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Differentiation. Individualized instruction. Personalized teaching.
Whether you’re brand new to teaching or you’ve been teaching for 30+ years, we’ve all heard these words. We’re often told that these are the expectations for quality instruction. We’re expected to differentiate. We’re expected to individualize instruction. We’re expected to personalize our teaching. But, have you actually been shown what this looks like in the classroom?
Early in my career, I thought I was differentiating and personalizing instruction when I incorporated student interests into our assignments. I mean, of course I was differentiating. I allowed students to pick their own topics for essays, and I spent time working individually with each of my students. Heck, I even let them choose their own seat in the classroom. That’s what it’s all about, right?
My understanding of differentiation came crashing down in my fourth year of teaching. My appraiser asked me to predict the percentage of my students I thought would pass the end of course exam. I spent hours looking at kids’ names on my roster. I had spent nearly 185 days with these individuals, but I truly could not tell you whether or not they would pass their end of course exam. I ended up making predictions based on behavior. I predicted that the students who had submitted all their assignments on time would pass; whereas, the students who had seemingly done little during class would fail. Needless to say, my predictions were inaccurate. This experience smacked me off my pedestal. Everything I thought about how effective I had been as their teacher suddenly crumbled into dust. How could I have been effective if I didn’t even know whether or not my students had learned anything I taught?
That summer, my PLC and I evaluated our idea of differentiation. Our goal going into the next year was to know our students’ strengths and weaknesses so well that we would be able to offer intentional remediation and extension. We wanted to know from the first quarter which students were on track to pass their end of course exam and which students would need additional support to get them there. At this point, we had answered the first two questions of a PLC; we knew what we wanted students to know and be able to do for each unit, quarter, and semester, and we had built rubrics to help us know which students had learned the material and which students needed additional support. Now, we had to answer the last two questions of a PLC: how do we respond when students do learn the material, and how do we respond when students don’t? Our version of pathways was born.
My PLC and I determined that the only way we could truly know whether or not our students were learning the material we were teaching was to track their progress outside of our gradebook. The gradebook, for a variety of reasons I will outline in the next blog post, was not the best place for us to track student progress. Our methods for tracking data have evolved since 2018, but essentially, we began keeping student data in a Google Sheet. We tracked each student’s performance on the essential skills using the rubrics we’d already created. Doing this allowed us to not only track progress over time for each student but to also determine who needed remediation or extension opportunities. This is still the basic methodology we use to track data and make our pathways, but over time, we’ve become more certain about the types of pathways we need to offer and the reliability of our data.
When I tell people that I put students into pathways, I often see a look of confusion. Most educators have a strong position concerning academic tracking which is the practice of offering students specific classes based on their academic performance. Academic tracking has been a highly researched and opposed practice since it can result in inequitable educational experiences, especially for students who have been deemed low-performers. Pathways, however, are more similar to ability grouping. Ability grouping is the practice of grouping students who have similar needs together so that they can receive the appropriate support. The students are not removed or separated from their classmates, and all students are expected to reach the same end-goal or summative task.
My PLC and I typically develop three pathways for our essential skills. We refer to the pathways as our beginner, intermediate, and advanced pathways. This language is not shared with the students. Instead, we color code the pathways and use different colors each time we offer pathways. For example, our beginner pathway may be blue for unit 1 but green for unit 2. My team and I develop our pathways based on anticipated misconceptions. For example, when teaching students to analyze the effect of language on a text, it is safe to assume that students who are not proficient at this task yet will need scaffolds to first help them identify specific words or phrases that have a significant impact on a text. Perhaps, their pathway will include a mini-lesson on the development of tone or connotative and denotative meanings of words. Whereas, our students who are able to analyze the effect of language will need to extend their learning by thinking about their language in their own writing. Their pathway may include a mini-lesson on a revision strategy to help them add imagery to a piece they’re already working on. Ultimately, though, all pathways will lead to the same summative assessment, so we must keep the summative assessment in mind when creating the pathways to ensure alignment. We discuss our plans for our pathways during our PLC meeting. Then, each team member creates the pathway using Google Slides. Finally, we share the pathways with one another at a subsequent PLC meeting. During that meeting, team members offer constructive feedback. Once the pathways are agreed upon, students are placed into the pathways.
We use the data collected from formative assessments to place students into pathways. Students who score in the advanced range are placed in the advanced pathway; they are ready to extend their knowledge. Students who score foundational on their formative will be assigned the beginner pathway; they need targeted instruction to help close some gaps in knowledge. Finally, we evaluate the students who have scored in the developing and proficient ranges. For some of our students, we may be able to push them into the advanced pathway, and for some, we may decide that they need to be assigned to the beginner pathway for additional support. Most of these students, however, will be assigned the intermediate pathway. With this type of grouping, it is not unlikely for a student to be in the intermediate or advanced pathway for one skill but not for another. All students learn the skills at different rates, so teachers cannot assume that students who perform well in unit 1 will also perform well in unit 2.
Once we’ve made the groups, we present the groups to the students. As stated above, I’ve made the choice to not let my students know whether they’re in the beginner, intermediate, or advanced group. Rather, I tell them only the color of the group to which they belong. Then, I assign a place in my classroom for each group to work. I work most closely with my beginner group since they’re the group of students who are performing below grade level. I will teach a mini-lesson to this group and monitor their progress closely. When I find pauses in the small group instruction, I will check in with my intermediate group. These are the students who are performing on grade level, so they don’t need as much support. Their pathway is designed to incorporate all the supports they’ll need such as instructional videos and graphic organizers. My advanced group may work together to complete their pathway. I check in on the advanced group only when a student has a question. Since those students are performing above grade level, my priority for them is to explore the skill in a way that applies to their own reading and writing.
Completing pathways typically takes two 50 minute class periods. The first day is spent introducing the pathways and teaching mini-lessons within the pathways. On the second day, students complete the assignment within their pathway and submit. Since I have closely monitored the students in the beginner group, I often don’t need to review their work. I will, however, review the work submitted by students in my intermediate and advanced groups since this will allow me to determine whether or not the pathways were successful.
Students will then take another formative assessment and the cycle begins again. Typically, a four week unit will have two pathway opportunities for students: one after the first formative but before the second and one after the second formative but before the summative. All students, regardless of their pathway assignment, complete the same summative task. I track the data from both formative assessments and the summative assessment which allows me to see which students made progress and which did not. I can also use the data to determine whether or not the pathways were effective.
I have not yet discussed how all this data equates to grades in my student management system. Remember, the whole point of standards based grading is to communicate student progress and proficiency throughout the year. Done correctly, standards based grading enables teachers to know each students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. In order to do that, we must first collect an absurd amount of objective data. So, no, I haven’t yet discussed how this looks in my gradebook; it’s difficult to assign a seemingly arbitrary number to students who are at varying degrees of proficiency. With that said, I promise to share my strategy for transferring student data to the gradebook. You’ll have to check back next week to learn exactly how I make sense of all this data and meet my quota of 10 grades per quarter.
Until then, be bold and be brave!
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