Episode 394: Whole-Group Differentiation: 5 Strategies You Can Use Tomorrow

Hello, March and welcome back to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. So today, I shared five simple, whole-group strategies that make differentiation workable and sustainable without adding extra lesson plans. The focus stays on one learning target while offering many entry points so every student can think, speak, and succeed.

• redefining differentiation as access to the same skill
• using mini experts to preview and build confidence
• writing key steps and stems on the board
• offering choice questions at varied depths
• adding question extensions for early finishers
• using wait time plus write time for equity
• starting with one tactic twice a week, then layering

If you're interested in learning more, simply go to: ebacademics.com

YouTube Episode mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQzWh_EBU0U

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Aim

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All right, you guys, welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. And I will be sharing with you five different strategies for whole group differentiation that you can use tomorrow. And I'm excited about this episode. We've talked about this before on the podcast a couple of years ago. And I thought that these were such great ideas that I wanted to bring them back to the forefront of your brain. So before we dive into today's episode, though, I want to just share a little story with you that might sound familiar. And if this is you, I'm sure you're nodding your head. But when I was in my master's program, I was in my first and second year teaching. I was gosh, 22, 23, 24 years old. And in my master's program, the way that they taught us to differentiate when we were learning how to create lessons and all of that stuff was like multiple lessons for multiple learners, all within the same unit and lesson itself. So it's like every day for my lessons, I was doing four different types of activities or question sets or whatever it might be. And it was extraordinarily hard for me as a first and second year teacher to take these concepts that in theory are great, right? You're in your master's program in a classroom with a bunch of other educators, and you're like, yeah, this sounds so helpful. This is what students need, this is gonna be great. But then when you take that theory and you actually put it into practice, it's so overwhelming that you actually can't make it happen in practice. And I think so often that happens with master's programs or when we're in school or when we're learning about things. It's like, yeah, that's great in theory, but does it actually work in practice? And so in this first couple of years that I was teaching, and I I was learning that like this is what differentiation looked like, I just kind of didn't do it because it was so overwhelming. I just froze, right? The thought of it was just so daunting. I was like, I can't do this for this is crazy. And what I want to share with you today are five strategies that don't do that to you at all, and in fact are so applicable in practice that you wouldn't even think about them as differentiation strategies when you're talking about theory in a master's program. So if you have felt that way too, that differentiation requires all of these different levels and all of this different, you know, planning on your part and all of this stuff that it that's not necessarily what we have to be doing on a consistent basis. Sure, for some things, sometimes maybe, but on a daily practice, no. I want you to think about differentiation as being multiple access points for students to the same lesson, to the same skill. So the five strategies that I'm gonna share with you today are all for whole group. And you could take any one of these and you could very easily implement it tomorrow in your classroom. And I really hope that this kind of just gives you a different way to think about differentiation as opposed to maybe what you've been taught or read about in books and things like that. That again, theory, great, practice, not so great. So let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune in to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. All right, so before we dive in, I want to just give you kind of like a phrase or a thought or a belief to hold on to that different or different, sorry, I'm gonna brain part, differentiation is just different access to the same skill. So again, differentiation is just different access to the same skill. It's the same learning target, right? Same whole group lesson, same text, same discussion, but we just have different entry points for our students. So different supports or different extensions. But that's it. And I want to offer you that belief because when we stop thinking about differentiation as needing to create so many different lessons, you can start thinking about it as how do I design one lesson where every kid can enter that lesson. And that belief starts to kind of change everything because you don't have to have this thought that you have to do more work for your lessons. You just have to design more intelligently. And that's what we're gonna do today. So it's the whole concept of work smarter, not harder. And that's exactly what we're doing with these strategies. So I'm gonna share five different strategies. And as I go through them, I want you to just pick the one that feels the most like sustainable for you, that you could consistently do that maybe two times a week. And if you can just stay consistent with two times a week with one of these strategies, what happens is it becomes so subconscious to you, right? It becomes so natural that you just do it. Then you can add another one of these strategies and you begin to layer all of the different strategies as opposed to saying, like, okay, I'm gonna do all five of these. I would not suggest that you do that. I would suggest that you pick the one that feels like, okay, I can stay consistent and do that twice a week in my lessons. Okay. So just some food for thought before we dive in. So strategy number one is called the mini expert. So