General Introduction
This blog is part of my Differentiation and Adaptive Teaching Knowledge Base.
I use the terms differentiation and adaptive teaching synonymously. To me, they are the same, as genuine differentiation has always involved adapting your planning and your teaching to meet the needs of the learners in front of you.
For me, differentiation is all the practical strategies, activities and techniques teachers use to personalise learning.
For ease, we can break that down into my five categories of differentiation: Activities, Questioning, Words and Writing, Things the Teacher Can Do and Things You Can Ask Learners to Do or Use.
This blog falls into the category of words and writing.
Writing Frames
A writing frame provides learners with a guide as to what they are to write and how they are to write it.
The degree of detail varies, but what remains common is a framework directing learners in their work.
In terms of design, writing frames usually consist of a piece of paper on which instructions are printed or written.
This description is necessarily vague because writing frames can take many forms.
Here are five examples that demonstrate the approach.
Genre Writing Frames
By genre we do not mean types of fiction but types of writing full stop.
Genres that are common in school include:
- Essays
- Stories
- Reports
- Reviews
- Diaries
- Answers to exam questions
In all these cases there are rules governing how the piece of work should be structured.
A genre writing frame provides learners with guidance on the specific form of writing they are doing.
For example, an essay writing frame might include instructions covering indicative content and appropriate sentence starters for each paragraph.
Sentence Starter Writing Frames
These involve learners being given a piece of paper on which there are a series of sentence starters.
Each of these signals a new element in the overall piece of prose the learner is aiming to construct.
Such an approach is most useful when learners have difficulties with extended writing or when they are at an early stage of language development (either within the traditional framework of schooling or because they are learning English as an additional language).
A set of sequential sentence starters guides learners through the process of writing an extended piece (which may only be a paragraph in some cases).
It provides a step-by-step scaffold that helps learners practice the process of writing and creates familiarity with different ways of starting sentences.
Content-Specific Writing Frames
These concentrate on the specific content learners are expected to include in each part of their work.
This may be at section level, at paragraph level or, in certain cases, at sentence level.
For example, if the teacher set learners the task of creating a report on parrots, they might provide a frame like this:
- Introduction – explain what parrots are, where they live and what the main species are.
- Section One – choose one species and explain in detail how that species looks, lives and interacts with other birds.
- Section Two – explain the impact that humans are having on the natural habitat of parrots in one area of the world.
- Section Three – evaluate the arguments for and against increasing government intervention to protect parrots in the wild.
- Conclusion – sum up your findings about parrots.
Improvement Writing Frames
Identify an area that an individual learner, a group of learners or the whole class could improve.
Create a writing frame that will help them to make the appropriate changes in their work.
For example, if your learners are failing to support the points they make with evidence, you might create a paragraph-by-paragraph writing frame focussing on this issue.
This could begin with specific examples that learners mimic, move onto suggestions of where suitable evidence might be found, and then finish by asking learners to identify appropriate evidence on their own.
In this example, the writing frame is a scaffold, but one that gets less interventionist as it progresses.
The idea is that learners gain confidence through the first half of the frame, helping them reach a point where they can do the improvement independently.
Mark-Scheme Based Writing Frames
Construct a series of writing frames linked to what learners need to do to achieve various levels on a mark-scheme.
Learners can then choose the writing frame that they feel most closely matches their abilities, or where they want to be.
They can also cherry-pick elements from other writing frames, if they wish.
This technique tends to be most common in exam preparation.
It is necessarily formulaic and instrumental.
That brings its own downsides, but the flipside is that it can effectively train learners in how to meet the expectations of an examiner, and secure high marks.
How can using writing frames help you to differentiate?
Writing frames leave learners free to concentrate on the act of writing and the myriad decisions that must be taken regarding content, punctuation and grammar.
This makes the task easier, allowing more learners to engage with the learning and to experience success.
Writing frames can provide less-able learners with a leg-up, helping boost their confidence by making starting and sustaining a piece of writing easier and more accessible.
Writing frames can be targeted to specific learners, used to help all learners to improve, and designed to be challenging.
There is great scope for playing around with the structure of your writing frames and observing the impact this has on learners.
Writing frames are, at root, a scaffold.
They do some of the work for the learner, making it easier for them to engage with the necessarily complex task of capturing their thoughts through the written word.
Structure Guidelines
Structure guidelines are about two things: minimising ambiguity and allowing learners to focus on the detail of what they are doing.
They are any means by which the teacher provides learners with a framework for the work that has been set.
Here are three examples to illustrate.
Structure Guidelines: Example One
In an essay task, the teacher might provide learners with guidelines indicating what should be contained in each paragraph.
For example:
- Paragraph one = Introduction
- Paragraphs two and three = arguments for the statement
- Paragraphs four and five = arguments against the statement
- Paragraph six = Conclusion
Structure Guidelines: Example Two
In a presentation task, the teacher might provide guidelines indicating what should be covered and in what order.
