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EDUC 880
Data Collection Approach Approval Assignment
Recommendations for Improving Literacy Differentiation Practices at Bacon Academy
Stephen M. Byrne
May 15, 2022
Research Question: How can literacy differentiation practices in humanities classes be
improved at Bacon Academy?
Approach 1: Semi-structured interviews
The first approach will be semi-structured interviews with five teacher and literacy personnel
(e.g., reading instructional coach, reading interventionist) participants, each of whom is familiar
with the school’s goals toward improving differentiation techniques.
Approach 2: Document reviews
The second approach will be a review of student documents that pertain to the differentiation
focus areas. Groups of students who receive differentiation for vocabulary practice, for example,
will have that category of their assessments reviewed to see if improvements are made as a result
of the practices, and likewise for each literacy domain for which content or instruction is
differentiated.
Approach 3: Student surveys
The third approach will be mixed-methods surveys completed by students using Google Forms.
Surveys will be conducted after each cycle of differentiation practices, using Likert-style items to
ask student opinions on levels of helpfulness / effectiveness of each strategy and inviting them to
EDUC 880
elaborate on follow-up items to each survey question. Surveys will be completed by at least 60
but not more than 80 students, depending on final course roster numbers for the school year.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 1
Recommendations for Improving Literacy Differentiation Practices at Bacon Academy
Stephen M. Byrne
School of Education, Liberty University
In partial fulfillment of EDUC 880
Dr. Drew Van Dam
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 2
Introduction
The purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for humanities (English and
Social Studies) teachers at Bacon Academy with possible solutions and strategies for improving
targeted classroom-level differentiation in the literacy domains. This introduction presents
information regarding the organizational profile as well as an introduction to the problem and its
significance. An overview of the purpose of the study, the central research question, and a list of
key terms and definitions conclude this introductory section.
Organizational Profile
Bacon Academy is a suburban public high school in southeastern Connecticut. The
mission statement of the school is to “promote a family-like partnership of students, staff,
parents, and community. The Academy fosters a strong foundation for learning; provides
comprehensive, rigorous academics; and nurtures personal growth, integrity, and respect for all.”
The high school primarily serves the residents of the town of Colchester, CT, but is also a
“school of choice,” allowing students from a neighboring district to attend via random lottery
selection. The school serves 733 students, 86% of which are Caucasian, while 21% of the student
body is considered low-income based on free or reduced-priced lunch eligibility. Less than 1%
of the students are classified as English Language Learners, while 12% have learning disabilities.
The school employs 61 teachers, resulting in a 12:1 student-to-teacher ratio, and all full-time
educators teach five sections of courses in their subject area. Additionally, the school has two
instructional coaches, a reading intervention specialist, four guidance counselors, a psychologist,
social worker, security guard, school resource (police) officer, and three school administrators: a
principal and two assistant principals. This study’s focus concerns the humanities departments –
English language arts (ELA) and social studies – which consists of 18 teachers (nine ELA and
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 3
nine social studies) and offers a total of 33 courses (10 ELA and 23 social studies). Each
department is led by one teacher leader who coordinates and leads all departmental staff
meetings, serving as the liaison to administration as well as determining use of department funds
with input from department members. Curriculum and standards are determined through a
collaborative approach by teachers of common courses, which the district’s Director of Teaching
and Learning approves annually. Instructional decisions concerning which courses are taught and
by whom are decided collaboratively with the department members and teacher leaders, with the
exceptions being courses that require teachers with specific credentials or certifications (e.g.,
advanced placement or college dual enrollment). All compulsory courses are leveled based on
teacher recommendations and students’ academic record, with the levels labeled as two (roughly
equivalent to a general level course), three (equivalent to honors), or advanced placement at the
higher grades. Traditionally at least one level-two course per grade level has been taught
collaboratively with a teacher from the special education department for classes with high
numbers of students with individualized education plans (IEPs), but budgetary constraints are
making that unlikely for the upcoming school year in which this study will occur.
