Scaffolding
Erica taught a unit on writing biography while her teacher mentor's reading units centred around biography picture books. A small number of students were at an emerging level of literacy, which meant reading and writing could be quite difficult. Using scaffolding to differentiate versions of the materials allowed all students to work on the same unit in a way that was appropriately challenging.
BIOGRAPHY: LEVEL 1
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BIOGRAPHY: LEVEL 2
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Overview
The focus of the biography unit was on reinforcing research skills that students had been introduced to on a previous unit, learning to write paragraphs, and biography as a genre. All students were given a choice of who they wanted to write about, as long as it was someone we could research through multiple sources at school (so Mom and Dad were out of the question). The booklets above were adapted from a resource written by Melissa Shutler that my teacher mentor shared with me.
Additional differentiation occurred outside of the materials shown.
Additional differentiation occurred outside of the materials shown.
- Students working on the level 1 materials have better aural comprehension than reading, so they were given additional support with text to speech features on the school computers. This empowered them to gather more information independently by listening to written articles found online.
- Students working on the level 1 materials often dictated their ideas and had someone scribe on a whiteboard for them. They then copied their own words into the booklet.
- Sometimes when students were struggling to get things written, I would scribe for them to help keep them moving.
Benefits
- Students working on the level 1 materials appeared to feel successful and included in the same work as the rest of the class.
- Students working on the level 1 materials were able to provide examples and support to classmates on level 2 materials and during mini-lessons.
- Students working beyond the level 2 materials could stretch to include more information and write more complex sentences.
Limitations & Areas for Improvement
- In hindsight, it would have been best to create a level between these two as there were several students in between.
- I had to add more scaffolding for most students for the paragraph writing. Even though these materials break the research into sections that can each become a paragraph, we had to do several lessons on topic sentences and paragraphs.
Student Work
Level 1
Level 2