In this present section, I first provide a brief description of each lesson, with the devices and applications used highlighted in bold. Then I discuss how these applications facilitated the differentiation of the various curricular elements, i.e., the content, the process, the product and the learning environment. Finally, I present the main affordances of technology for DI that emerged upon the thematic analysis of my observation notes. For a numerical overview of the number and distribution of the themes identified in this study, please refer to Table 17 in Section 3.3.3.4.

 

The lesson began with a challenge generated randomly by the “Random events generator”, a feature built in the Classcraft gamification platform. The day’s challenge was that any student who remained seated throughout the session would receive an extra point for their lesson work. Then, to set the tone and energise the class, using YouTube, Kamilla and her students listened to and sang “Old Town Road”, a Western-themed pop song they had been rehearsing for some weeks.

Next, the students participated in two rounds of a vocabulary game of naming places in a town. Kamilla then introduced a Quizlet study set she had prepared, which included flashcards, with each showing a word on one side and its Hungarian equivalent on the other, accompanied by a picture, as well (screenshots of the flashcards are presented in Appendix P1). Going in order, each student read a Hungarian equivalent and then identified the English word. When the students were unsure of the correct pronunciation, Kamilla clicked on the word so that the students could listen to the pronunciation.

In the next activity, in a cognitively more complex version of the previous task, the students were asked to write their own definitions for the words. If students completed the task early, they could get extra points, or “XPs”, as they are called in Classcraft, if they wrote additional definitions or helped their peers with writing their definitions. During the activity, Kamilla was moving around the classroom and helped the students who were having difficulties with formulating the definitions.

In the last activity, the students read their definitions, while the others were guessing the terms. They earned XPs for both writing definitions and identifying words based on their classmates’ definitions. In the final minutes of the lesson, Kamilla recorded the points for each student in Classcraft. In our follow-up discussion after the lesson, Kamilla told me that the Quizlet study set would be assigned to students as homework, which in practice meant that she posted the link to the study set on Google Classroom, to which the students’ parents also have access.

Bea invited me to join a lesson of hers with her fifth graders. At that time, they were covering a unit related to the topic of cultures (“What Do Different Cultures Give to the World?”, Oxford Discover 5, Unit 10). This lesson was held in the ICT room, which meant that each student had access to a desktop computer, equipped with headphones, and the teacher also used a PC and a smartboard.

The main objectives of this lesson were reading and listening skills development as well as the revision of vocabulary. First, as a warm-up activity, students played a Kahoot quiz game on their PCs, the aim of which was to revise a reading about cultures that they had dealt with in the previous lesson. After this, they logged in to their Google Classroom, and accessed a link to the British Council’s Learn English website, which contained a listening activity sequence dealing with the topic of “Unusual British Festivals”. The students first completed a pre-listening vocabulary matching activity and then moved on to the listening exercise. Each student used their headphones and listened to the recording individually, and they also had the option to listen with or without reading the transcript. Upon listening to the text, they completed two comprehension tasks (true/false and multiple-choice questions). Throughout the entire phase (the sequence of activities is attached in Appendix P2), students worked at their own pace – by clicking on finish, they could instantly check their results and sought Bea’s assistance only for clarification or help. Early finishers had the opportunity to watch an additional YouTube video about cultures, and, again, they could choose whether to watch it with or without subtitles. The lesson ended with an interactive drawing and guessing game on Skribbl.

Rebeka’s lesson with her sixth graders, similarly to Bea’s, was held in the ICT room, where both the students and the teacher had a PC to work on, with the teacher’s PC being connected to the smartboard. The lesson focused on developing reading and listening skills through the discussion of the topic of Stonehenge.

In the first 10 minutes of the lesson, the students gave feedback on each other’s homework that they had created and submitted on Flip, a video discussion and video sharing app. In these videos, they were summarising the main points of a book about Stonehenge that they had previously read in the Kids A–Z graded reader application. The class watched some of these videos and provided feedback by highlighting both some strengths and areas for improvement.

Following this, using their PCs, each student joined Nearpod, an online learning platform where students can engage with a sequence of interactive slides prepared by the teacher (for the sequence used in Rebeka’s lesson, refer to Appendix P3). The students first noted three things they remembered from their reading assignment on a collaborative notice board and then reacted to their peers’ comments. Next, they read a short story about Stonehenge, and then took part in a virtual 3D tour of the site, where they could look and walk around as if they were actually there. This was followed by a slide where students described their virtual experience by drawing what they had seen in the VR tour. On the next slide, using their headphones, they watched a YouTube video about Stonehenge, where they could decide whether to enable or disable subtitles, and then they completed a gap-filling exercise as a post-listening comprehension check. Fast finishers could play a Stonehenge-themed online game, followed by a short reflection activity where they wrote about whether they would like to visit Stonehenge and why. The lesson ended with a team quiz on Gimkit, the aim of which was to check the students’ comprehension of the YouTube video. At the end of the lesson, Rebeka recorded the points for each student in Motimore. Points were awarded for completing the Stonehenge homework, as well as for winning first, second, or third place in the Gimkit quiz game.