Introduction to the Problem
The problem is that humanities teachers at Bacon Academy have reported struggling to
implement consistent, effective differentiation to meet the literacy needs of their students -
particularly in the past two years when traditional methods such as small group instruction have
been restricted due to social distancing requirements. As a result, student literacy scores have
faltered on standardized tests as well as class-administered assessments. On the other end of the
spectrum, more advanced students have not been appropriately challenged as a result of overall
instruction being slowed down to better meet the needs of the majority who have missed
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 4
significant instructional time due to school shutdowns and resulting curriculum compacting.
There is little consistency across grade-levels and academic groupings regarding areas of
struggle: for example, within a single class of thirty students there may be ten whose scores
indicate vocabulary concerns, while others show deficiencies with command of evidence, main
ideas, themes, or editing and revising (this data is available to district staff and will be attached
in the full report). Typically, having such a wide scope of needs might be addressed through
tracking (Domina et al., 2019), small group instruction (Lyon et al., 2021), or at the very least
cycling through different skill focus areas with the whole class. Research has indicated that such
interventions are typically effective for improving student literacy, with one meta-analysis
reporting that 88% of studies showed that differentiation led to increased student achievement
(Puzio et al., 2020). Most literacy differentiation work is focused on reading comprehension,
likely because that is what is most frequently assessed in standardized and computer-adaptive
testing (Puzio et al., 2020), but research is increasingly being done in related categories such as
fluency (Landreth & Young, 2021) and writing (Philippakos & FitzPatrick, 2018), both of which
are included in the standards for most humanities classes at the school. Much of literacy
differentiation research, however, is aimed at the elementary level, whereas the most common
approach at secondary schools has been to track students according to data-based academic
abilities, but that is inconsistent (Domina et al., 2019) and does not take into account variability
within tracked groups. Bacon Academy’s English and social studies classes are only loosely
tracked (aside from the advanced placement groups), and accordingly demonstrate a variety of
literacy needs that must be simultaneously differentiated for within each individual class.
Significance of the Problem
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 5
The stakeholders who may benefit the most from improved literacy differentiation
practices are the teachers and the students. For teachers, having an array of differentiation
strategies specifically aimed at literacy for secondary students readily available can make
planning and lesson design more efficient than having to create something new for each aspect of
instruction. Students may benefit by being able to practice and improve upon their individual
literacy skills and needs, bypassing the frustrations that can accompany having to work far below
or above their own abilities with a whole class. More specifically, this tier-1 differentiation has
the potential to significantly benefit special education students who have difficulties with or
diagnoses that affect literacy, as they will presumably receive differentiated materials and
instruction that target the concerns particular to the needs at their specific age range, whereas
many of the differentiation techniques in current usage tend to be broader in scope (e.g., Fisher
& Frey, 2018). If successful, this may lead to improved student achievement on literacy tasks,
and with that an increase in academic self-concept and reading motivation (Toste et al., 2020;
Moller et al., 2020). This concept of differentiating for literacy needs is not at all novel, but it has
typically been focused on elementary students and components of reading comprehension (Puzio
et al., 2020; Smale-Jacobse et al., 2019), while this study seeks to address the needs of secondary
students and a wider variety of literacy components, including writing, speaking, and fluency.
This research will be conducted at Bacon Academy with English classes of varying tracks and
grade levels with the purpose of offering suggestions for literacy differentiation that works for
students of all academic abilities, not just focusing on intervention – as differentiation frequently
does - for struggling learners. Additionally, a wider purpose for this study is to identify some
strategies for literacy differentiation specifically designed for secondary students, as one recent
study (Smale-Jacobse et al., 2019) found that only 12 out of over one thousand studies provided
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 6
empirical data regarding in-class differentiation at the secondary level, and only a few of those
were specifically concerned with literacy, suggesting that it is more common for interventions
and tracking practices to be used than in-class differentiation. With this study it is hoped that
more data-driven and inclusive, age-appropriate approaches to differentiation will aid teachers
with their practice and students in improving their literacy achievement.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for humanities teachers at
Bacon Academy with possible solutions and strategies for improving targeted classroom-level
differentiation in the literacy domains. This applied research study will use both qualitative and
quantitative data collection. The first approach will be interviews with five teacher participants,
each of whom is familiar with the school’s goals toward improving differentiation techniques.