the concept is essentially that, you know, different kids process information at different speeds, right? Some kids need to hear things like 10 times before it clicks and it gets solidified in their brain. Some kids need to actually do something or act something out or physically move with a concept before they can understand it. And some kids just get it, right? They are ready to go deeper the moment that you introduce a concept. And what I love about this strategy of the mini expert is that it solves all of those problems all at once. So essentially how it works is the day before your whole group lesson, you would pull like three to four students aside for five minutes. You're not pulling them aside for, you know, 15, 20 minutes, just really short five minutes. And you're giving them a bite-sized chunk or idea of what is coming tomorrow. And you're just gonna pre-teach it to them. And then tomorrow, during whole group instruction, you can call on them to help you teach it. So you're providing them with confidence beforehand so that they have time to think about this concept that you're gonna be covering in class and they become the experts. And even just borrowing that confidence from you that you've chosen them and you've assigned them to be the experts to this, that in and of itself is helping them own and master this skill because they're borrowing your confidence, which is a real thing. The other thing that I want to say about this um is that this is why it's so important to have, you know, the last five or 10 minutes of your class period, if possible. I know some of you are gonna be like, Caitlin, I only have 42 minutes, and I know that for some of us, this is not possible, but those last five or 10 minutes of class, when it's able to be dedicated to sustain silent reading time, everyone else in the class is reading and you've just pulled these couple of students aside, you've talked to them about the lesson tomorrow, and that's that. There's no chaos, there's no extra planning. Right? If you can weave in those five to 10 minutes of SSR every single day at the end of your class period, it makes such a difference. And again, I know that that is not applicable to everybody. So if you cannot do that, just know that my empathy goes out to you and my compassion goes out to you and I understand. Um, so I want to give you like a real example for what this would look like. So let's say that tomorrow you're teaching theme in a novel that you're reading together. And so today, during independent reading, the last 10 minutes of class, whenever, you're gonna pull those students aside and you're gonna teach them like a really simple process for understanding theme. You're gonna tell them, hey, I'm teaching theme tomorrow. I'm making you guys my mini experts. Here's how we identify theme in a text. So when we talk about it tomorrow, you guys can help me with this. And you might even want to give them like a printed-out piece of paper with this information on it to take home so that they can look at it and review and feel confident as they head into class tomorrow. So, number one for this would be like identify the topic of the story. Then you're gonna ask the question what does the author want us to believe about this topic? And then you turn that into a statement and that's your theme, right? Whatever it is. But that is what you would give to them. You tell them that, you'd put it on a piece of paper, very, very simple. And you might give them an example, right? Of of what this looks like. And maybe they can practice with a second example if you have time. And then that's it. And then again, you tell them tomorrow, you're gonna be my experts, I'm gonna call on you, I'm gonna rely on you, et cetera. And then the next day, when you're doing whole group instruction, you can say to them or to the class, you know, like what's step number one for identifying the theme? And your many experts already know. Or you can even put them as the leaders of groups if you're having students work in groups after you introduce theme to come up with themes, whatever it might be. So it's really great because these students get to have this belief instilled in them that they are confident, that they are capable, that they can do this successfully in a public capacity. And so I love this because those students who wouldn't normally participate at all, they're actually ahead of the lesson. They're actually the ones helping you teach the lesson. So they get extra exposure to the concept, they get to participate more confidently, and the whole class benefits from hearing it through a different voice, right? Not just your voice, but from their peers as well. So I love that strategy. I think that's so great and just a really simple thing that you can do and you can rotate who your many experts are, right? You don't want it to be the same kids every single time, but we want to give other students the opportunity to build that confidence across the board. So that's a great one. That's one I would start with. I think that's so easy to do, especially if you have that time, those five to 10 minutes at the end of class. All right, strategy number two is the concept that if it matters, it lives on the board. If it matters, it lives on your board somewhere. So our brains all process information differently, right? Some of us are auditory learners, some of us need to hear it. I'm sorry, some of us need to see it, some of us need to write it down, some of us need all three, some of us need movement while we're learning something. So when you only say something and like speak it out loud, you're only reaching the kids whose brains work that way. Like I personally cannot process auditory information. Like if you're telling me a story, I like space out and I have no idea what you're saying. But if I read it or I read it out loud to myself or I read it out loud in my head, then it gets put into my brain. Same thing, like if I'm reading even just a story, like a novel or something like that. If I'm just reading the words, but I'm not actively reading the words aloud in my brain, I hope that makes sense as I'm saying that, it doesn't get stored in my memory. And so for