Emma’s lesson with her ninth graders was part of the two-month project called Summercraft, based on and realised with the video game Minecraft. As was described in Section 4.2.1.1, within the project, students worked on PCs in groups in the ICT room to set up a holiday resort in Minecraft-Land. This involved detailed planning of various aspects like the restaurant, beach area, hotel interiors and exteriors, and entertainment facilities. Besides, they were asked to create an audio-visual tour guide of their resort using video-editing tools and to develop written materials of their choices (e.g., postcards, brochures or restaurant menus) from Minecraft-Land, using Canva. The project aimed at developing writing and speaking skills and expanding students’ vocabulary related to the topic of holidays and travel.

My visit was scheduled for the postcard-creation phase of the project. This lesson had been planned to take place in the ICT room, where students would use PCs, however, due to an unexpected last-minute room change, the ICT room was not available and thus the students could not work on PCs. Emma, therefore, resorted to using plan B: she printed pictures of the Minecraft-Land resort, which the students had previously designed, and asked them to use these images while creating paper-based products such as postcards or leaflets. The students were free to decide how they would solve the task, and they could use their phones to look up genre-specific writing examples and to check words and phrases in an online dictionary.

At the end of the lesson, Emma collected all the products to be jointly assessed during the upcoming project closure and feedback session. In our subsequent correspondence with Emma, she mentioned that in later classes students also created virtual products using online content creation tools such as Canva (a collection of these is presented in Appendix P4).

Tímea’s lesson with her twelfth graders was part of a unit on Advertising (“Not What It Seems”, Pioneer B2, Module 7). The primary focus was on speaking practice, more specifically, on developing students’ debating skills. In this lesson, students used their mobile devices while Tímea used her laptop connected to the smartboard.

At the beginning of the lesson, the students played a hangman game on Wordwall, projected on the smartboard. The goal of this activity was to invite students to guess the statement that would serve as the topic of a debate: “It is desirable for people in advertisements to be beautiful and look flawless.” After this activity, they revised advertising-related vocabulary. Next, in preparation for the debate, they played a sorting game on Wordwall, where they categorised expressions used for agreeing and disagreeing (they accessed the game by scanning a QR code with their phones). At the next stage, they collected arguments for and against the statement. They could either come up with their own arguments, and for that they could use online dictionaries, or scan a QR code that directed them to a sorting game on LearningApps where they put pre-prepared arguments in the “for” and “against” category. During these games, students checked the solutions for themselves and only asked for the teacher’s help when they needed explanations.

The next part of the lesson was dedicated to the debate. This was first moderated by the teacher, who asked the students to react to each other’s arguments one by one in a chain sequence, but the discussion soon transitioned into a genuine and spontaneous debate. Students with lower levels of English proficiency also contributed, first by using some of the pre-prepared arguments from LearningApps and then adding some ideas of their own, as well. At the end of the debate, Tímea asked one of the students to summarise the main points.

Following the debate, students scanned another QR code and accessed a LearningApps listening comprehension exercise on their phones that aimed at practicing listening for specific information. They listened to the text together but checked the solutions on their own. In the final minutes of the lesson, the students opened their book on a page which contained the transcript of the text they had listened to. This text served as an introduction to an argumentative essay task, which was assigned as homework. A screenshot of each online task students accessed on their phones is provided in Appendix P5.

In what follows, I first discuss how the ICT tools used in the lessons supported the differentiation of the various curricular elements (content, process, product, and learning environment). This is then followed by a presentation of each of the affordances identified in the observed practices.

 

In terms of the applications ran on these devices, a summary of which is presented in Table 30, the resources show a great variety with regard to the curricular elements of DI addressed. In this section, I provide an overview of how these apps facilitated the differentiation of the content, the process and product of learning, and how they were used to create a learning environment conducive to DI. In presenting the findings, I seek to explore the specific functionalities of these applications that make them suitable for DI.

