INDIVIDUALIZING FOR INFORMATIONAL

LITERACYBy: Candice M. Ellis

DIFFERENTIATE: DON’T DIVIDE

It is very important for you, the instructor, to understand how to provide the best learning environment for each student based on his or her academic needs, without neglecting all of the social aspects of student life. We might all remember the days of the blue bird group and the cardinal group. We all knew who was in each group, and we all didn’t want to be in the “low” one.

DIFFERENTIATE YOUR TEACHING METHODS

Remember, you are not changing the standard. You are modifying the WAY you teach. In other words, each individual kid still has to work his or her hardest. The rigor is still there. The rigor is now adjusted differently for each child so that everyone feels they attain success.

WHY DIFFERENTIATE FOR INFORMATIONAL LITERACY?

In an Information Literacy lesson format, the students are gathering the information they need to learn a concept. Most of the time this is through reading. (AASL Standard: Skills 1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.) They might be reading a textbook, a worksheet, a blog, an article in a print magazine, or an article in a website. Although the media changes, the student is still READING, and that poses a problem for many students who are still not reading on grade level for one reason or another.

HOW DO STUDENTS DIFFER? SCHEMAStudents differ in their background knowledge (schema). Schema allows the students to select information from their reading that will be valuable to them. Without the important prior knowledge, students are not able to make inferences or predictions when they are reading. (AASL Standard: Skills 1.2 Use prior and background knowledge as context for new learning.)Schema also helps students organize information or fit in the new information with the old information. When a student is able to do this, he or she can then RETAIN that information longer.Finally, schema helps students elaborate on the information that they read. This helps them to dig deeper and use their higher order thinking skills. (Vacca, 2014, p. 22)

To differentiate for lack of schema: Activate prior knowledge BEFORE reading

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO ACTIVATE SCHEMA? 1. Create a problem to be solved. The teacher must provide adequate time to discuss the problem, raise questions, and seek possible solutions before assigning the reading material.

Example of A Problem Situation for a U.S. History Class:

2. Provide an Anticipation Guide before reading. An anticipation guide is a series of statements to which students must respond to individually before reading the text.

The time is 1680 and the place is Massachusetts. Imagine that you are early European settlers. You will want to try to think as you believe they may have thought and act as they might have acted. You and your group have petitioned the Great and General Court to be allowed to form a new town. After checking to make sure you are of good character and the land is fertile and can be defended, the court says yes. It grants you a five-mile-square plot of land. As

proprietors of this land, you must plan a town. What buildings would you put in first? Second? Third? Later? Why? How would you divide the land among the many people who want to live there? Why? As proprietors, would you treat yourselves differently from the others? Why? How would you run the government?

(Vacca, 2014, pg. 188)

HOW DO STUDENTS DIFFER? LEARNING PROFILE

A learning profile is the same as a learning style. Some learning styles are: Verbal/Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Visual/Spatial, Bodily/Kinesthetic, Musical/Rhythmical, Naturalist/Environmental, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal.

Of course, you can not do a musical lesson for one kid and a visual lesson for another. This would be impossible. It is just important to note that these different learning profiles should be taken into consideration when planning lessons. Vary your lessons to be verbal one day and visual another, etc.

HOW DO STUDENTS DIFFER? COGNITION Within one heterogeneous classroom, you can have half of the students reading on grade level, a quarter of them reading above grade level, a quarter of them reading one grade level below, and the rest reading several grade levels below.

1. Level your students’ reading abilities. Have three versions of the same text. You can make them yourself, or there are websites that have leveled text passages for content area curriculum.

2. If you are having students do research online, don’t have them roam freely. Plan ahead and choose the websites they will go to. Give the kids that are below grade level websites that are not too wordy and ones that have more pictures. Give the advanced kids websites that will challenge their thinking.

Know your students. If you have one or two that are severely below grade level and you cannot find a website with the right content and reading level, make an appropriate text for him or her. Have the student read it off a computer, so there is no embarrassment.

EXAMPLES OF SOURCES FOR CONTENT AREA LEVELED TEXTS (CLICK ON PICTURE FOR LINK)

Social Studies Research Online for 5th and 6th grade level readers

Literary Paired Texts with Quesion Sets

YOUR ASSIGNMENT Make an Information Literacy lesson plan within your content area using one or more of the Common Core Standards that you teach. You may use one that you already have.

Include:

1. A roster of your students in one of your classes showing each child’s reading level.

2. The materials you will be using in the lesson (worksheets, websites, passages, etc.). All texts must be leveled appropriately for the students in your class. You can group the students into low, middle, and high, but each student must have a text that he or she can understand.

Completed lesson plans are to be emailed to me in the link at the end of this post.