DI in Gymnastics? Really?

“Differentiated Instruction (DI) in Gymnastics? Really? Are you not afraid of students getting injured? Are you even any good at performing gymnastics skills?” I was taken aback by the trepidatious remarks from fellow educators when I spoke about my desire to incorporate DI into my Gymnastics lessons. However, I saw this as a challenge and a few months later, I presented my takeaways at the North Zone Cluster NLC. In this article, I would like to share with you how I tapped on the six key elements of DI (Tomlinson, 2001, 2013) to enhance the students’ learning experience in Naval Base Primary School.

To provide you with a focus for this article, I will concentrate on a particular lesson I conducted with a Primary 4 class. The lesson’s objective was to jump to rebound on a springboard to form different shapes in flight and land in a controlled finished position. 

1. High-Quality Curriculum

To implement a high-quality curriculum, it is necessary to identify essential understandings (concepts, principles and big ideas of the unit) at the outset. 

For this lesson, I wanted my students to comprehend two main concepts: 

1. executing proper landing technique reduces the risk of injury and 

2. the greater the force applied on the springboard, the higher the resultant jump.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the majority of the students would not have experienced a serious injury due to improper landing before and, thus, would struggle to relate to the first big idea of the lesson. To help my students better visualise this concept, I brought a fragile toy box and a cushion to class and showed them two scenarios. 

First, I dropped the toy box onto the cushion, and it stayed intact. Then, I dropped the toy box onto the concrete floor, and it broke. I used this to explain how not cushioning your landing could impact your bones and ligaments. For the second big idea, I wanted to encourage my students to be protagonists of their learning and for me to evolve my role from that of a teacher to a facilitator. Thus, I provided my students with a rubber ball, and got them to consider how to throw it onto the trampoline to achieve the highest possible bounce. By the end of the activity, the majority of the students could elucidate that the greater the force on the trampoline, the higher the resultant bounce. Thus, analogising the two big ideas allowed my students to draw connections between their learning and prior knowledge. This makes the essential understandings more meaningful and thought-provoking. 

Above: Asking thought-provoking questions (what can you do to jump even higher?)

2. Appropriate Degree of Challenge 

Have you ever found yourself engrossed in games such as Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, wondering what makes them so captivating? One potential explanation for their addictive quality is the increasing levels of difficulty that pose a challenge to the player. This brings us to our next key element of DI, which is the provision of tasks that offer an appropriate degree of challenge to our students. A task pitched at an appropriate degree of challenge is one where success is possible, but not too easily attainable. When pitching such a task, it is important to explicitly communicate the difficulty level to the students, enabling them to assess their abilities and understand the steps needed to progress. Additionally, providing students with the autonomy to select their preferred levels of difficulty enables them to take greater ownership of their learning and stimulates natural curiosity and motivation. For example, when getting students to form different shapes after rebounding on a springboard, I matched each shape to a level of difficulty and allowed them to choose accordingly. 

With the vast disparity in skill levels among students, I challenged them appropriately by tapping on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and getting the more competent students to coach students that require guidance. Getting students to coach stretches their ability as it requires them to execute the skill proficiently, identify their classmates’ areas of improvement, and then communicate these ideas back. 

3. Respectful Tasks 

As educators, we often demand respect from our students, but do we consider how much respect we are showing them in return? A powerful way to instil values is through leading by example, and assigning stimulating, authentic, and meaningful tasks is one way to demonstrate respect for our students. 

These tasks make learning more genuine and applicable to other areas of their lives, such as sports, subjects, or skills. For example, I encouraged my students to consider how rebounding skills could be applied to other sports (diving). It is also important to ensure that all students feel valued and not inferior to their peers, even if they are performing simpler tasks. 

To achieve this, I provided every student with the same assessment sheet with varying levels of difficulty, to prevent any feelings of embarrassment or inadequacy. This facilitated mutual levels of respect between myself and all students equally.

4. Flexible Grouping 

Imagine being tasked to plan a lesson incorporating e-pedagogy. Would you rather plan it alone or with your department? Our answers differ because of our working styles and strengths. Likewise, our students will also have their preferred group configurations. This underscores the crux of DI: that there is no one size fits all approach to grouping. Thus, we should allow our students to work in various group configurations as it creates opportunities for different students’ strengths to shine. 

For this lesson, the students were assigned to practice rebounding on a springboard individually at the beginning of the lesson. After which, students worked in pairs when assessing each other’s ability to perform shapes after rebounding on the springboard. Finally, students worked in groups of 4 when demonstrating their favourite shapes after rebounding on a springboard. Providing students with these different learning experiences while employing heterogeneous and homogeneous grouping strategies can help accelerate learning in the classroom. 

Above: Students demonstrating their favourite shapes in groups of 4

5. Continual Assessment 

DI centres around tailoring our instructions to meet the needs and abilities of our students. The only way we can understand our student’s ever-evolving needs would be through continuous assessment. For this lesson, I had three different apparatus (foamed springboard, normal springboard and trampoline) for my students to rebound off which were assigned to my students based on their ability. 

To enable this, I had to perform a diagnostic assessment to determine their comfort level with jumping off heights. Based on the resultant height of the equipment, I initially planned to get the LP students to use the trampoline, the MP students the springboard and the HP students the foamed springboard. However, upon performing my diagnostic assessment, I spotted three students who were very uncomfortable jumping off a height. As such, I got those three students to use the foamed springboards, the MP students to use the trampolines and the HP students to use the normal springboards. 

In addition, I administered a formative assessment utilising a checklist that necessitated students to execute specific shapes following a rebound. This aided me in deciding on subsequent instructions and provided me with a clearer insight into whether I needed to scaffold my instructions or provide activity extensions. 

Above: Assigning of apparatus based on diagnostic assessment

6. Community Building 

Community building can be likened to the creation of a family among educators, particularly within the realm of Physical Education. Consider the various forms of sharing we engage in, be it through taking courses, sharing on social media platforms like the PESTA Facebook page, or simply having conversations with one another. Thanks to the robust backing of organizations such as PESTA and SPEA, a culture has been fostered in which we can feel secure, embraced, and bolstered by one another. Similarly, DI involves the enculturation of a safe learning environment where students know their voices are being heard and respected. While this might take a lot of time, and even time outside of lessons, to foster, this is one of the most important elements as it facilitates the implementation of the other key elements. To help with this, we can fall back on the fundamentals of the STP and continue to do the little things like recognising positive behaviour and providing opportunities for meaningful collaboration. 

As an educator, I strongly believe that every student deserves an opportunity to learn. As such, I am gladly trying to incorporate DI in my lessons as I see it as a platform that creates an omnipresent expectation for growth. Stephen Covey once expounded “strength lies in differences, not in similarities”. Ultimately, by embracing and leveraging the diverse learning profiles of our students, we will provide greater opportunities for our individual students’ strengths to shine. 

Contributed by: 

Ralph Paul Chan Zhi Wei, Physical Education Teacher (Naval Base Primary School) 

Email: ralph_paul_chan_zhi@schools.gov.sg

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