me, it's really hard for me to learn. And so I have to know, like, oh, I learn in this way, but I'm almost 40 years old and I get that. But our students, middle schoolers, most of them have no idea how they learn, right? And so we really need to give their brains every opportunity to hold the information that you are sharing with them. So the rule is that if it matters, it lives on the board. That means like any key vocabulary or any steps in a process or any sentence stems or an example or a quote from the text, or what you want them to do when they walk into your classroom, like some of those basic executive functioning skills and activities that we have them do when they come into the classroom, write it down every single time you want to write it down. So, for example, this is something that I would do before my students would go to write um an in-class response to literature, an in-class essay, always have them write everything in class. Nothing was ever written at home or on a computer was all done timed 60 minutes in my class or 30 minutes and 30 minutes, always in class, but that's another discussion for another time. But I would write everything on the board that they needed to know, right? Indent, last name, student ID number, um, no I slash me in my paper, or whatever it might be that I and I'm sure you do repeat a million times. And you're like, but I told you. It's like, yeah, that's great. You told them, but for the students who don't process information that way, they didn't hear you, right? They heard what you said, but they didn't store that information and they didn't process that information. So it's not there, right? And so when we write it on the board, it really helps the students who struggle when we are just giving verbal instructions. So that's going to be something that is very simple for you to do, but is going to help your visual learners so, so much. And the students who process information more slowly, they have time to absorb this information while it's being written on the board. So if you don't have time to like write everything on the board, you could have one of your students who you know you know can handle this task. They could be your scribe and write it on the board for you, right? This honestly helps everyone. Honestly, it helps you because you don't forget what you're teaching them or what you've told them either. So that is very simple differentiation that makes a huge difference for students. Okay, strategy number three is choice questions. So the concept is when you ask one question, you wait for hands, right? The same five kids answer every time. I know which five kids those are in my head as I say that out loud. And we have the kids who process more slowly just really don't get a chance to even think, right? The kids who are ready for that deeper thinking get forward. And half your class checks out because they just don't feel like they have anything to say, right? It's the same thing every single time. However, when we give students choice in which question to answer, sometimes something can shift for a lot of our students because some of the students who wouldn't normally participate, suddenly they have an entry point. And the students who are bored also have something that's challenging them to the next level. So how it works is instead of asking one question, you might put two or three questions on the board. One is accessible, one is kind of standard, and one goes deeper, right? It's the same discussion topic, but different entry points. And you can just tell your students, you know, pick one to answer in your head or answer all of them if you want to do that. And then as you have that discussion with your class, everyone is thinking, everyone's participating, no one feels behind or bored. And so what you can actually do is I have a great YouTube video, and I'll link this for you in the show notes about um, gosh, why can't I think of what it's called? The depth of knowledge wheel. And I talk about the diff four different types of questions, and I give you examples, and that's gonna be a really helpful YouTube video for you to watch to start to think about what types of words to use in the way that you phrase these different questions for accessibility or for that deeper thinking. So it's great because you're not creating different work, right? You're just creating, again, different access points to the same concept and you're able to meet students where they are. So I love that one. All right, strategy number four, question extensions. So the concept is that we all know that pacing is one of the biggest challenges when we are differentiating, right? Some students finish really fast, some students need half the class to complete something. And if you're not intentional about what happens in that gap, the fast finishers get bored, right? We know this, and the slower processors feel rushed or feel bad or feel shame or whatever they're dealing with, right? Whatever feeling comes up for them. And I love question extensions because they solve this problem without creating extra work or making anyone feel behind. So how it works is you ask one question, but then you add a second layer of questioning for students who finish early. So, for example, let's say we're reading the Odyssey, which I loved, absolutely loved, and wish we could go back and learn about it all over again because it's so good. But let's say we're reading the Odyssey and you want your students to reflect on Odysseus' character. And you might ask, you know, what is one mistake that Odysseus made in this section? Write one sentence explaining why that matters. So most students are going to write one sentence and that's it, right? Because we're just asking for basic responses. This is not a response to literature. But then you might add, if you finish early, list two other moments in the book where Odysseus makes a similar mistake. What pattern do you notice? So now your students who need more time aren't staring at everyone else being finished. Your fast finishers don't get bored, right? They get to think more deeply. Everyone is working, everyone is thinking. We have different levels of challenge, but it's just built into