Inosse Wilson Chavane

How Discussion and one-to-one strategies can be used to support low performing students in
class and enrich differentiation and active learning?

1. Introduction

I believe that one of the biggest mistakes the schools do, is to believe that they can standardize the
student learning, but: two students are never the same.

The key to answering this heterogeneity is to differentiate education to ensure the differentiation
of learning.

Differentiation is seen as the process of identifying, with each learner, the most effective strategies
for achieving agreed goals.

If differentiation does not occur, then many learners will become unhappy and disenchanted with
the learning process and, therefore, may not achieve their potential until they leave the education
system.

Differentiation calls for greater understanding in the way learners work, either alone or with others,
based on their individual needs and goals. It requires the learner to take a more active and
responsible role in the planning, carrying out and reviewing of what is learned.

We, as teachers, must be sensitive to this variety, and be flexible enough in our thinking to
accommodate those who may not perform in the generally accepted way.
As can be understood in the previous words, differentiation is very abroad because it deals with
individualities.

“If, as teachers, we increase our understanding of who we teach and what we teach, we are more
likely to be flexible in how we teach.” Tomlinson and Eidson

It is very interesting to read the following statement in the Special educational needs in IB
programmes guide: In some IB schools differentiation has become a long-term whole-school
strategy that enables the community to maintain the momentum to transform teaching and
learning habits, develop classroom relationships and expectations, and address suitable patterns
of assessment that reflect the shift in thinking.

Differentiation is supposed to be visible and transparent in policy documents in order to

accomplish IB expectations for authorization and evaluation. A good curriculum must be coherent,
relevant, stimulating and challenging, and all tasks are supposed to be respectful of students as
diverse learners.

Differentiation can help learners access the content at an appropriate level through a variety of
resources, and is supposed to become an integral part of each teacher’s curriculum planning. In the
past it has often been hard to persuade many staff that effective differentiation within the classroom
is a relevant and necessary part of every teacher’s professional expertise.

2. Problematization

Due to the number of students versus the number of teachers in class, not forgetting the need to
follow and finish the lesson plan, teachers tend to find the best fit teaching strategy in order to
cover most of the students learning. This affects quite a number of students, students that could be
as good as others, but because of the teaching strategy chosen not covering them, at the end they
are considered low performers.

In this work I will be focused on how the discussion and the one-to-one teaching can create a
space where he and the students can support the low performing students in order to achieve
better results.
 3. Justification

During my time in secondary school, I found it very difficult to understand what was being taught
in class. To understand it, I had to have support from my elder brother who used to explain to me
in a different way, mostly one-on-one e use to first introduce me to a scenario where we would
discuss.

Then, after university and started to teach, I saw the same scenario repeating over and over again,
and this kept me thinking: teachers (including me now) may have been marginalizing many
students by teaching as all the students are the same.

4. Objectives

4.1. General objective

● Develop lessons driven by discussion and one-to-one teaching to create a space where
students can support each other in order to achieve better results.

4.2. Specific objectives

● Identify students in need of extra support in class;

● stabilize groups that can support each member;
● Use the academic support lesson period to understand students line of thinking.

5. Methodology

The research took place in the MYP 3 (year 9) integrated sciences where are 17 students of mixed
gender in total.

5.1. Control tools

This study was driven in a qualitative way (method), this was chosen because as said before, the
aim of this study was to study how to support each student in order to have his best. Quantifying
the students would make this research go into generic and traditional way, in other words,
standardized the student.

The effectiveness of the teaching strategies chosen were informed by the level of engagement and
performance in the investigator optic.

6. Cycle 1: Using debate-based lessons

During the lessons using class discussion/debate and me as a mediator, it was evident that all the
students had an opportunity to express their thoughts and knowledge. Interestingly there were 3
types of students with peculiar ways of processing data: The first was able to relate easily with the
lesson, the second found it hard to understand a topic until their pair with other colleagues and get
the explanation coming from there, and the third, this particular student had an inclination to
mathematical logic, in other words, in other to things make sense and consequently understand,
we (me and my mentor), had to find ways to drive the lesson with a practical examples.

This method of teaching made very clear that students are different, and the need of differentiating
was evident, but the challenge faced during lesson was that it was time consuming: because the
discussion were very engaging and with the need to allow the students to express themselves, it
was very difficult to end the lesson in time, and there was a need to continue the discussion in the
following day of integrated science lessons. Similar challenges were found by LUCIANA, 2009.

With the challenge of time management, I tried to apply a slightly different approach which lead
to the second cycle.

