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Language Arts:
Differentiating Instruction for Reading,
Vocabulary, Spelling and Penmanship
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Reading
Language learning is arguably the most important thing we teach, because language
is infused in all subjects. To build capacity with language, students must be exposed
to as much reading in their comfort level and instructional level as possible.
Independent Reading
An effective literacy promotion program includes free choice reading. Research tells
us that when it comes to improving reading fluency, stamina, speed, and
comprehension, quantity counts.
10 Effective School-Wide Reading Initiatives:
1. Make it possible for children to own books
2. Show kids that the adults in the school value reading
3. Ritualize reading (SSR or DEAR)
4. Read aloud to children
5. Use every possible media opportunity to promote reading:
Book reviews as part of the morning announcements.
6. Institutionalize reading conversations: use small group book
conversations as opposed to written book reports.
7. Keep plenty of high-interests reading material around.
8. Have older children read to younger children.
9. Keep teachers up-to-date in the research on the cognitive,
social and emotional dimensions of reading.
10. Encourage teachers to read and share what they’ve read,
including both professional and leisure reading.
Differentiated Instruction Performance Tasks for Reading
Assessment
These tasks can be used as formative or summative assessments for independent
reading.
The Book Box
The book box is a shoebox in which the student places various items that
represent key objects in the story. The students identify objects and show
how these objects reveal the theme, characterization, setting, and other
literary elements.
Lists and Maps
• Props: students list and explain the significance of them handheld
items that appear in the book.
• Character Star chart: students express the main and minor
characters and their relationship to each other in the form of a chart.
• Key Verbs: Students list and explain 10 key actions in the story.
Write 10 key verbs and explain who does each verb.
 Displays
• First and last sentence: Students make an attractive poster using
visual images to show the story, featuring the first and last sentence
of the book.
• Multi-perceptions: Students make a display that shows how a
character feels about herself and how others feel about her.
• Museum: students make a museum to exhibit their representations
of their books.

Reading Informational Text

With informational text, as with literary text, learning must be actively constructed
(by the learner, with the assistance of the teacher). Some ways of making that
happen in differentiated ways are:
• Concept mapping
• Having students make up mock tests
• Summoning prior knowledge
• Using multisensory techniques
• Sharing knowledge and questions with peers
Readers need to learn to integrate multiple forms of information. Some
differentiated ways to do this are as follows:
• Go from word to picture or from picture to word depending on which
is more effective for the individual.
• Develop a strategy for moving around the page
• Overview captions and headings.

Vocabulary
Teachers need to plan a wide array of activities, exercises, conversational contexts,
and reinforcements in order to effectively teach students to learn new words.
Vocabulary learning must be contextual, enthusiastic, purposeful and gradual if it is
to be lasting.

Three Ways to Learn New Words

The work of Allan Hunt and David Beglar divides vocabulary learning into three
categories:
• Incidental Learning: Students are exposed to extensive reading and are
listening to language at their instructional level.
• Explicit Instruction: Teachers present and analyze new words for students,
helping them to understand structure, suffixes, and prefixes.
• Independent Strategy Development: Students learn how to learn new
words through contextual clues, dictionary and glossary use, etymology, and
maximizing personal learning style such as visualization, memorization, and
categorization.

Other adaptations of the principles of word-learning

• Incidental learning of new words is all about exposure: Read, read, read.
• Concentrate on high-frequency words: What words are students most likely to
use, hear, and read?
• Nurture new words: Explicit word-teaching is most effective when words are
used in meaningful contexts.
 • Be deliberate in how you cluster words: Learning a word provides an
opportunity to learn its family and friends. Semantics (synonyms, antonyms)
etymology (prefixes, suffixes, roots)
• It’s better to learn a few words thoroughly over time than to try to learn many
words over a short spurt of time: Try teaching 5 to 7 words per week rather
than 20 to 30. To get more mileage out of the 5 to 7 words, teach them along
with related words.

Assessment: Beyond the Vocabulary Quiz

Ben Trellis gives every student in his language arts class his or her own vocabulary
quiz, based on the words each child has decided to learn. The day before the quiz,
Ben’s students write down the words that they want to be quizzed on. They write
these words down the left-hand column. They’ve taken these words from their
reading vocabulary journals of the basal reader or from the newspaper. The next
day, he hands them back their own quizzes and has them fill in definitions in the
right-hand column.

Spelling
The spelling of a word gives us clues to its meaning, and we are more likely to use a
word in writing if we are confident about its spelling. Spelling is one of the most
teachable skills and one of the easiest to differentiate instruction for.
The following are various ways to improve spelling:
• Explanations: “I need to know why.” Think of words as archeologist would – a
word’s history gives clues to its construction. Prefixes are simply tacked on to
the beginning of a word, while suffixes are added in accordance with certain
fairly rules.
• Repetition: “I need to go over and over it.” Learners with a strong musical
sense can learn to spell through finding the rhythm of the words.
• Kinesthetic: “I need to know it in my hands.” “Air writing” works well for
many learners.
• Visuals: “I need to see it.” Most people are strong visual learners. Posting
words around the room is a powerful reinforce.
• Multisensory Combinations: “I need the whole body spelling experience.” The
see-say-write method has proven useful for special education students.

Penmanship
Penmanship is not a critical thinking skill. It’s a motor skill, highly dependent on
getting the fundaments right. We should not take for granted that some people just
have chicken scratch for handwriting,” and we shouldn’t overlook the fact that those
people will be disadvantaged later in school when teachers have to read their
handwritten essays, which is still a fact of life. Just as children learn to adjust their
speech registers depending on audience and purpose, so should they have a “dress-
up” handwriting for writing that others will read, and a “dress-down” one suitable for
notes and other personal writing.
Techniques that improve penmanship. These activities build
muscle memory and fluidity:
• Tracing
• Finger painting
• Constructing letters out of clay
• Air writing
• Practicing circles, arcs and lines
• Drawing waves on the sea