Theoretical+Understanding

This poetry unit has been designed for a stage 4 English classroom and aims to differentiate learning using a layered curriculum approach to encourage all students to achieve the learning outcomes and objectives of the unit. The unit incorporates a range of interactive and rich tasks, scaffolding, and message abundancy to make learning explicit, as well as to create a classroom environment which is engaging, interesting, and diverse.

**Group work**

The unit places emphasis on interactive activities, such as pair and group work, to encourage collaboration among students and substantive communication in achieving the key learning ideas. Group work is an important teaching and learning tool in the classroom as it gives students the opportunity to be active participants in their learning experiences (Manuel, 2010; Gillies, 2003). Manuel (2010) highlights a number of benefits to students which occur as a result of group work. These benefits include: choice, agency, developing increased responsibility for learning, opportunities for purposeful talk, moving from low-level tasks to high-level thought processes, and developing confidence. For this reason, group work is a key strategy in a differentiated and layered learning curriculum as students have frequent opportunities to share their understanding with each other and talk informally to clarify meaning. This is helpful for all students, and particularly for ESL learners, who benefit from moving along the language mode continuum of BICS to CALP, that is, informal talk among peers in order to clarify understanding, before moving towards more academic and formal language (Gibbons, 2009, p.141; Michell, cited in Pillans 2011; Cummins, cited in Pillans 2011). Further, group work is beneficial in providing students with the opportunity to maintain choice and agency in their learning.

**Variety in activities** This unit promotes the importance of catering to a wide range of learning styles in students, demonstrated by the rich variety in the activities. Variety in the classroom also increases the level of interest and engagement among students, particularly beneficial for students who may have difficulty in concentration (Manuel, 2010). In addition, through variety in lesson activities, the unit incorporates a high level of message abundancy in the classroom whereby students are provided with visual, written, and oral alternatives in activities. Educational theorists, Mariani (cited in Hammond, 2001) and Krashan (cited in Gibbons, 2009), emphasise the importance of message abundancy in the classroom, arguing that comprehensible input in learning is achieved through the use of different kinds of modes for transferring knowledge.

The unit also includes alternative activities for students who feel more confident with using digital media software (Lonergan, 2011). These alternative activities are accessible to every student in the class through adequate scaffolding. For example, in activity A5: the creation a digital text, students' learning has been scaffolded in B layer and C layer activities to aid students in successfully accomplishing the task. By scaffolding activities, there is an increased level of student support and modelling so that all students are capable of reaching the learning outcomes. Explicit teaching through modelling and scaffolds are important for all learners (Gibbons, 2009; Pillans, 2011).

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