For example:
- Begin by outlining what you will talk about, then make your first key point and support this with examples.
- Repeat this for your second and third points.
- Then provide some time in which the audience can ask questions.
- Finally, sum up your presentation.
Structure Guidelines: Example Three
In a primary research task, the teacher might provide learners with guidelines covering how to report their findings.
For example:
You will need to create a report that contains the following:
- Introduction
- Hypothesis
- Aims
- Rationale
- Background Research
- Methodology
- Results
- Conclusions
- Evaluation
In each of these cases, the guidelines make clear to learners what their finished work should look like, in terms of its layout and its structure.
Structure guidelines minimise ambiguity by providing a reference point for what it is the teacher is asking learners to do.
It may be the case that the word ‘essay’ or ‘presentation’ does not have the same connotations for learners as it does for the teacher.
By providing clear guidance the teacher is sidestepping this possibility (and the potential problems that might emerge from it).
In addition, even if learners have a general idea of what a specific task ought to involve, they may still struggle to articulate this analytically – that is, in a manner that involves separate elements being identified and then put together into a sequence.
For both these reasons, structure guidelines make it easier for learners to succeed in a task.
A second point to note is that all creation – whatever its nature – involves both form and content.
The provision of structure guidelines is essentially a provision of form.
It lets learners focus their attention fully on matters of content.
And it is this that is the basis of most learning in most lessons.
However, with that said, it can also be noted that through the manipulation of content in accordance with a given form, learners will come to better understand that form – they will be learning it through practice, just as they are learning the content through application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Therefore, structure guidelines aid rather than sacrifice the learning of skills despite giving primacy to content.
As you’ll see from the examples above, writing frames can also double up as structure guidelines.
I’ve separated out the two techniques because you can use structure guidelines in any task, whereas writing frames are, of course, tied only to written work.
How can using structure guidelines help you to differentiate?
Structure guidelines minimise ambiguity.
This makes it easier for learners to achieve success.
This is because they know precisely what it is that the teacher wants them to do.
Structure guidelines let learners focus on content.
This makes it easier for them to achieve success because their minds are not split between competing demands.
All learners can produce work to their own highest standard using structure guidelines.
The technique therefore helps learners to make progress, regardless of their starting point.
Using Planning Pro-Forma for Extended Writing
A planning pro-forma is a document you hand out to learners and which they use to help plan their written work.
It is a blank form that serves as a model.
All learners use the same version, tailoring the contents to suit their needs.
Here is an example of a set of questions you could include on a sheet of A4 paper, which learners could then use to plan an essay:
- What do you need to signpost in your introduction?
- What will each of your paragraphs be about?
- What evidence will you use in your paragraphs?
- What is your conclusion and how does it link to the rest of the essay?
Here are three ways you can use planning pro-forma.
Planning Pro-Forma: Example One
Create separate pro-forma for different types of writing, for example, essays, stories and reports.
You can then use these repeatedly across a year.
An advantage of this approach is that learners come to internalise the questions or divisions that go to make up the pro-forma.
This means that in the future they will be able to plan their work without needing any assistance.
Repeated use of the same pro-forma, specific to the task in question (story writing, report writing etc.) helps learners familiarise themselves with the planning structure.
This makes internalisation more likely, simply through the act of practice.
Planning Pro-Forma: Example Two
Create more detailed pro-forma for less-able learners.
These should contain a series of questions or divisions that break up the piece of work into manageable sections.
At each point you might like to provide learners with a range of options from which they can choose.
This is a further way of supporting learners who struggle to plan extended pieces of writing.
For example, a primary teacher might create a detailed planning pro-forma for a less-able learner, to help them write up the results of a science experiment.
The teacher could work through the pro-forma with the learner, supporting them to plan their work.
During the process of writing, the learner can then refer to the pro-forma, as can the teacher, who can use it as a tool to continually help the learner, as they make their way through the task.
Planning Pro-Forma: Example Three
Create challenging pro-forma for your most-able learners.
These should contain taxing questions that cause learners to think more deeply about their work, both in terms of its form and in terms of its content.
This is a less commonly used method, but one that can have great benefits.
For example, a GCSE English teacher might create a high-level planning pro-forma for their more-able learners, designed to get them refining their poetry analysis so it hits the very top marks in the mark-scheme, where previously it has been falling just below.
How can using planning pro-forma help you to differentiate?
A pro-forma will help a learner to plan their work.
This means they will be more likely to make progress and produce something that meets the teacher’s success criteria.
The plan learners produce will help them to sustain their writing – something that many learners find challenging.
You can construct pro-forma that are targeted to the needs of specific learners. This personalisation means you can meet the needs of different individuals in different ways, simply by altering the design of your pro-forma.
