corner: Here they will find a mailbox. Each student will write a letter to whom they want saying something positive about this person and expressing its feelings.

Student's choice corner: Here they will do an activity that pupils will have decided and voted previously about the current topic.

To move around the different corners they will have a poster in each of them in which there will be 5 gaps where they could put a label with each name. When they want to move to another corner, they will have to move their label and situate it in a corner that it isn't full.

To finish, the last strategy that I have chosen is 'the cubing strategy'. In this strategy, we use cubes in which there are questions, directions or prompts in their side. Each side should develop different intelligence levels and all of them are focus on a topic. Each cube can be differenciated in different levels (high, average or low level) depends on the capacities of students. Students can be divided in groups a work with a cube together.

In my specific activity, I would divide my class in three  groups, using the levels in which I divided the class in the previous strategy. Each group would have two cubes, all of them related to the topic developed in my planner 'Living in society'. In one of them, it would have words and concepts written related to the topic  The concepts will vary from the more concrete (Ex: nationalities, countries,etc.) to the more abstract (Ex: culture, peace, values, etc.) On the other hand, the skills and instructions to use these words will be written in the other cube. The intelligence levels to develop will be the following:

- Describe: children would have to describe the word that appears on the other cube.

- Compare: In this side, students have to compare two of the concepts of the other cube, talking about the similarities and differences between them.

- Contrast: Here, using one of the words of the other cube, they would think about another concept that means the opposite and explain it.

- Analyze: Through this strategy, they look for extra information about the concept of the other cube (what it is, examples, types...) using books, the Internet...

- Evaluate: they have to evaluate how the situation in society is related to the concept that appears on the cube. Firstly, giving their opinion and after that, looking for real information about it on the Internet.

- Imagine: They would have to invent a short story using the concept of the cube.

They will roll the dice several times, so they will practise the different intelligence levels through different concepts. Firstly, the teacher will explain each side of the dice and after that,  he will be a supervisor, checking that each group is following the rules, clarifying doubts and giving advices.