Differentiaion techniques
1. Getting to know your students.
  • Listen and take notes when your students do getting-to-know-eachother exerciese and games.
  • Let your students write a letter to you introducing themselves to you. You will also get an idea about their writing ability.
  • Allow your students to get to know you. This will encouage them to do the same.
  • Personalise activities whenever possible. Ask student for their opinions and encourage them  to share their experiences and aspirations.
  • Ensure you get to know the shy individuals.
  • Train your students to sit in another place every class next to different people.
  • Keep a (confidential) page with notes about your students.

 

2. Addressing the class.

  • When asking questions to the class (during your teacher talk) think carefully about which questions you ask and to whom. If cerrtain students dominate, use names to give everybody a chance. Ask less confident students yes/no questions and ask the confidential students open-ended questions or to explain the answer another student just gave.
  • Supplement your teacher talk by putting writing prompts on the board. This supports weaker listeners, stimulates more linguistically-aware students(who might notice spelling), etc.
  • Appeal to more visual learners by emphasising points with a picture or exaggerated body language.

 

3. Grouping the students.

  • Group learners according to differences but also similarities, depending on the exercise.
  • Try grouping students according to other factors, like interests, experiences, attitudes, etc.
  • You the possibility to re-group after a certain exercise.
  • Consier having permanent groupings (colour, theme, animal, etc.) for certain exercises.

 

4. Focusing on language.

  • Appeal to different larning styles by varying the ways you present the target language.
  • Encourage students to notice language in any written or oral text.
  • Build up a collection which recycle the particular target language in different ways.
  • Refer to students' L1, eliciting from them differences or similarities with the target language.

 

5. Providing skills tasks.

  • Use differentiation in two ways: 1. Same task, but different outcome (writing a horror story, some write a longer story then others), or 2. different task, same outcome (listening to a text/with prompts/tapescript and listen for detailed understanding).

 

6. Managing learning.

  • At the start of a course, let sstudents write down three things they want to achieve and how.
  • Vary class feedback techniques and train your students to assess their own and peers' progress. Use checklists from which students choose aims at the start of lessons and then assess their progress at the end.
  • Remember that students have different expectations of you as a teacher, so discuss feedback and error-correction methods openly and consider how directly to express feedback to each student.

Report Place comment