DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGIES: "FOODBALL" CLASS ACTIVITY

We've been flipping our classes for five years and some parts of the course - mainly grammar and vocabulary - have been moved from the group learning space to the individual learning space.

Now we have more time to work in class with the students, to observe them while they are working and we've been noticing more than ever that it's really impossible to avoid differentiation.

So giving differentiated instructions and using a lot of different strategies is the only approach which makes sense for us.

This activity - the "FOODBALL" project - meets the needs of all the learners, makes them work together and has a collaborative product as a final outcome.

What is a Bloom Ball?

A Bloom Ball is a project where students have to complete activities that take them through all the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, from Remembering to Creating. They are great for both collaborative  and  differentiated work. Students work in mixed-ability groups and they choose the activities they want to carry out . Everybody works at their level and the final product - the assembled ball - will be evaluated by the teacher according to grading criteria specified in a rubric.

Here is, step by step, the project carried out by Daniela Becchio's students. She's been so kind to share the results with us and she's even made a video explaining the whole process.

WHAT

Students designed and created a dodecahedron on the topic of "food"

WHEN

They worked in class to complete all the activities and to assemble the ball ( 2 hours )

HOW

Here are the requirements for each side

1) describe your ideal restaurant

2)  invent a menu

3)  write a recipe

4)  write a dialogue at the restaurant

5)  create a crossword with ten difficult food related words

6)  create a wordsearch with food related words

7)  make a Venn Diagram comparing English breakfast and Italian breakfast

8)  write ten commandments for healthy eating

9)  write a short text "My eating habits"

10) draw a world map showing hunger problems

11) invent a slogan promoting healthy eating

12) write a short poem on food or create a survey

Students were given all the instructions through a webquest  https://createwebquest.com/index.php/foodball

 where they could find all the requirements, the online resources to explore in order to complete the tasks and the evaluation criteria.

The Foodballs showed a good use of language, a lof of creativity and were nice to see.

Everybody worked at their own level, while interacting with each other at the same time.
What I like about this activity is that each student gave their contribution to the group and the final result was given by the amount of individual effort.