Classroom differentiation is a key component of effective teaching. It allows you to meet the needs of all your students, regardless of their learning styles, levels, or interests. But how do you differentiate instruction in a Spanish classroom?
Tiered assignments are a great way to provide differentiation with a wide variety of Spanish proficiency levels. They cut down on your prep time by allowing you to create one assignment with a variety of options for students.
There are 3 key ways to differentiate the same assignment in your Spanish class.
- By level of difficulty
- By level of output
- By level of input
By level of difficulty
You can create different versions of the same assignment, with varying levels of difficulty based on spanish proficiency levels.
Here is an example of a Spanish vocabulary assignment. The new words are highlighted in green with white font. Everyone needs to use those words three times each in their writing. However, Spanish students at the novice proficiency level may copy the paragraph and just change the italics information to be true for themselves. This provides them with extra repetition of the vocabulary, but removes the stress of forming complete sentences from scratch.
Students with a higher proficiency level must use the sample paragraph as a model, but can write whatever they want, while including the required vocabulary words.
In this example, students with a higher Spanish proficiency level are responsible for more vocabulary than other classmates. This is an example of a vocabulary notes slide. Students know the expectations before notetaking begins. Students in group one only need to write down with with an asterisk(*). These are the basic words for everyone. Students in group two write down everything because they are receiving more of a challenge.
When this unit is complete, the assessment should be differentiated by proficiency level as well. I suggest making the most challenging assessment first and then deleting certain items to make the regular version. Here is an example.
The quiz is exactly the same, but the higher proficiency students have more words and the students with lower Spanish proficiency also have a word bank. The goal is always to make everyone feel successful. Remember that world language is not usually a required course, so making work hard just because you can is probably not in your best interest. 🙂
The next piece is really important – a self reflection. This is one of those executive functioning skills that all teachers must explicitly teach. Students need to think about their study habits and see the correlation between hard work and grades. But the last question is very important because it asks them to think about their own learning. Sometimes students pick to be in the higher proficiency group because they think it’s the right thing to do. Or sometimes, their parents told them they must do that. But it’s not always the best fit. Answering this final quiz question helps both parents and students assess their choices.
By level of output
Reading proficiency levels in Spanish are another way to challenge students. However, maybe you want the class to all read the same story. Just ask them to show you their learning in a differentiated way!
(Caption): When you allow beginning or struggling Spanish students to give answers in English, it lowers their stress immensely and allows them to focus on only reading. It also shows you exactly how much they understood because they are not struggling to find the right words to express themselves.
This is what teachers hope most of their students will be able to complete. But this kind of output is more advanced because it also assumes that the students understands what the questions are asking in addition to what they read.
Many teachers will think this story is far too basic and easy for native or heritage speakers in their class and decide it’s a waste of time for them to read. However, when you supply these students with a much harder task, the complexity of the reading passage doesn’t matter.
By level of input
You can allow students to choose a reading that is related to their interests. If you have access to NewsELA, students can pick from leveled articles. Otherwise, you can provide reading materials for students to select from. Pull 2-3 level-appropriate books or short stories for each group and let the group choose what they want to read. Here is an example from my class. Groups 1 & 2 read short stories and Group 3 had their choice from my FVR Library.
FAQ: How do you determine student proficiency levels or groupings?
I don’t. Students pick for themselves based on the challenge level they want. This surprisingly works out 98% of the time. In instances where students choose the easier proficiency level, have a private conversation with them. Let them know you believe in them and want them to do more. If they fight back, explain that you would like permission from their parents before you agree, and send an email explaining the situation. If their parents agree, they can do the easier assignment.
When it comes to labeling groups, there are also several choice you can make. Some teachers label the groups by proficiency level – novice, intermediate, and advanced. This is probably the clearest way to do this. Numbers (1,2,3) or letters (grooup A,B,C) are also options, but sometimes a little harder to keep track of.
Classroom differentiation is so hard, but it doesn’t have to be all-consuming. As these examples show, you can often provide the same assignment for everyone, and just differentiate one piece!