The second approach will be a review of student documents that pertain to the differentiation
focus areas. Groups of students who receive differentiation for vocabulary practice, for example,
will have that category of their assessments reviewed to see if improvements are made as a result
of the practices, and likewise for each literacy domain for which content or instruction is
differentiated. The third approach will be mixed-methods surveys completed by students using
Google Forms. Surveys will be conducted after each cycle of differentiation practices, using
Likert-style items to ask student opinions on levels of helpfulness / effectiveness of each strategy
and inviting them to elaborate on follow-up items to each survey question. Surveys will be
completed by at least 60 but not more than 80 students, depending on final course roster numbers
for the school year.
Central Research Question
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 7
How can literacy differentiation practices in humanities classes be improved at Bacon
Academy?
Key Terms and Definitions
1) Differentiation – “resources, learning tasks, strategies, time for those who are and are not
proficient on a standard” (Schunk, 2018, p. 207).
2) Literacy – “reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and thinking in all subjects”
(Schunk, 2018, p. 138).
3) Tracking – “separating students by academic ability into groups for all subjects or certain
classes and curriculum within a school” (Sadker & Zittleman, 2008, p. 104).
4) Tier 1 Intervention – core instruction, meant to take place within the general classroom,
focused on improving student performance on a particular skill or standard (Burns et al., 2015).
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 8
PROCEDURES
Overview
The purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for humanities teachers at
Bacon Academy with possible solutions and strategies for improving targeted classroom-level
differentiation in the literacy domains. Bacon Academy is a mid-size suburban public high
school in southeastern Connecticut. This portion of the report provides interview procedures and
questions, documents procedures, and survey procedures.
Interviews Procedures
The first approach for data collection will be semi-structured interviews which will allow
the researcher to formulate questions tailored to specific topics and subtopics related to the issue
(literacy) to be investigated. Additionally, semi-structured interviews allow leeway for the
researcher to incorporate answers to interview questions into subsequent items based on the
experiences and expertise of the participants. Conducting interviews in this format will allow the
researcher to determine how teachers and intervention specialists conduct and have previously
conducted literacy differentiation and with what results, thereby providing recommendations of
strategies for the researcher to consider in the applied study. Purposeful sampling will be used to
select participants based on their knowledge of the research topic (Creswell as cited in Claxton &
Michael, 2020) and awareness of the study school’s increased focus on differentiation. The five
faculty members to be interviewed include one reading instructional coach, one reading
intervention specialist, one Advanced Placement United States History teacher, one 10th-grade
English teacher, and one 12th-grade English teacher.
Interviews will be conducted on-campus in a one-on-one, face-to-face format using
standard protocols. Each interview will be scheduled for approximately 45 minutes and will be
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 9
recorded and immediately transcribed for data analysis. The researcher will note tone and diction
during interviews, asking follow-up questions based on those attributes to further understand
interviewees’ thoughts regarding each topic. Once consent is given by the participants, the ten
questions listed below will be used for the interviews.
Once the interviews have been conducted, they will be transcribed, reviewed, and coded
to identify categories and themes observed in the conversations. Coding and categorization will
help the researcher align responses with literature related to the study as well (Creswell & Poth,
2018) as well as point the researcher toward potential new related topics to research and add to
the overall study. Themes will be identified throughout the review process and coded according
to category (e.g., literacy and intervention). This method will provide ease for the creation of a
code table from which the researcher can determine what qualifies items for entries under
specific themes (Creswell & Poth, 2018), making the transcription review process efficient.
