Give ownership of the learning over to your learners and watch as they self-scaffold and differentiate independently of your input

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 activities.

Envoys – A Wonderful Activity for Promoting Independence

Envoys is a group-work task that is especially good for differentiating.

It puts learners at the centre of things, so they are working independently, taking control of their learning and, where necessary, self-scaffolding, or helping their peers to access the learning.

It works as follows.

The class is divided into groups.

Each group is made up of four or five learners.

Groups are given an area of the topic to investigate.

The teacher might assign questions to provide direction.

Each group is given the materials necessary to complete their investigations.

A time-limit is set.

Once the time has passed, each group stops what it is doing and selects an envoy.

This learner stands up and moves to another group.

They then teach this group about what they have discovered during their investigations.

When this is done, envoys move off to teach another group.

The activity continues until all the groups have been visited by all the envoys.

This means every group gains access to what all the other groups have been working on.

When envoys return to their home groups, their teammates can fill them in on what they missed.

You can create a pro-forma for learners to complete, if you wish.

Each time an envoy teaches them, they can use this to capture what they have heard.

Having a pro-forma can also give additional structure to the teaching element of the task, directing learners as they listen to their peers.

Here’s an example of an envoys task.

A class of twenty-four learners is divided into six groups.

There are four learners in each group.

The topic is climate change. The following questions are assigned, one per group:

What causes climate change?
What effects has climate change had so far?
What effects might climate change produce in the future?
How might climate change be stopped?
What is renewable energy?
What is sustainable development?

Each group researches their question and then selects an envoy.

These learners leave their home groups and cycle round the other groups, teaching each one in turn.

By the end of the activity, learners have developed their knowledge and understanding of all six questions.

And the learning has been largely independent, driven by the learners.

How does Envoys differentiate?

Learners can learn from one another, rather than from the teacher or another source (such as a video).

This makes the information accessible and engaging – learners share social codes and perceive their peers differently from how they perceive the teacher.

It also creates variety, which is engaging and motivational.

The role of ‘envoy’ is often taken on by more-able learners.

This gives them an opportunity to be stretched and challenged; they will have to carefully consider how to communicate the information their group has discovered to ensure their peers understand it.

The independence inherent to the activity can be challenging for some learners.

To mitigate this, think carefully about the structure of your groups and, if necessary, provide scaffolding to underpin the research element of the task.

For example, success criteria or a series of sub-questions that learners can use to structure and target their efforts.

Activity Stations – An Activity That Can Bring Big Rewards

This is a wonderful way to structure learning, though it does require a bit of additional planning and set up time.

However, once you’ve used it a couple of times, both the planning and the set up get considerably easier.

Here’s how to use the approach.

Set up multiple stations around the room.
Each station should have a different resource and/or task attached to it.
Ensure there are a variety of tasks and a range of resources. For example: you might have a case study, a laptop with a video on it, a card sort, a hand-out, a diamond nine and a newspaper article.
Put learners in groups and assign each group to a station.
Rotate the groups after a set length of time. Aim for each group to visit each station.

The purpose of the activity is to provide learners with a variety of ways to engage with a topic.

And for them to do so independently, working in their groups.

You can supplement your learners’ journey around the activity stations with a pro-forma on which they must capture key information or answer key questions.

Another option is to frame the entire activity with a big question that learners can only answer in full by visiting each of the activity stations.

A final option is to give learners an overarching question and to then ask them to rank the activity stations from most to least useful in helping them to answer the question.

This brings in an evaluative element and pushes learners to think critically about the different stations they visit.

How does Activity Stations differentiate?

By providing a range of different resources or tasks at each activity station, the teacher ensures learners interact with the lesson content in a variety of ways.

This increases motivation, helps to maintain engagement, and makes it more likely that all learners will find something that plays to their strengths.

The range of resources and tasks challenges learners to think about the topic in several different ways.

This is likely to result in all learners being stretched, regardless of the point at which they start.

Each activity station provides a different route into the topic.

This means learners have multiple opportunities to get to grips with the key concepts and ideas.

In addition, each time learners move stations, they are challenged to reassess what they have learned about the topic so far.

This stretches their thinking.

Using Peer Research to Differentiate

Our third and final activity is peer research.

This involves learners eliciting information from their peers about the topic being studied.

It works as follows.

The teacher explains that each learner must create a questionnaire, ten questions in length, that they can use to interview their peers about the subject area.

When learners have developed their questions, they stand up and walk around the room, interviewing as many people as they can.

Learners should record their results as they go.

The teacher sets a time limit for the interviewing section of the activity and should also encourage learners to aim for a certain number of interviews (which will be determined by the length of time available, the type of questions that are being asked and the number of learners in the class).

It is advisable for the teacher to highlight at the beginning of the activity that learners must record their results and then either write these up or use them as the basis of a discussion.

The reason for this is that it compels learners to think carefully about the questions they ask and the likely information these will elicit.

The task is usually most effective when learners have a mixture of quantitative, qualitative, open and closed questions.

Here are five examples of topics in which learners can research the views of their peers:

Crime. Learners studying crime in Citizenship or Sociology could investigate their peers’ experience of and feelings about crime.
Family. Learners who are engaged in a piece of work connected to the family could investigate their peers’ experience of the family. This could then be compared to whatever they are studying (for example, family life in Roman or medieval Britain).
Responses to a text. Learners could interview one another to find out about the different responses people have had to a particular text.
At the end of a unit of work learners can interview one another to find out what they think about the big questions underpinning the topic.
At the end of a unit of work learners can interview each other to find out what they enjoyed about the topic, what they found easy, what they found difficult and what most stood out for them.

How does peer research differentiate?

Learners develop their own questions.

This means that they can work at their own level and focus on aspects of the topic that interest them.

(There is also scope for learners to develop questions in pairs, which brings its own benefits.)

The teacher can model good questions, or they can use peer models.

Both will help learners to develop better, more pertinent questions.

Learners oversee their own learning. They are independent. The task is very much learner led.

This means learners are likely to be motivated (and to see meaning and purpose in what they are doing): they are developing their own questions, they are choosing who to interview, and they are writing up their own results.