Scaffolding & Differentiation

First of all and before I explain the two activities I made up, I would like to present the concepts of scaffolding and differentiation so that you are familiar with them. Scaffolding deals with teaching (in this case, language) by cutting up the content in chunks and providing students with several tools that allow them to work with each of those chunks of information. Differentiation, instead, stands for the modification of the activities in which the content will be taught so as to adapt it to the cognitive styles and ways of learning of our students.

Scaffolding 

In this lesson, students are learning about the different types of stones that exist in their nearer natural environment. This didactic unit will last for two weeks, and the proposed  scaffolding activity could be a warm-up done in the first lesson that activates the already-existing background knowledge that students have about the topic. In this case, the teacher would bring realia (stones found in parks, mountains of the area, etc.) to the classroom so that students pass them around, comment on them and experiment their features (touch, texture, softness, colour...). Then, the teacher will ask questions about what students know about them from general to more specific characteristics. 

This way, students will be working with "chunks" of information related to what they will study later on in the theoretical part of the lesson. They will find it fun and perhaps appealing, since bringing real material to the class helps to create a good ambience in the and to place learning in a real context. 

Differentiation

In this lesson, students will be working with the topic of gender violence. Since the nature of the students in a classroom is very varied, it would be interesting to create some small groups containing students with similar learning styles. They will be required to go through different already arranged stations of learning in which they will complete different activities, all related to the topic of gender violence. Each of the stations will be assigned to a group according to the specific needs of the teenagers that compose it. 

Consequently, the whole classroom is dealing with the same topic but in a way that it adapts to and fits the likings of each of the students. The classroom atmosphere would be very positive, since hopefully each student will be working on something meaningful for him or her and that is related to their preferred way of acquiring knowledge. Finally, learners will benefit from the advantages of group work.