Coding generally requires reading the transcripts of all interviews and identifying themes that are
present throughout, with each theme being assigned a specific code, so each new topic that
comes up throughout the interviews will be assigned a code, and then the codes will be reviewed
for prevalence of each theme among the interviews as a collective. Qualitative data regarding the
central research question will be collected via the following ten semi-structured questions with
allowances for follow-up questions as appropriate.
Interview Questions
1. How do you determine whether a struggling student needs differentiation, re-tracking / course
placement, or intervention for literacy? What are the distinctions between those categories?
The purpose of this question is to determine educators’ tendencies toward recommending
struggling students for intervention, perhaps thereby unintentionally using either that or level /
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 10
track change recommendations in place of tier-1 (main classroom) differentiation. Secondary
teachers and schools have a tendency to default to putting students in different tracked classes
(e.g., advanced placement, college preparatory, etc.) as a first means to addressing student skill
levels and proficiencies that deviate from the mean, particularly in English language arts (ELA)
classes (Domina et al., 2019). Tracking is not true differentiation, however, and neither is formal
intervention. Therefore, this question is meant to surmise whether part of the differentiation
problem is a misunderstanding of exactly what it means in contrast with tracking and
intervention.
2. Besides the typical grouping strategy, what literacy differentiation practices do you use that
are specifically targeted toward high school students?
This question is simply intended to gauge what methods teachers are employing aside
from grouping and what, if any, have been effective for them. Several teachers at the school who
have classes of students with diverse skill levels have co-teachers in their classrooms, and one of
the most common practices with co-teachers is to employ the method of station teaching, in
which students are divided into groups or stations based on their proficiencies and work on tasks
aimed at helping them improve with either or both of the instructors, and this is frequently
viewed as an efficient way of individualizing instruction (Lyon et al., 2020). Most classes do not
have the luxury of the co-teacher, though, and more advanced classes such as honors and
advanced placement may still require differentiation, albeit not the kind that takes the guise of
literacy interventions such as modified texts. Additionally, stations are often unfeasible and
cumbersome, so this question is aimed at determining what approaches have been attempted to
streamline the differentiation process in large, diverse classes.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 11
3. What would be most helpful to you to inform your differentiation planning and practices,
particularly regarding student literacy?
The purpose of this question is to gain educator input on the topic in order to improve
student achievement. Common approaches where schools have closed significant literacy
achievement gaps have included co-teaching, inclusive classrooms, and collaboration time in
order to plan such practices (Butler & Nasser, 2020). These are relatively common practices at
the school already, though the special education department from which the co-teachers come
has seen significant turnover and inconsistency over the past several years. As such, this question
seeks teacher input if it is the research-informed practices that are causing difficulty or if other
accommodations are needed.
4. All intervention is differentiation and the two often get used interchangeably. In your own
practice do you tend to consider differentiation first and foremost as intervention?
This question is intended to gage practitioners’ levels of understanding of differentiation
beyond its usage as a tool for remediation. The concept of differentiation has become ambiguous
over the years, with various schools and educators applying it differently, but generally putting
much of the focus on the intervention components (Taylor, 2017). Since this study will focus on
differentiation to provide enrichment and challenge to high-achieving students as much as
support for struggling learners, it is important to establish an understanding of how teachers view
differentiation and ensure that emphasis is given to focus on all learners, not just those in need of
extra assistance.
5. What data points or types of data do you consider to be the most helpful for informing
differentiation?
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 12
The purpose of this question is to determine how teachers decide when, how, and for
which students to differentiate instruction or materials. This is particularly important to know at
the secondary level as components of literacy for which students may need differentiation are not
always apparent, such as reading comprehension and fluency, since much reading work is done
silently and independently. It is also important for the purpose of trying to establish some
consistency of when to apply differentiation strategies, since it is well-documented that this can
vary between teachers (Bondie et al., 2019), and in order for this study to have any impact it
would help to have consistency of data usage to inform practices and implement at the same
time, thereby increasing validity of any findings that may come from implementation.
