Differentiation for One; Differentiation for All

Throughout the course of this teacher education program, I have continually come across the topic of differentiation in all aspects of teaching and teaching English. The most important thing I have learned about differentiation is that what you do for one student, a type of student, or a particular group of students, you essentially do for all your students. By doing something like reading aloud in front of the class to help a student who has difficulty reading, you also help ELL students, auditory learners, and all learners as the instruction is reinforcing and comes in different forms. I have encountered this bit of information yet again in reading about teaching writing to students who speak with different dialects in "Dialects and Writing" from Dialects in Schools and Communities written by Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian. This text discusses the paradox many students of English face: talking is a different language than writing.

Most speakers of English, no matter what their background, will speak differently than they write. In turn all students of English need to learn the language of written English, or rather Standard English, as this English is used in the workplace and higher education. In order for a person to navigate and properly communicate in our society, they must have a handle on Standard English. This can often be troublesome to students who grow up with different vernacular dialects where the syntax of their words, or the structures of their stories are often different than the boundaries set by Standard English. The article mentioned above discusses the importance of student from different vernacular dialects to be fluent in the Standard English form in writing. I would argue that all students have some difficulty in the differences between written and spoken English, as they are indeed different, and all students need fluency in Standard English, but it is no doubt that speakers of certain dialects will have much more difficulty than a student who grew up speaking close to Standard English.

In finding ways to help students from vernacular dialect backgrounds with their writing, the article mentions different key factors in teaching writing to these students. This differentiation the article suggests for these students will not only help the group of students they are directed for, but the variation in instruction will help all students. One suggestion the article mentions is "regular and substantial practice in writing, aimed at developing in fluency in writing" (Adger et al., 118). This is no doubt an important aspect for students of vernacular dialect backgrounds, but it will also help ELL students in their English skills, and any student in the classroom to strengthen their writing. The article also mentions strategies like teaching the different stages of writing (pre-writing, drafting, and revising), teaching writing strategies and techniques, and reading various writings of published literature to the writings of peers.

All of these strategies mentioned here and noted in the article are things I think a teacher would want to do for all of her students. It seems the important lesson here is that a teacher needs to do more than just stand in front of the class filling heads with knowledge; the teacher needs to instruct the students in a variety of ways to better reach all students despite their dialect, background, or learning style. Providing a variety of instructional methods to your students is one of the best things you can do for them. Differentiation doesn't have to mean doing one activity for ELL students, another for a student with a writing disability, and yet another for a student from a vernacular dialect. Differentiation means providing different forms of instruction and learning for your students, i.e. not doing the same activity/learning mode every day. I'm sure there are times when providing a very specified form of instruction for students of different needs will be needed, but I don't think differentiation needs to be as daunting as it seems. Providing different modes of instruction will be exciting for students and the teacher as well.

This leaves me with a couple of questions to ponder:

If teachers were to really focus on teaching in multi-modal ways, will there still be students who are left out? students who are not receiving the instruction they need?

Is it possible to reach all the different needs of students by simply providing them with different instructional modes, or do we need to tailor differentiation to specific types of students? Can we really direct our instruction to all learners and yet reach all students?

And now for the link of the week:

Center for Applied Linguistics

This website talks about communication, and making communication effective through the study of language and culture. The website talks about ELL's, dialects, foreign language learners, immigration, and more. One specific article that caught my eye is one on vernacular dialects in schools. This article talks about guidelines for teaching standard dialect, the issue of dialect, and the opportunities dialects provide. This website seems to be a useful tool for any teacher with a diverse student body.