In the early 2000’s, there was a lot of talk about differentiated instruction picking up steam. Whether or not it was just another bandwagon remains to be seen, but it strikes me that differentiating middle and high school social studies classes is not only de rigeur right now but it is the right thing to do. Like anything else, how this is done is worth considering.
As a beginning teacher in the early ’90s, my unconscious goal was to teach the course so every kid would aim to get an A. The unspoken, unchallenged notion seemed to have been that every kid who works hard enough can, and therefore should, get an A. Disabusing myself of this notion improved my teaching practice and, therefore, my students’ progress.
I offer the analogy of a paper grocery bag, when overfilled, breaks at the bottom and all the groceries are lost. It is probably a question of cognitive load, or overload, as the case may be, that inhibits encoding of information into long-term memory.
The concept begins with the idea that the average student across the world earns probably a C or C+ in most courses. That is, after all, the definition of average. This is really the goal of instruction for the majority of students. The mandate is to pass. I was greatly influenced by a paper from 1993 (Dempster, F. N. (1993). Exposing Our Students to Less Should Help Them Learn More. Phi Delta Kappan) in which the author argued that limiting the amount of content delivered will increase how much students retain. Much instruction seems to be guided by the notion that if we inundate students with knowledge they will scoop up more of it, as much as they can. The opposite is the case. I offer the analogy of a paper grocery bag, when overfilled, breaks at the bottom and all the groceries are lost. It is probably a question of cognitive load, or overload, as the case may be, that inhibits encoding of information into long-term memory. The “Basic Proficiency” curriculum is a parallel set of modified tasks for the regular classroom that may be accessed by anybody any time whether special education or not.
The beneficiary of this program is the student who struggles to get that C+ in the course. Their performance and satisfaction is enhanced by offering less; more manageable chunks of data to process, integrate, and retain.
So that’s the theory. In practice, it calls for a lot of preparation. I selected key assignments for modification: the reading task, the multiple-choice quiz, a writing task, and capstone options. The system worked thus (scroll to the bottom for sample parallel curricula): students electing basic proficiency at the start of a unit needed to declare their intention at the start. Then as the unit progressed, they accessed the modified versions of each assignment. When I moved my course materials completely online to go paperless in 2019, students changed from pulling modified assignments from a different folder to accessing a different set of links at Innovation Assessments.
For this kind of differentiated instruction to realize its full benefit, it must be paired with some remediation time outside class.
Fairness
I began developing this strategy about 2007. There are a number of key things I learned along the way. The first was to address the issue of fairness. A reasonable critique of differentiated instruction, and an element of this practice that was often overlooked by its proponents in the beginning, was the importance of ensuring that assignments that were different were actually of equivalent value. If student A is doing less than student B, how can student A reasonably expect to earn the same marks as student B? Furthermore, there were cases where strong students chose basic proficiency because they wanted an easy grade. Both of these problems were resolved by setting limits on the maximum score a student could earn on a modified task.
One of my friends in the special education department once made the case that a student with disabilities who was doing their best within their ability should be entitled to an A. I took a more conservative position on this, maintaining that the value of a work product was little influenced by the effort of the producer. There were valid and reliable ways of measuring the quality of student essays and the criteria were unaffected by ability.
Differentiated Reading
I would suggest that one of the key features of this plan, one which I embraced with some reservations at first, was to offer different levels of textbook reading for students on the basic plan. I was able to find history textbooks at a fifth grade reading level for all my classes (I was teaching US history in grades seven and eight and global history in grades nine and ten). In advance of the school year, I selected page numbers of articles that mirrored what was to be assigned from the standard textbook. Students process text in my classes using one of two methods, the “five and Three summary” (blog post coming soon on that) or Cornell Note Taking.
It should be noted that these texts contained about half as many words in a larger font and less than half the information of the standard text. Students choosing the easier reading were also choosing to learn less content. While they may learn some of the missing content from other activities such as my lecture, they were still having less served up to them.
Many assignments were the same for everybody. Each unit progressed through the same type of activities, key elements of which were offered on a modified basis. Management considerations dictated that students had to choose one package or another, Standard Inquiry or Basic Proficiency, on a unit-by-unit basis. the could not choose on a task-by-task basis. It was not possible to manage it.
Don’t Worry: There was plenty of enrichment for advanced students.
In the spirit of differentiation, I maintained a collection of college level books my ambitious learners could choose for their reading assignments. I had developed rubrics for more sophisticated versions of our essay work so students could attempt the next grade level of work. Differentiating for these students was done on a task-by-task basis and less formally, but being self-directed scholars they managed this mostly themselves. I only needed to provide the materials and encouragement to challenge them.
So How Did It Go?
I carried out the plan for a little over ten years in all my classes, grades seven through ten social studies. I found some interesting things. Firstly, I discovered that weaker students who chose basic proficiency in grades seven and eight mostly moved to standard inquiry by grades nine and ten. They tired of the maximum score limitations and they developed the skills to approach academics more effectively by having materials at their ability level to work on. Secondly, I discovered that some students who would be candidates for basic proficiency would sometimes choose standard inquiry if they liked the topic. The American Civil War was often one that had most people doing standard work. The effect of this was to give the weaker students confidence.
In 2012, I did a study of student progress on the plan to see whether I wished to continue it. Results were strong enough to continue the practice.
But then I could not do it anymore…
In my last year teaching social studies before retiring, I had to discontinue the program. The reasons were practical. My course assignments and rosters increased during this time period. A big disappointment for me was the loss of this extra remediation time in my schedule. I lost my remediation periods in the schedule in favor of teaching more courses (we taught six different subjects / grade levels where I worked). This showed me that modifying the work was sometimes not enough. Some students needed more time with their teacher outside of class and being denied this was a serious blow to my program. For this kind of differentiated instruction to realize its full benefit, it must be paired with some remediation time outside class even if only thirty minutes a week.
When I did a study of the work submission rates of my students during the remote learning of the pandemic, I discovered that there was a huge drop in work submission and homework completion overall starting after 2017 when my remedial class periods were cancelled. I invite the reader to return in the future and read my blog post on my experiences teaching in the pandemic. Pertinent to this discussion, the detrimental effect of eliminating extra help for my students was demonstrable over time.
I present this basic proficiency idea to the reader as a possibility they might consider for their classrooms. I found it to be a recipe for success, especially when paired with appropriate remediation. One needs to bear in mind that even when the assignments are all prepared in advance, there is a significant investment in time for management of the plan and for scoring a wider variety of assignments. Technology can help a lot with this (Like the Innovation Assessments learning platform!) but schools are advised to provide teachers who do this enough planning time and student contact time to make it happen. It is rewarding for the learner and well worth the investment.