6. When considering differentiating instruction and/or material for student literacy, are there any
components that you tend to consider more than others (e.g., vocabulary vs. text complexity vs.
fluency)?
This question is meant to help the researcher determine which components of literacy
may need more attention in the study. For example, if all of the participants indicate that they
give significant consideration to text complexity and already have many strategies in place, the
researcher may give more attention to writing strategies which tend not to receive the same level
of consideration (Philippakos & FitzPatrick, 2018). At the same time, if teachers indicate that
one component receives significant attention and they want more strategies to aid with it, then
the researcher can test approaches that have not yet been attempted by the participants.
7. Aside from complex texts, how do you differentiate literacy for the most gifted and talented
students?
8. In general, do you find that student engagement with and motivation for literacy tasks
improves with differentiation? If so, which types of tasks and components of literacy?
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 13
This question’s purpose, similar to the previous one, is to further inform where the
researcher should focus in testing literacy differentiation strategies throughout the study. If there
is a perception that students are not motivated by differentiation for particular literacy
components, the researcher may focus on that area to test strategies, as there is evidence
suggesting that student literacy improves with motivation and vice versa – that motivation
improves with literacy achievement (Toste et al., 2020).
9. For those students who have engaged more, do you think that their self-efficacy and academic
self-concept for literacy has improved?
A follow-up to the previous question, this question is intended to help determine two
things: first, whether participants and students view literacy differentiation as worthwhile,
especially at the secondary level, since it can be polarizing and is often seen as a waste of time
and resources (Puzio et al., 2020). Second, to continue to narrow the focus of what the researcher
should emphasize in planning differentiation strategies, as the goal of any differentiation should
be to improve students’ self-efficacy and academic self-concept so they will continue to improve
and be confident when encountering tasks of a similar nature in the future.
10. Technology is particularly ubiquitous with secondary students, so what role do you see
technology playing in helping teachers implement literacy differentiation specifically designed
for these older learners?
The purpose of this question is to gage participants’ thoughts on technology use as a
differentiation tool in the classroom. It is undeniable that there are a multitude of technology
programs that help students with literacy (Toonder & Sawyer, 2021), so the researcher needs to
find ways to incorporate technology into differentiation plans with as little disruption as possible.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 14
To that end, the researcher would like input for how this should be approached while maintaining
the integrity of the classroom and the literacy tasks which will be required of students.
Documents Procedures
The second approach for data collection will be document analysis. This approach will
help show evidence of the impact of each type of differentiation on student achievement in each
isolated literacy domain. Documents will include formative assessments after single
implementation of strategies and summative assessments after prolonged and repeated use of
strategies. Differentiation for four literacy domains will be conducted throughout the study:
vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, synthesis writing, and fluency. These are
preliminary choices and subject to change based on student data from pre-assessments that are
conducted at the start of the school year. The literacy foci are chosen due to their relevance to the
school’s overall goals for graduates, the “Bacon 10,” which have a strong emphasis on skills in
these areas. Additional rationale for these literacy components is their inclusion in the Common
Core State Standards for literacy at the high school level, which is used by the school and states
that students should be proficient in these skills (National Governors Association Center for Best
Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010).
For each literacy domain the researcher will choose two differentiation strategies,
applying them one at a time over a span of three to four weeks each, and collect three formative
assessments and one summative assessment from all students (likely to be in the range of 60-80
students). These documents will be obtained directly from students after administering the
assessments. The researcher will grade each document and record students’ performances on the
differentiation focus area in a spreadsheet which will track the control group (non-differentiated
instruction or material) versus the experimental group (differentiated). Data gathered will be
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 15
presented in tabular format, as trend charts showing changes in student performance, and as a bar
graph showing control and experimental group comparisons.
