When I wrote the unit plan “Bringing a Character to Life” for a high school level Intro to Theatre class, I included various scaffolds to support student learning as they worked their way toward the rehearsal period for a two person scene. Differentiation goes a step further than scaffolding, providing additional learning opportunities based on different levels of academic readiness. The most obvious way to differentiate a scene study is to assign scenes from plays that work for each student’s reading level. For example, students at a lower reading level will learn more about the acting process by working on text that is not overly challenging in the areas of theme, vocabulary, or grammar. They might do best with a Neil Simon play. Students reading at higher levels, as well as students with prior theatre experience, would learn more from text with richer language and more thematic complexity. Shaw or Shakespeare might fit the bill. But before the students enter the rehearsal period, before they even begin to unlock their assigned text, they must have a firm foundation in theatrical vocabulary, concepts and conventions.
Logically, then, the first lesson of my unit plan is pre-teaching the unit vocabulary. Or at least it was. Now I understand that to dive right into a unit like that is to assume that students are already on the same page, coming to the lesson with the same level of readiness. Obviously, that can’t be true. And thus, the pre-assessment, to learn where each student fits on the spectrum of readiness and differentiate accordingly. So I wrote a pre-assessment using the Socrative app (click here to see a pdf version). I appreciate how this app allows teachers to measure student performance in a number of different ways. I also like the feature that allows students to see the correct answers as they move through the quiz. Immediate feedback makes the quiz an assessment OF learning and an assessment FOR learning. For the purposes of this unit, I will use the Socrative quiz to identify students at a low level of readiness who need to review previously learned vocabulary; students who already know the majority of the unit vocabulary and accompanying acting concepts (which perhaps they learned in their ELA classes or in previous theatre classes); and the students who fall somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, I made a few missteps the first go around. After watching a colleague do a test run of the quiz, I realized that true-false questions are not the best tool because a student has a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly if s/he doesn’t know the answer. If they guess well, I will not have a true assessment of student knowledge. So I limited my use of true-false to a handful of the terms students should already know from the previous unit. All of them are true, and two of them ask virtually the same thing. If students get any of the true-false questions wrong, it’s likely they don’t know the previous vocabulary very well. Another mistake I made was making the multiple choice questions for new vocabulary/concepts so simple with improbable detractors that it would be fairly easy to guess the correct answer. Again, I would arrive at fairly skewed results. I hope the newer version is a better barometer. Time will tell.
My strategy for differentiating the beginning of the unit is to have the handful of students who score below average (Group A) to spend time reviewing the previous unit’s vocabulary by working in pairs to label the floorplan of a theatre as well as fill out a graphic organizer that outlines plot elements. These are the most basic building blocks a beginning actor needs before analyzing a script or setting foot on stage. Most students will score, as expected, between 35% and 85% on the quiz (Group B), indicating some understanding with a need for extended knowledge, clarification, and/or reinforcement. They will create a vocabulary bingo game. Then they will teach the new vocabulary to Group A, and together the two groups will play several rounds of the bingo game.
Group C, the small number of students who score 85% or above, demonstrating a strong grasp of the ideas and vocabulary presented, will have the opportunity to bypass both review of previously learned vocabulary and bingo to learn new vocabulary. They will work together to create a SlideShare that will serve to introduce the unit to the rest of the class. It will include the lesson activities, unit vocabulary and definitions, and an introduction to the final project and the grading criteria. Assessment for their learning will be via a simple rubric. Groups A and B watch the SlideShare then immediately retake the Socrative quiz. While they are doing that, Group C will embark on a quick exercise, planning a series of silent tableaux from three famous fairy tales. When Groups A and B are done with their quiz retake, they will observe the tableaux and attempt to name the characters and the fairy tales based on facial expressions and body language. This will be the students’ first introduction to nonverbal communication, a huge component of this unit.
I’m very excited to try out these differentiation strategies because I truly believe it will give the students who would normally fall behind a fighting chance. And the gifted or advanced students, rather than being bored waiting for everyone else to catch up, can move forward in a fun and engaging way.
