Text Differentiation

Part 1 of 10 in the "Artificial Intelligence, Real Literacy" series

What you’ll see in this post:

• My history as a low literacy learner

• An overview of text differentiation as a teaching strategy

• How to use AI to differentiate text (including an AI prompt)

• Other things to consider as you differentiate texts for your learners

(PS - I’m running professional development in June. I’ll be sharing my framework for building AI capacity in teachers. You can get tickets here.)

Let me start with a confession.

I was a low literacy student.

It took me ages to read, I couldn’t write well, and I found spelling harder than a week old baguette. Despite a childhood saturated in books and a fantastic school, reading and writing simply did not come naturally to me.

I find this interesting to reflect on now - as an adult, reading and writing actually form a load bearing wall in my life. Whereas I used to find it hard to write, now I find it hard to stop. I write for the same reason a dog barks - I just can’t help myself.

I can happily lay the credit for this transformation at the feet of Mrs Wilson, my Grade 10 English teacher.

She knew I struggled, and she met my needs.

She would sometimes hand me a reading with the key passages highlighted. Sometimes she would handwrite a summary for me at the bottom of the pages. Other times she would reduce the reading level of the text holus-bolus and give me a simplified version. I was welcomed into the discussion into a way that I hadn’t been before. It made a difference.

Decades later I found myself in Mrs Wilson’s position, and only then did I fully appreciate her sacrifice. I recall the moment clearly:

I glanced at my watch. 10:46 PM. I was halfway creating a differentiated text for one of my learners and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was caught in a tug of war between self-care and student care and I didn’t like it.

But here’s some good news:

In an age of Artificial Intelligence, it no longer costs us our evenings, weekends, and holidays to create these resources for our learners. We can welcome them into the learning and it takes minutes not hours. We can do the basics more often for more learners with AI.

So lets look at the why and the how of text differentiation.

What Is Text Differentiation?

Text differentiation is the practice of adjusting a reading to suit the range of learners in front of you.

Because there is a range. There always is. But it looks like the range is even bigger in the post-pandemic classroom.

As teachers, we intuitively understand that there is no such thing as the average student. Sit in any Grade 6 classroom and you’ll find readers spanning from a Grade 2 level to a Grade 8 level. One text, handed to all of them, will be too hard for some and too easy for others.