7. Cycle 2: The one-to-one teaching approach

“A comprehensive model of the dynamics of one-on-one teaching is described. Adoption of specific

teaching styles is influenced by the learning styles of students; the interest in faculty to build
interpersonal relationships with learners”. (ANTHONY, 2002).
In order to try this method, there was a clear need of changing the lesson plan. First I developed
activities and posted the essential content in the student managebac and/or give small handouts.

The Idea of the handouts and content on managebac was basically similar to the idea of promoting
debate, but this time, the students had to answer questions in class based mainly on the given
handouts.

Interesting was that the level of engagement was fairly positive, but at the same time I found three
major concerns about using this method:

First: The decrease of the quality of answers

Students began copy-pasting or memorizing the answers: basically they stopped thinking. The
answer were correct, but during the one-to-one clarification and inquiry, was evident that most of
the class was “following accordingly the example”.

Second: “Clonation”

Because the students had a place to find the answers, which were provided by me (as I was the one
who produced the material), I realized that they were learning what I know, in other words, I was
creating (imperfect) clones of me.

Third: Standardization

Although the lesson was differentiated in a way, during explanation or even the content, I realized
that because of the second issue, I was somehow back to standardize my students because I had
cut their major freedom to think, research and share with their colleagues.

I am not stating that the one-to-one strategy was a total failure to me, one of the big advantages of
this method is that I could keep track of the student thinking, reinforce my relationship with
students and other more.

I went to research more about this matter, and I found very useful the information given by
ANTHONY, 2002.
This led me to rethink about how best I could fit both strategies in the cycle 1 and 2 in order to
find balance, and this led me to the third cycle.

8. Cycle 3: Infusing debate and one-to-one strategies

This consisted in lessons packed two by two, where, normally first I would send topics to research
and discuss in class taking notes, then I would send links to enrich their learning, including a few
questions where the answer were not covered. The holy idea was to enrich the one-to-one method
without affecting the student abilities to inquire, discover, discuss and share.

Interestingly, using this fused method, I was able to manage time more efficiently, and the
supposed “low performers students” were able to demonstrate better knowledge than before.

The major challenge in this method is that it needs lots of time for planning. Observe that this
method requires a lot of prediction and planning of the following lessons, move away from the
classic teaching to managing, use of ICTs and so on. Time management was part of the challenges,
but this time it was not as concerning because when such happened we could cover it in the first
minutes of the next lesson.

This strategy showed improvement when comes to give freedom to students to inquire and at the
same time keep track of students with unique learning style.

8.1. The Academic Support lesson (ACSU)

The academic support lesson in a session one-to-one. this lesson takes about 10 min for each
students and because of the number of subjects and the nature of the session itself, attendance is
not mandatory.

Before I started to drive the lesson using the cycles, almost none of the students had an interest to
come to ACSU, but after that, students, especially the ones with unique learning styles began to
come asking for more clarification.

This had proven that engaging strategies had created good connections between me and students,
and they were motivated to learn.
 9. Conclusion and final considerations

After doing this research, I realized that covering all students needs in class (differentiation) is
very important and very challengefull. Different strategies must take place in class not just
focusing on one, because this may fail.

Looking at the results observed when using both discussion and on-to-one, I had better results as
it created a space to contact with all the students either by them sharing their knowledge or by
supporting them directly where I could do my best to give an explanation based on their unique
way of thinking and processing information.

This method is not perfect as sometimes incites “noise”, and probably it should be incorporated
with development of listening skills.

I recommend father trials of these methods, incorporating them with another strategies in order to
find better efficiency.

10. References
➢ Do Nascimento, C. B. (2015). Oralidade E Letramento: O Debate Em Sala De
Aula(dissertation). Rio grande do Norte, Brasil.
➢ Grasha, A. F. (2002). The Dynamics of One-on-One Teaching(dissertation). EBSCO, Ohio.
➢ Bowen, T., & Sun, A. |. (n.d.). One-to-one methodology: Ten practical tips for effective
lessons. Retrieved from http://www.onestopenglish.com/one-to-one-methodology-ten-
practical-tips-for-effective-lessons/144647.article.
➢ Differentiation Guidelines. (n.d.). Retrieved December 16, 2019, from
http://www.iss.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Differentiation-Guidelines.pdf.
➢ Classroom Differentiation: One Teacher, One Class, Many Learning Styles. Is It Doable?
(2019, December 2). Retrieved December 10, 2019, from
https://dominicancaonline.com/classroom-management/classroom-differentiation-one-
teacher-one-class-many-learning-styles-is-it-doable/.
➢ Goncalves, L. F. (2009). O genero oral debate em sala de aula: um estudo de
caso(dissertation). Sao Paulo, Brasil.