Connections to Social Justice Standards: Identity, Diversity, Justice
Strategies:
1. Scaffolded Activities
2. Making Space for Student Choice
3. Use of Technology to Support Differentiation
4. Universal Design for Learning
Differentiated instruction honors differences between students and highlights diversity as a positive aspect of the learning process. This can be accomplished by adapting strategies to fit individual student abilities, needs, backgrounds, skill levels, talents and learning profiles.
To effectively differentiate instruction, educators must be intentional about the following:
- Learn about your students, their particular needs and preferences, and how to individualize learning for them.
- Plan content and instruction with those differences in mind, rather than adapting after planning.
- Tailor both teaching strategies and student tasks to create an inclusive learning experience for all students in the classroom.
It can be easy to fall into the trap of making assumptions about some groups of students when differentiating instruction. This might look like lowering expectations for multilingual learners or for students who receive special education services. To prevent biased assumptions, teachers can use grading rubrics, provide students with multiple options to show their understanding of a topic and allow students opportunities to reflect on their learning.
This section offers strategies for differentiating content, student products, and the teaching and learning process while remaining responsive and equity focused.
Scaffolded Activities
Scaffolded activities allow all students to engage with the same material but with different levels of support. Scaffolding ensures that teachers are not unintentionally lowering expectations for some students.
Depending on students’ background knowledge or reading skills, scaffolding may look like:
- Providing multiple ways to engage with materials (e.g., printed text, audio readings).
- Developing multiple vocabulary lists.
- Asking a variety of higher-order questions.
- Preparing different student tasks for learning outcomes.
A common question teachers have about scaffolding is how to support multilingual learners. We recommend using Colorín Colorado, a bilingual website for teachers and families of multilingual learners. They have practical guides for teaching multilingual learners, including “Content Instruction for ELLs.” Many Learning for Justice lessons also include scaffolding ideas for supporting multilingual learners as well as extension activities.
Making Space for Student Choice
Being a social justice educator means planning for what Geneva Gay, a leading scholar of culturally responsive teaching, calls “multidimensional” teaching: using multiple approaches and perspectives to facilitate learning. This includes intentionally planning for different forms of student engagement and options for students to reach and demonstrate mastery. As outlined in “A Practical Guide to Planning for Intentional Differentiation” from Edutopia, providing students with choices honors students’ diverse ways of thinking and learning.
Teachers can also provide students with options for larger assessments, such as an end-of-unit performance task. For example, C3 Teachers offers a high school Inquiry Design Model that outlines how students can demonstrate their answer to the unit’s big question, “Does it matter who ended slavery?” through an essay, a poster or a detailed outline.
To see student choice in action, the case study “Balancing Student Choice and Needs with Playlists” from The Learning Accelerator serves as an effective example as it provides instruction on how to use a playlist for student choices.
Use of Technology to Support Differentiation
From interactive whiteboards to tablets that read text aloud, technology can be an effective tool for differentiating instruction. Technology can also be helpful in providing students with synchronous and asynchronous options for learning. And technology can expand options for student communication, engagement and choice.
However, access to technology may not be equal across the district, the school or within the classroom. Providing technological support can help make a classroom more equitable, but expecting that all students have the same skills or access to the same technology can actually reinforce inequity. Carefully consider what technology is available to all students and provide choices for student tasks that allow all students to participate.
Universal Design for Learning
By applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a research-based framework, educators can support all of their students by designing curricula and instructional practices through an equity lens. UDL asks teachers to provide students with multiple options for engagement, representation, action and expression to meet their learning goals. As noted in the LFJ article “Disability Is Diversity,” focusing on changing the learning environment, instead of the learner, opens up thinking about accessible learning practices that can benefit all students.