Survey Procedures
The third data collection approach will be mixed-methods surveys completed by students
using Google Forms. Surveys will be conducted after each cycle of differentiation practices,
using Likert-style items to ask student opinions on levels of helpfulness / effectiveness of each
strategy and inviting them to elaborate on follow-up items to each survey question. This will
allow for both quantitative and qualitative data to be collected, which is appropriate for the study
as it seeks to determine whether the strategies would be helpful specifically for secondary
students and data is needed from them to determine the overall perception of whether the
implemented strategies help their academic achievement. Student perceptions of effectiveness
and utility value are often correlated with engagement, particularly with literacy (Quinn et al.,
2019), and no instructional strategy – differentiated or not – is likely to be effective without
student engagement, so determining these perceptions further makes this survey useful.
Surveys will be completed by at least 30 but not more than 40 students after each
differentiation cycle, depending on final course roster numbers for the school year. This is a
purposeful sample because half of the students will receive each differentiation approach in a
given cycle while the other half will be kept as the control group, then the groups will switch for
the second strategy within each literacy domain. The students in the experimental group will
answer the survey at the conclusion of the cycle. In this way, all students will receive
differentiation for each literacy domain and be able to provide survey data for at least one
differentiation method for the literacy focus area. Participating students will receive the survey as
an extra credit assignment on their Google Classroom page with a link to it on Google Forms,
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 16
and the survey will ask for consent to participate and include instructions; participants will have
one week to complete the survey. Results will be analyzed by calculating the frequency of each
number reported on the Likert scale for each question and the average score for each item.
Additionally, any follow-up elaboration recorded for each item will be coded by themes that
arise in the responses, and this data will be presented in tabular format. The survey will include
three demographic questions and ten questions or statements regarding the methods and derived
from the literature. Participants will respond using a 5-point Likert scale rating, and each item
will have an optional follow-up prompt asking for elaboration. The items on the survey include
the following statements and questions.
Survey Questions
Demographic Questions
1. What is your race?
o Black / African-American
o White
o Asian
o Native American
o Pacific Islander
o Multiple races
o Other (please specify): _______________
2. What is your biological sex?
o Male
o Female
3. Which category best describes how often you read independently or were read to at home
growing up?
o 0-1 times per week
o 2-4 times per week
o 5-7 times per week
Content Questions
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 17
1. How engaged did you feel while learning this method for (insert literacy skill here, which will
change with different cycles) during the learning cycle?
5 4 3 2 1
Neither
Strongly Engaged Strongly
Engaged Disengaged
Engaged nor Disengaged
Disengaged
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
As noted in the previous section, students need to feel engaged for any instruction to
work well, especially differentiation (Burns et al., 2019). Therefore, this item is simply meant to
gage whether or not the attempted differentiation strategy is able to cultivate student buy-in,
which is an important first step given that sometimes the need for differentiation stems from a
lack of interest or motivation, especially regarding literacy (Toste et al., 2020).
2. Did the learning tasks done while working on (insert literacy skill here) feel like they were
designed to be too simple or too challenging for your capabilities?
5 4 3 2 1
Neither too
Too simple Somewhat Extremely
simple nor Difficult
/ easy simple Difficult
too difficult
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
The purpose of this question is for the researcher to make sure he is not skewing too far
toward intervention with the differentiation strategies. This question is based on the notion that
educators tend to either blur the lines between intervention and differentiation or outright
mistake one for the other (Domina et al., 2019), or simply provide instruction they believe to be
appropriate for students’ assigned tracks (Hodge, 2018). Therefore, it is important to make sure
that the strategies are not perceived by students as meant for intervention or remediation,
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 18
especially since such approaches often ignore the more advanced students in need of
differentiation.
3. Do you believe that your skills in (insert literacy skill here) improved after having gone
through the lessons and learning tasks your teacher gave?
5 4 3 2 1
Neither
Strongly Improved Strongly
Improved Declined
Improved nor Declined
Declined
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
This item is meant to measure whether students’ academic self-concepts improved as a
result of the differentiation strategy. Having a high self-efficacy and academic self-concept is
one of the keys to student success (Wu et al., 2021), so any differentiation should aim to improve
that for students as part of improving overall achievement.
