Differentiating Instruction for students using Keys to Literacy Strategies

By the end of the year, it might be expected that 6th grade students could create their own top-down webs digitally or on paper.  After all, they have been creating them all year with various structural supports and guidance.  However, some students may still benefit from the teacher-created models at various scaffolding levels.  This is where the coordination and cooperation between both the general education and inclusion teacher are very important!    Additionally, many of these strategies are also appropriate at the different WIDA levels for English Language Learners.  

Below are some ways that we, Gail (inclusion teacher) and Barbara (general ed geography teacher) have worked together on a lesson about South American colonization so that all students can work on their Keys to Literacy skills, but still access the curriculum.

• Create a filled-in top down web for them to keep as a reference, or to assist with copying notes from the board.
  

  
  

  

  
  

• Partially filling in the created top down web, with some of the terms filled in at various levels.

• Providing a word bank and the topdown web, totally blank, so students can fill in the template.

2 Levels of Word Banks

• Using an app like Popplet to remove the drawing & written portion of the web altogether. 
  

• Communicating constantly with each other to check in about students and make sure we are doing all that we can do to educate all students, making adjustments as we go.

• If we turned the web into a question generating lesson for the next class, different supports could be put into practice like sentence starters, examples, etc.