As was discussed in my last post, “Tiering tasks for authentic text to meet the needs of all learners,” one way of differentiating tasks to meet the needs of all learners when interpreting authentic text, is to tier the task. Another approach would be to tier the text.
Here are some simple steps to tiering authentic text:
- Look for multiple pieces of text at varying levels of difficulty or complexity on the same topic.
Here are three examples on the topic of Bullying in French. Determine which text will be for the lowest, mid, and highest tiers.
2. Decide whether you will tier the tasks as demonstrated in the previous blog post or design a generic task that will work for all three tiers like the one below:
Example scenario for tiering authentic text:
Students have a graphic organizer and one of three infographics of varying challenge levels on the topic of the physical activity level of children in Canada during a unit on healthy lifestyles in an intermediate level French class. Students are assigned an infographic based on their readiness level or may select an infographic. Students record information gleaned from the text on their graphic organizers.
Afterward, students are placed in mixed readiness groups of 3 or 4. In their small groups, students conduct an interpersonal conversation with their peers about what they learned from the text using their graphic organizers. Ideas acquired from group members are added to individual students’ notes on the graphic organizers.
The teacher may provide helpful phrases and/or sentence stems in the target language to students as a resource for their conversations.
- According to the infographic…
- It is interesting that…
- I am surprised that…
- Typically…
- Generally…
- In my opinion,…
- Both
- On the contrary
- On the one hand/on the other hand
As a follow-up, student create a presentational writing product comparing their family’s level of physical activity with information from the infographics. The students are given a blank Venn diagram graphic organizer to plan their writing.
If you’d like to explore more examples of tiered text, visit: https://www.grahnforlang.com/tiering-tasks-and-text.html
For more detailed information about tiering, download the Tiering Guide below:
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