One of the math teachers and I attended a BER Conference on differentiation to meet the common core. We got some really great ideas for helping all our learners engage with our curricula. We presented the first part of our three or four part training with ideas for offering more student choice. Here’s the Prezi we put together for our session:
We put together a packet of resources in a Google Drive folder to share with some handouts teachers can use to offer their students some choices in how they show their learning. The two main ideas we shared with our staff was RAFTs and Lit Log Codes.
Lit Log Codes or Literature Log Codes are different ways that students can write about the content they are reading. Do a Google search for Lit Log Codes and you’ll get many examples that teachers are using. Lit Log Codes aren’t only for English or ELA classes though. Our course instructor noted that Lit Log Codes are also known as Thinking Log Codes by other disciplines such as Math, Social Studies, and Science. For differentiation offering students choice as to how they reflect on what they’re reading satisfies our kids’ need for autonomy while satisfying our need to have our students write and engage and show us what they are learning/thinking! They are great, just make sure to teach each code and not just assume that your students will know how to respond to each code.
RAFTs are pretty awesome and are totally new to me. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format and Topic. Basically, RAFTs provide fun, sometimes silly, unique options for kids to write about any topic they are studying by taking on different roles for different audiences. The format adds another level of fun by having students write friendly letters, news shows, speeches, ads, etc. Here are some RAFTs I created for our Mt Saint Helens learning.
By even offering two different RAFTs for kids we give them choice and make it so we get more enjoyment and engagement with our content. Plus it makes reading and/or listening to their responses more fun because you aren’t getting the same thing from all your students.
In our training we offered teachers the following RAFT choices as an example of how they work:
Here’s a template for creating your own RAFTs. And this website, Writing Fix, has random RAFT generator for creating your own RAFTs! The link goes to Science RAFTs but if you dig around you can find the generator for other subjects. These are just too much fun! I can’t wait to start using them with my 6th grade Science students. 🙂
For our next session we will probably share ideas for differentiating modes of learning or using tiers for differentiation.
