For differentiated learning

Newspapers are used by english Language teachers to improve students’ language skills. The newspaper bridges the gap between school-based reading/writing and reading/writing in the real world.

This tool is also a good platform for teaching listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar. as such, it is a powerful tool that can be used to teach students at varying levels of language proficiency.

engaging students in activities using the newspaper is a great way to provide differentiated levels of challenge to students based on their level of proficiency. activities can be set as three-tiered. Teachers tier activities during learning so students are working at different levels of the same task, some more difficult and challenging than others. all students work on, explore, investigate and learn the same basic material but on differing levels or tiers. This is to enable students to complete tasks in manageable ways.

Take for instance a writing activity based on a topic of current interest such as the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. a task set by the teacher could be for students to produce a write-up on the topic “How to protect ourselves from the coronavirus”.

This task can be made threetiered to enable students from low, medium and high proficiency groups to participate in the activity according to their abilities.

Let’s say the focus of the lesson is reading, writing and vocabulary. a sample three-tiered activity could be as follows:

Task for high proficiency students

scan the Nation section of the newspapers for information about the ways we can protect ourselves from infection of the Covid-19 virus. Make short notes. Using the notes, draft an email to a friend to share the information that you and your friends have gathered.

Task for middle proficiency students

scan the Nation section of the papers for information about the ways we can protect ourselves from infection of the Covid-19 virus. Make short notes. Using the notes design a poster of do’s and don’ts to share with your classmates.

Task for low proficiency students

refer to a specific page of the Nation section of the newspaper. read the article titled, “seven ways to Keep Covid19 away” for example.

List the ways mentioned in your notebook. Create a bubble-map to put up in your classroom.

In the three-tiered activity above, students would need to be divided based on their proficiency levels. Note that the content and resource is the same: an article/articles from the newspaper.

The main skills practised are reading, writing and vocabulary but the end product differs as the demand of the end product is based on students’ varied abilities.

as such the learning process is given precedence. In this way, all students will have the satisfaction of completing the task set and the sense of achievement that follows will be in itself a motivation.

This sense of worth is extremely important to ensure students see a purpose to go on learning the language especially in situations where the second language has little or no relevance to the learners’ lives.

The newspaper as a resource in this case, makes the task authentic as it is a valid, real world resource and lends purpose to the activity.

On another level, the newspaper is very suited for differentiated instruction as it is a resource that has different language formats as well as registers. at the same time, it is a resource of varied visual representations as well.

all this content can be exploited by the creative teacher to differentiate in terms of Gardner’s (1983) Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

The theory hinges on the premise that each individual has a unique set of intelligences.

It demands the teacher to acknowledge all the various types of learners who favour different intelligences in his class, such as the linguistic-verbal learner, the logical learner, the visual-spatial learner, and the interpersonal learner to name a few from the total of eight different intelligences.

The newspaper with its versatility allows for teachers to manipulate this tool to the advantage of their learners.

Let us look at three intelligences for a general feel of activity planning. Here is an example of how the newspaper can be used to teach the verbal-linguistic learner.

Teachers can set students a task to describe a picture in the papers or to draw from their imagination based on a description given in an article or report.

Teachers can also set an activity such as a role-play or interview or a writing task based on information gathered from the newspaper depending on what skills are the focus.

The visual-spatial learner will enjoy and learn from activities such as poster design, advertisement creation and scrap book projects using newspaper content.

The logical learner can be given tasks such as discussions of pro and cons from a topic in the newspapers, creating logical visual representations of information in flow-charts or mind-maps and so on.

For each kind of intelligence, the possibility for the teacher who cares to plan, are endless. For the teacher who wants the best for his learners, the exploitability of this printed media is at their disposal – available, accessible, cheap and authentic.

The choice is theirs.

The writer is a freelance education consultant-cum-facilitator and a former School Improvement Coach (SISC) with the Education Ministry