i. What do you understand by the term differentiation?

P. Ur states that all the classes to some extent are heterogenous. There will always be
diversity caused by various aspects such as age and maturity, general knowledge, cultural
background, gender, expectations. Thornbury also adds aptitude, an innate predisposition to
language learning, to the list. A crucial factor that constitutes such mixed-ability classes is
language proficiency. Any class can be considered as a spectrum with struggling students (they
need more time for preparation, more scaffolding, facilitated instruction-giving) on the one end,
advanced (who grasp information quickly, complete tasks faster than others) – on the other end,
and those students who find themselves in the middle of this spectrum. Roland&Barber
intentionally do not refer to advanced students as ‘fast finishers’ as they treat it as classroom
management issue when they discuss differentiation. Taking these differences into account,
providing each student with a task that corresponds to their learning preferences and needs, is
‘differentiation’. When a teacher differentiates a task, they tailor tasks and exercises for their
students’ needs, increasing the level of complexity (with one task) for advanced students and
simplifying it for struggling ones.
Differentiation can take two forms according to Tomlinson and Roland&Barber:
structured differentiation (when changes are made in advance at the stage of lesson planning) and
differentiated support (which occurs during a lesson and is reactive). In my teaching practice I
mostly rely on the former, as it makes me feel confident that every student’s needs are covered,
no one is neglected and their potential is used to a fuller extent. It aligns with Tomlinson’s
definition of a teacher as the ‘ organizer of learning opportunities.

ii. With a group of a level and type defined by you, what differentiation issues have
you faced and how have you dealt with these?

Like in almost every group, there are struggling and advanced learners within my pre-
teen group, aged 10-12 (A1 level, middle of the course, Russian learners). Due to this, as a
teacher I often find myself struggling to ensure equal participation: confident students are
always the first to answer, they volunteer and raise their hands, showing their readiness. Such
active engagement, being definitely a good thing on the one hand, makes those students who are
shy or just weak in terms of proficiency level, stay silent. They are not so confident and do not
want to compete with their active classmates, on the other hand. To ensure equal participation, I
rely on tiered tasks, ‘core activity plus optional’ (as defined by P. Ur) is one of my favorites.
Students receive one basic task, designed so that they all can cope with it, and one extra, more
challenging but optional. Graded (tiered) materials enable students to work at their own pace,
having no rush and feeling no pressure. When I see that weaker students are about to finish, I
nominate them to be the first to answer, they are not worried about competing with other active
students. Their confidence increases, they gain the feeling of belonging to the right place
(group). The lack of competition enables to open their potential to a fuller extent.
The issue of unequal participation might stem from different levels of English
proficiency among students, which is, I suppose, is the most common challenge for ESL
teachers having mixed-ability classes. As mentioned in the part ‘i’ the spectrum of students’
learning abilities varies from advanced to those who struggle, which could be explained by a
higher / lower initial level, more or less exposure to English outside the classroom, L1
interference, motivation, etc. In my class, such fast finishers immediately let me know that they
are ready to check and move, it creates extra pressure on those students who need more time to
process information. My approach to them is framed by ‘structured differentiation’: at the
preparation stage I modify exercises by extending them and making more challenging (e.g.
adding more wh-questions to listening/reading activities, or turning close-ended statements into
open-ended, removing words from matching activities so that students would rely on their
memory, etc.). I consider this strategy to work effectively as two goals are achieved: every
student of the spectrum is engaged, everyone’s needs are considered, advanced students are
pushed forward but they still work in the zone of the proximal development (a zone where we
learn the most – between tasks we can cope ourselves and tasks we can complete the help -
Vygotsky.)
Alongside unequal participation, learners’ preferences for how they prefer to interact is
another issue for a teacher. There is no universal interaction pattern that could suit every
student: some learners like working collaboratively in groups or pairs, others prefer individual
tasks. In my group, there is a female student who feels quite uncomfortable working with male
classmates (who form the majority of the group), she becomes passive and remains silent when I
set a group task and assign her in break-out room, as boys are more active and might become
dominant in pair / group work. From time to time I let her work individually before assigning her
to the group so she could gather ideas, could have more processing time in a safe environment
without peer pressure. When she joins a group discussion late, she is ready to make some
contribution to the overall discussion. This strategy aligns with what P. Ur called ‘variation’,
when we enable learners to work at their own pace and they way they benefit more, while still
using other interaction patterns.

iii. Outline an activity for this group that required or would require differentiation. If
describing a previous class, evaluate the effectiveness of this differentiation. If describing a
hypothetical class, describe how you would measure effectiveness.

It is a standard activity set for the 2 nd reading – a list of six comprehension questions about the
text on past discoveries (the target language is the past simple of both regular and irregular
verbs). However, the questions are graded: the first three questions are quite easy and require
finding information which is explicitly stated (e.g. ‘Who discovered America?’) or factual
information (‘When did the ship arrive in America?’), the other questions are more demanding as
they need to look deeper in the text and establish connections between several sentences in order
to answer (‘How did he feel when he arrived? Why?). I create individual slides for them,
highlighting minimum number of questions they need to answer and welcome them to answer
more if they feel they can, but the more the better.
The female student works alone for a couple of minutes at her own pace, under no pressure of
competition, then I assign her to a group with other struggling students who don’t mind working
collaboratively. She will benefit from being already prepared, will contribute and listen to other
students’ speech production.
Middle students can also be challenged if they finish answering first questions but are not able to
answer more complex ones. I give them dates from the text and ask to try to recall what
happened then without looking back at the text.
There is one student, strong and quick to cope with everything, but he tends to answer with one
or two words, so I monitor him carefully, pointing out that he is supposed to write full sentences.
This will take him more time and promote a habit of giving fuller answers, as well as developing
writing skills. In case he finishes this task quickly, I ask him to write a short historical summary
of the text including dates and what happened.
Benefits: this activity with graded question is beneficial for students as it is designed to make
every student participate wherever they would be on a learning spectrum. Everyone is engaged to
a less or fuller extent and they are working in their own pace but still they complete the same
task, though individualized and modified, and all of them use the target language answering the
questions.