4. Do you believe the skills and methods you were taught during this cycle are ones that you will
be able to use in other classes in addition to English class?
5 4 3 2 1
Definitely
Definitely Likely Maybe Unlikely
Not
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
The purpose of this study is to provide literacy differentiation methods for all humanities
classes, not just English, so this question is an attempt to measure the transferability of each
approach. Additionally, if students do not perceive a learning task to be transferable then they are
less likely to engage (Burns et al., 2019), so this item is important to help determine whether
each tested strategy will truly be useful.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 19
5. Were the assignments you did while working on (insert literacy skill here) during this cycle
similar to or different than assignments you can remember doing related to this in middle and
elementary school?
5 4 3 2 1
Very Partially Extremely
Similar Different
Similar Similar Different
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
This question is meant to gage whether or not the differentiation strategies are new to
students and therefore possibly unique to use in secondary schools (at least in the district under
study). This is pertinent information because the study is seeking to provide recommendations
specifically for use at the secondary (and mostly high school) level, and nearly all existing
literacy differentiation data that currently exists is from the elementary level (Smale-Jacobse et
al., 2019), so the researcher wants to be sure to provide strategies that are somewhat new and
tailored to the needs of older learners.
6. On the summative assessment, how well were you able to recognize and remember how to do
each task related to (insert literacy skill here) you worked on during this cycle?
5 4 3 2 1
Neither
Easily Easy nor Difficult to Unable to
Remembered
Remembered Difficult to Remember Remember
Remember
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
Part of the purpose of differentiating instruction and material is to make it so that it is
more accessible for students, and that may include automaticity (Jones et al., 2012). Thus, this
question seeks to determine whether literacy automaticity improved as a result of the
differentiation.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 20
7. I was given a number of different ways to demonstrate my learning regarding (insert literacy
skill).
5 4 3 2 1
Neither
Strongly Strongly
Agree Agree nor Disagree
Agree Disagree
Disagree
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
One component of differentiation can be providing students with a number of ways to
demonstrate their learning (Sibold, 2016). While this may not always be possible, this item
nonetheless attempts to determine if students find it to be the case with each differentiation
strategy when applicable, thereby granting some credence to the strategy.
8. Did you find working in small groups to be helpful when working on (insert literacy skill)?
5 4 3 2 1
Neither
Extremely Somewhat
Helpful nor Not Helpful Harmful
Helpful Helpful
Harmful
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
Each strategy in the study will include at least one session of working in small groups
with peers and the teacher, as this has been found to be helpful for student achievement (Lyon et
al., 2021). This question, then, serves the purpose of discovering students’ perceptions of that
approach and whether or not it helped them be successful.
9. Did you feel that the teacher’s expectations of you regarding your ability with (insert skill)
during the cycle were the same as those for other students?
5 4 3 2 1
Never
Always Sometimes Not Sure Rarely
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 21
The purpose of differentiation is to help all students reach the same standard of academic
expectations and success within the curriculum (Tomlinson, 2018). Therefore, this question is
meant to help measure whether students feel expectations are being kept high throughout the
differentiation process and inform the researcher of whether a strategy is in danger of being
invalid as a result of altered expectations.
10. Did you feel you had sufficient freedom to work ahead individually or seek out teacher
assistance as fit your needs throughout the cycle?
5 4 3 2 1
Very Free
Neither
to Choose Somewhat Somewhat Extremely
Free nor
What I Free Constrained Constrained
Constrained
Needed
Reason for rating above (optional): _______________________________________
This final question is intended to check whether the teacher is providing students with
autonomy and, as with an earlier question, not falling into habits of making differentiation overly
focused on intervention for struggling learners (Domina et al., 2019). This question’s purpose is
to measure if the differentiation approaches are inclusive in providing excelling students as well
as typical and struggling students the support they need.
IMPROVING BA LITERACY DIFFERENTIATION 22
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