the way in which you've set up this question. It's very simple. So you're not creating a second assignment, you're just creating a natural extension of the first one. Again, same skill, just deeper. Okay, so you're just using the words. If you finish early, try this. That's it. All right, last one. Strategy number five, wait time and write time. So I'm sure some of us have heard of this, and then we forget to use it, right? Sometimes the best things to use are the ones that are so simple that we forget to use them. So here's where most teachers miss like the biggest differentiation opportunity of all. You ask a question, right? We're having a whole class discussion, and within two seconds, five hands go up and you call on the first one. And you feel like you've differentiated because maybe you've asked the question a couple of different times or different ways, a couple of different ways. But what actually happened is you only let your fast processors run the entire discussion. Like that's it. And your kids who need those maybe five, 10, 15 extra seconds to check out or to respond have already checked out. So they don't even get to be a part of the conversation. So here's the move. Instead of like wait time like we're used to, where we just wait for hands to go up, what we do instead is we say, do not raise your hand, do not raise your hand. Class, you're not gonna raise your hand. No one raises their hand. You ask your question, and then you count five seconds in your head silently. It feels long, right? I know wait time is weird, but that's how you know it's working if you start to feel uncomfortable. And then you can say, okay, before you raise your hand, I want you to write it down first. So you're gonna ask the question, you're gonna pause and wait five seconds, then you're gonna tell your students to write it down first. They're gonna write the response, just one or two sentences, it's not graded, right? It's just for students to help them respond. So what you've done now is not just wait time, but you've done processing time with the writing as well. So you've done something really, really powerful. You've given every brain in that room time to think about it and time to anchor their thinking in writing. That's huge. That second piece is not what we were typically taught with wait time, right? We're just taught to wait and let students raise their hands. But we're also going to incorporate the writing aspect of it too. And then when you say, okay, I'm ready for you guys to respond, right? When you say, okay, hands up, you have so many more hands raised in your classroom than just the same five who always participate because writing first gave them the ability to have that time to think about something that they had that was worth saying, right? That's equity, that's confidence building, that's the difference between the same kids always talk. Oh, here goes Caitlin again, right? More kids actually get to think. And the concept underneath this is again, is that different kids have different processing speeds. And that's not necessarily a problem to fix. It's not something that's fixable. It's just a reality that as teachers, we get to design the way in which we teach differently. So we're not changing all of our lessons, right? We're just building in these different structures in our classrooms to help our students with the same question, the same rigor, just different access points to the things that we're discussing. So, what I want you to see as we wrap up this episode is these five strategies aren't five separate things that you have to like do, right? They're just A way in which we systematize our teaching. I don't even want you to think about it like as differentiation, right? We're just using these different systems to help create different opportunities for our students who process all differently, right? You have many experts, get your struggling students ahead of the lesson, right? Gives them that confidence. Writing it down gives students something to hold on to while they're thinking. Choice questions let them enter at their level or push deeper if they're ready to. Question extensions gets everybody engaged at their own pace. And then wait time and write time, which I think is my favorite, honestly, of all of these, just make sure that every student gets the chance to think and participate. So you're not creating three lesson plans, right? You're not running small groups, you're not trying to figure that whole thing out. You are just designing one lesson with these systems in place. And that's the shift. And that's what actually works in real classrooms with actual practice in place, not theory that we're learning in our master's programs. So what I want you to do is it's great to listen to this, but now let's implement something. So just pick one, not all five, just one. Pick the one that speaks to you the most or the one that you know you like your students are going to respond to well. And for the next month, and I mean this, I want you to practice it at least twice. So it doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to be consistent with it. So it becomes a natural part of your teaching practice. Because what happens is when you do something every Tuesday, Thursday, this is just what I do. It's no longer like a strategy that you have to remember. It just becomes a part of how you teach. It just becomes a subconscious part of you as a teacher. And that is when differentiation stops feeling like this extra work and the stuff you've got to do. And it just starts feeling like, oh, well, this is just what I do. This is just how I teach, right? One that becomes natural. And so once you've done one and you've been consistent and it works, and again, it's just become a part of what you do, then you add a second one and so on and so forth. So then you can layer in throughout your, you know, teaching practice as you get better at this. All right. I hope that this was helpful for you guys. And if it was, please share it with another teacher who could benefit from learning from today's episode. All right, you guys, thanks so much for joining me, and I will see you next week on the podcast. Bye, everyone.