I teach various levels of English language, and I teach different modules like Conversational English, FCE, QSkills and TOEFL prep course.

Students mostly find difficulties in writing and my aim was to research the problems, why students struggle while writing paragraphs and essays.

My research helped me to identify different learning styles in my classroom and adapt the writing instructions to the needs of my students.

2. In what ways auditory, kinesthetic, and reflective learners respond differently to adapted writing strategies?

3. Which strategies are most effective in supporting diverse learners?

4. What improvements in writing occur after differentiated instructions?

Week 2: Short survey on preferred styles. Observation notes during writing activities for instance, auditory learners prefer discussion or explanation. Peer explanation helps them more. Kinesthetic learners prefer slides, charts, matching sentences, order different paragraphs. Reflective learners prefer journaling, writing on logs and highlighting the key moments in paragraphs, using different colors to separate the paragraph parts

Week 3: Different supports like graphic organizers, sentence strip activities, jigsaw reading, unscrambling the sentences in a paragraph, watching videos, peer correction strategy.  Gather students’ reflection using the exit ticket “What activity helped you most?”

Week 4: Compare initial baseline paragraphs with later drafts after using differentiating supports. Rubric scores assessing the content, organization, unity, coherence and cohesive devices, details, supporting sentences etc.

Peer assessment with checklist and self-assessment-do they see the improvement

10^th grade students from different schools and the number of students is 20.

Task: Smartphones should be banned at schools.

Attempted essay:

Introduction-misses thesis statement, no transition, no conclusion. 90% of students did not know what thesis statement is, did not know how to use transitions and how to develop conclusion.

The criteria included

Task completion

Organization

Coherence

Mechanics

The baseline essays were lack of organization, and coherence.

Post-intervention essay with differentiated support, same topic with graphic organizer, outline for visual learners, oral discussion for auditory learners and sentence strips, unscrambling paragraphs for kinesthetic learners.

Compared average score

2. Survey responses for the questions:

1. How confident do feel writing a paragraph in English?

15-Sometimes confident

5-Confident

2. How confident are you to write a full essay?

10-Not confident

10-Sometimes confident

 3. Which part of a paragraph do you find easy?

20-details, examples

2-Topic sentence

5-Supporting ideas

7-using transitions

6-concluding sentences

4. Which part of a paragraph do you find difficult?

20-Topic sentence

20-Thesis statement

15-Organizing ideas

1-spelling

9-grammar

10-academic vocabulary

5. How many times did you write essays?

20-Not many times

6. What best helps you learn paragraph/essay writing?

8-teacher explanation

5-step by step modelling

4-graphic organizer

3-working independently

15-Peer discussion

7. What kind of supporter do you need while writing?

15-sentence starters

20-paragraph frames

9-more times

7-essay outlines

18-vocabulary list

8. What would make paragraph-to -essay writing easier for you?

16-Paragraph structure

20-Thesis statement

13-Teacher’s explanation

Observation notes:

8 students used the outline to organize their thoughts-use of scaffolds-visual learners

6 students asked their peers to help them-use of scaffolds-auditory learners

6-students put their ideas, brainstormed the ideas-reflective learners

2. Adapt instructions to students’ needs

3. Measure how differentiated instructions impact on students’ engagement, motivation and confidence

1. Identify my students' learning style

2. Adapt writing instructions to my students' needs

3. Apply writing activities that could help them to write paragraphs and essays accurately

   Students began to gain both writing skill and self-confidence, and apply writing strategy and techniques which are very close to their learning ability