Offering students productive diversity creates memorable learning experiences because they are tailored to students interests & needs. Productive diversity encourages learning activities in which students:
- are designers of knowledge
- work collaboratively to offer feedback
- differentiate the process & pace of learning
- reach similar but high goals
I recently tried to offer English Language Learners productive diversity while they studied the transatlantic slave trade. Instead of asking all students to analyze the same documents/primary sources and write the same Document Based Question (DBQ) essay, students worked in pairs to create first-person video stories about an African’s journey from Africa . Students used a free online video editing tool (WeVideo), primary sources, and this rubric to create their videos.
For the most part, the project demonstrated productive diversity because
- Students developed their own understanding of the slave trade by analyzing documents in order to come to their own conclusions.
- They worked in peers to offer feedback on the storyline and historical details.
- There was some differentiation of the pace but all students created a video.
- There were different degrees of imagination, historical detail and audio & video editing students could tackle but they were assessed with the same flexible rubric.
Here is a sample video of the final product:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMnMNgFwosk&w=560&h=315]