Teaching and Learning in English - Secondary

IDEAS FOR DIFFERENTIATION IN THE SECONDARY ENGLISH

CLASSROOM

1. Plan/do/review.
Pupils may be given a task for which the outcomes are open-ended
e.g. to plan a multi-media campaign on an issue or to promote a
product. Pupils work collaboratively to undertake the work. Time is
given for review and reflection on their management of the task.

2. Working from a Difficult Text.

Able pupils use a more difficult style to emulate e.g. satire or
parody. Set tasks which require genre transformation e.g. rework
a text or part of it into another text type; a short story into a film
script, a recount into a set of instructions.

3. Using a range of text or information.

Pupils work on a range of texts to compare different writers’
treatments of similar themes. For example, childhood in ‘Jane
Eyre’, ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’, ‘Cider with Rosie’, ‘The Diary of Anne
Frank’ and ‘Charlie Chaplin, My Early Years’.
Teach different writers’ techniques for creating tension and
suspense using, for example, ‘The Open Window’ (Saki), ‘All But
Empty’ (Graham Greene), ‘The Landlady’ (Roald Dahl)

4. Recording in an unusual way.

Pupils might be asked to plot the changing fortunes of a character
or the changing natural settings and events in a novel (pathetic
fallacy as in “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry”) in the form of a time
line or graph as an aide memoir.

5. Role Play.
Pupils are asked to present the viewpoints of a character in the
form of a diary, or ‘on the psychiatrist’s couch’ presentation. More
able pupils may be given the more contrary characters to portray
e.g. the Nurse (in ‘Romeo and Juliet’) or the more enigmatic e.g.
Mercutiso. Use other drama techniques, hot-seating, thought-
tracking or tableau to explore text.

6. Problem-solving/enquiry tasks.
Develop a problem-solving approach to “the way that texts work”;

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 ask not ‘what effect is the text having on me as a reader of it’ but
‘what effect is the text aiming to have on me as a reader of it?’
which requires the pupil to consider the author’s intent.

7. Choice in how to handle content

Offer alternatives in the ways in which pupils present a body of
knowledge e.g. events in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ could be recounted in a
diary, letter, or report format.

8 Decision Making
This may take the form of an argumentative piece e.g. “Who was
most responsible for the death of Eva Smith?” (‘An Inspector
Calls’) in which pupils are required to communicate an analysis of a
number of characters’ actions and to weigh this against each other
to come to a considered conclusion.

9. No correct answer.
Many opportunities arise for this kind of activity in English in tasks
which ask pupils to take a viewpoint or make an interpretation and
to justify these with evidence from the text.

10. Give the answer; they set the question.

Give one group of pupils the information (fiction or non-fiction)
which they present for others. Pupils could be asked to compile a
set of quiz questions as part of a revision programme or to design a
crossword on a text for others to complete.

11. Using one text or artefact.

e.g. a crown or a dagger with relevant lines from Macbeth as an
introduction to the text. Pupils work out from the limited
resources given to develop themes of kingship, ambition, murder,
betrayal.

12. Allowing pupils to do the planning.

Ask pupils to decide what the criteria for success might be for a
task.

13. Time restricted activities.

e.g. give pupils a variety of newspaper items of differing levels of

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 “newsworthiness”, develop a sense of urgency against a time
deadline to produce a front page. This can be most effectively
simulated using ICT. Against a time limit more able pupils may be
asked to appraise a text quickly, retrieving information from it and
evaluating it for other members of the group. An oral activity
might be an outside broadcast or news flash.

14. Developing Metacognition

Encourage pupils to reflect on and identify their thinking
processes. For example ask pupils to make a set plan for a scene in
a play with detailed annotations re props, costume, etc. and to make
an oral presentation of the processes they went through to
complete the task. Use pupils as observers of others working in a
group to feedback on the group’s strengths and weaknesses.

15. Bloom’s higher order thinking.

Refer to the EXEL model when planning any comprehension activity.
Use questions which require analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
“How do you think x feels……?”

16. Study skills.

Use DARTs activities to interrogate text e.g. text marking,
diagram construction, flowcharts, segmenting, tabulating.
Reconstructive activities such as paragraph or sentence deletion
i.e. where pupils are given a skeleton of the original text such as
the first or last paragraphs only. Pupils discuss what they think
the missing elements might be about, possibly inserting a version
consistent with the style of the sections provided.

17. Introducing technical language -

and particularly the language of literary criticism. Ask pupils to
label a poem to identify all the technical and literary features that
they recognise.

18. Modelling experts.

E.g. visiting poets, writers, interviewing a local journalist or
publisher/printer. Talking to a librarian about the work that goes
into selecting reading material for a wide readership.

19. Philosophy
Develop philosophical thought e.g. who was Inspector Goole and

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 what did he represent? (‘An Inspector Calls’); consideration of
moral issues arising from Shylock’s actions and the treatment of
Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’; discussion of the spiritual
dimension and influences pervading Blake’s poetry.

20. Book talk.

Clearly integral to the subject. Allow time for reading conferences
in which pupils can operate as expert critical readers.