Differentiated Instruction: Fine, but what to do with the rest of the class?

…use of reading groups creates a problem; when the teacher is working with one reading group, the other students in the class must be occupied with activities they can complete with minimal teacher direction. Research on these follow-up activities, or unsupervised seatwork, indicates that they are often of poor quality, are rarely taken seriously by teachers or students, and are poorly integrated with other reading activities (e.g., Beck, McKeown, McCaslin, & Burkes, 1979; Osborn, 1984), and that student time on-task during follow-up periods is typically low (e.g., Anderson, Brubaker, Alleman-Brooks, & Duffy, 1985). Yet in a class with three reading groups, as much as two thirds of the reading period is spent on follow-up activities.

Stevens, R.J., Madden, N.A, Slavin, R.E, & Farnish, A.M. (1987). Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition: Two Field Experiments. Reading Research Quarterly. 22 (4) p. 433-454.

Comments

[Mark Bohland]

Is there any research more recent than 25-30 years ago? I wonder if teachers and students today are different than those studied then. Has current teacher training helped teachers to "get it" and to take such unsupervised work seriously?

[Laurence Holt]

Great question. I'm not aware of any such research.

[Mathew]

I'd appreciate a post on follow-up activities that are not of "poor quality."