Mod05_U04_A02 Designing Differentiated Instruction

It's not uncommon that special accommodations need to be made in our classrooms to make learning experiences accessible to all students. In this activity it was required that I select a student with special needs and one ELL student from your classroom or from a case study and specify both students’ reading level.

I must then describe the special needs student’s learning disability or difficulty either from a clinical diagnosis or from your own observations.

By selecting an assessment in my subject matter I should create two alternate assessments using same target language and concepts I am using in the original plan.

Below I will write a brief summary of the changes you made to the original assessment, explaining reasons for change and makes a note of the following where applicable:

1. Special provisions for the student within the test

2. Special considerations while delivering or administering the test

Designing Differentiated Instruction

Grade 11 ICT Project Assessment

Original Assessment

Students must build a functional blog site that will be used for their English and ICT assignments. Upon completion, students must also submit a portfolio that outlines and details their design choices, justifications based on research and their development processes. Attention will also be given to the specific terminology that has been covered in classes and used within the portfolio.

As a class, we have previously critically analysed a selection of sites to assess their functionality, in particular with regards to the user experience design in accordance with the sites target audience for practice purposes. The class will then research websites similar to those that they wish to construct themselves and analyse these to assist in their design and decision making processes.

The analysis worksheets can be completed by hand or via digital copy, whichever the students find easier and more convenient for adding to their ongoing portfolio. They should look something like this:

It should be noted, that all of my students are ELLs. However, for the sake of this assignment I will continue on the prerequisite that they are not in order to fulfil the requirements.

Case Study 1

Student: Tony

Grade: 11

Needs: ELL

Tony has been in the school for two years now, he is a Chinese student with a strong grasp of conversational English. While not fluent, he can proficiently express his thoughts especially in topic areas and with content he is familiar with. However, with areas of unfamiliarity or that he finds more challenging he becomes more measured and considerate of what he says. Tony’s spoken language may be at a reasonable level, yet his reading and writing is drastically behind comparatively, making frequent grammar and spelling mistakes even when it comes to simple content.

Socially, Tony is quiet but sociable. He has a well established friendship circle within the school and class and has settled in well to school-life here.

Alternative Assessment

Seeing as the portfolio is focused on the understanding and processes within the ICT project and is portfolio assessed, Tony could submit his work accompanied by an audio or video walk through explaining each step and decision he has made. This can be flexible for how he feels most comfortable with. It could be him speaking and making references to a specific element he has annotated in his native language within a physical portfolio, or he can submit screen recordings explaining orally what website elements he seen in his research, how they’re being used and how they will assist in his own site.

Additionally, Tony is allowed to use translator/tts/stt software for any of the stages of this project if he feels it will help him as well as being given the lesson’s tasks ahead of time to give a chance to review and ask for help in comprehension if necessary.

Case Study 2

Student: Karly

Grade: 11

Needs: Dyslexia

Karly has been in the school since grade 7 and is comfortable within her surroundings. Personality-wise she is studious, shy and while perfectly capable across subjects, she lacks confidence. She was diagnosed with dyslexia before coming to school and studies hard to compensate for her challenges. She has a mild-to-moderate case of primary dyslexia, so providing adequate intervention is made there is no reason at all that she cannot have a successful academic life. This is proven as she generally sits in the middle to lower top percentile across her subjects.

Alternative Assessment

As with Tony, the portfolio can also be completed by using audio/video submissions but due to her shy nature it may not be comfortable with this alternative method of assessment.

Due to the fact that Karly is challenged by a mild-to-moderate level of severity of primary dyslexia, I think it would be more beneficial to assist Karly in supporting her to improve her reading and writing skills rather than shying away from the challenge which would have longterm negative effects.

To assist, all worksheets and project files should be sent to Karly digitally before classes so she has the ability to use TTS software where she needs it. Additionally, for this to work the files should always be presented in a Word .doc file or a .pdf format so the software can work properly as .jpegs and other image files do not retain textual data. This also gives the benefits of her clarifying anything she doesn’t understand with a peer or myself. However, to make sure she doesn’t shy away from any problems I will subtly pass a few CCQs her way during class to confirm comprehension.

Task information can also be sent as audio files with clear descriptions in the names (Task 1 - site analysis, for example) giving clear instructions on what is required for each task.

Finally, as Karly will primarily be using her computer, it would be a benefit to her if she was able to use an app like ColorVeil by Aurelitec. ColorVeil places a colour filter on the screen to assist with dyslexics to read and type, basically a digitised version of the colour overlays used to place over pages for reading.