YouTube, which was used in the lessons of Bea, Rebeka, and Tímea, also served content differentiation purposes as it provided students with the option to watch videos with or without subtitles, thereby catering for different levels of proficiency. In the same vein, the British Council’s LearnEnglish Teens website, used in Bea’s class, offered students the choice to listen to the recording with or without subtitles. Besides, in Emma’s and Tímea’ classes students used online dictionaries when preparing written products as part of the Summercraft project and when collecting arguments for the debate on the advertisements, respectively. In different ways, these online tools all functioned as scaffolded online learning resources that provided on-the-spot support for comprehension, which is a frequently applied content differentiation strategy (Tomlinson & Allan, 2000).

 

Kamilla’s use of the vocabulary app Quizlet also supported the differentiation of the learning process. The pictures included on the flashcards could be beneficial for visual learners as they help make connections between the words and their meanings. When the students were unsure of the correct pronunciation, Kamilla clicked on the word so that students could listen to the pronunciation, which could address the needs of auditory learners (for examples of Quizlet flashcards used in the lesson, please refer to Appendix P1). As Kamilla explained in our follow-up discussion, these flashcards are assigned as homework so that students can learn new vocabulary through the various games generated by the app, which provides them with further opportunities to practice the words in multiple modes and at different levels of difficulty.

 

Besides these comprehensive gamification platforms, other applications were also used for gamification purposes, such as quiz games like Kahoot, Skribbl (Bea), and GimKit (Rebeka). These apps supported a differentiated learning environment in two ways: firstly, through team mode, they encouraged collaboration and teamwork while students worked together to solve the tasks. Secondly, as was observed in Rebeka’s lesson with GimKit, these games were played not only in team mode but also in teams that were randomly created. This element of randomness promoted flexible grouping, which gave students the opportunity to work with a variety of peers. It is important to note that Rebeka’s students appeared quite accustomed to working in such conditions as they showed no reservations towards working in their randomly formed groups.

Based on the observed student behaviours, the ICT tools used in these lessons increased student motivation and engagement. The gamification elements, such as earning points and rewards in Classcraft and Motimore, created an apparent sense of excitement. In Kamilla’s and Rebeka’s classes, for example, students were eager to complete the activities to earn points for their avatars. Besides, the use of quiz games like Kahoot in Bea’s class and GimKit in Rebeka’s class created a competitive yet collaborative atmosphere, which encouraged students to work together while they also strove to perform well individually.

 

One of the most apparent patterns that I observed in the participants’ lessons was the use of ICT tools for facilitating self-paced learning. In all of the lessons where students worked on devices individually (Bea, Rebeka and Tímea’s lesson), they engaged in tasks that allowed for self-checking. The pre-listening matching vocabulary exercise, the post-listening True/False and multiple-choice activities on the British Council’s Learning English Teens website, as well as the gap-filling listening tasks on Nearpod and LearningApps, made it possible for students to check their answers with a simple click and work at their own pace (examples are provided in Appendices P2 and P5).

Furthermore, as the students were checking the tasks for themselves, the teachers could focus on providing support to those who had difficulties with the tasks. I could observe this on several occasions in Bea’s, Rebeka’s and Tímea’s classes, where the teachers circulated the room and offered support whenever the students encountered problems. Students also often took the initiative to request help based on the feedback they received in the app.

Involving students in decision-making, i.e., fostering student choice was also apparent in all the lessons, and technology was used in various ways for that purpose. One practice I observed in the lessons of Bea and Rebeka was the assignment of listening tasks (on the British Council’s LearnEnglish Teens website and YouTube, respectively) that offered the option to listen with or without the transcript. In both lessons, the students were free to choose the level of challenge: some students chose to only listen, while others read the transcript as well.

Another way to provide student choice, as I observed in Tímea’s class, was to prepare a simpler version of the same activity on LearningApps. In Tímea’s lesson, the original, cognitively more complex task was to come up with arguments for the debate about advertisements, which would be placed at the topmost, “creation” part of the Bloomian categories (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). In a more simplified version of the task, a screenshot of which is presented in Appendix P5, students had to identify pre-prepared arguments and sort them into the for and against categories, which would be an “analytical” task in Bloomian terms. Students were free to choose the level of difficulty, and, quite interestingly, those with more advanced English typically opted for the creative task, while students with lower levels of English first completed the matching activity, and only then did they start to work on their own arguments.

Finally, in the projects facilitated by Kamilla and Emma, which involved the creation of Western town personas and of various travel-related products from Minecraft-Land, respectively, students were free to choose the applications and templates for completing the assignment. While I could not observe the actual creation of these products during my visits, the submissions I received later from Kamilla and Emma are testaments to the students’ creativity in approaching these tasks. Examples of student products created with Canva are provided in Appendices P1 and P4.

Another affordance of technology for DI observed in the lessons was the privacy it provided for students during the learning process. In the lessons where students engaged with the content on their individual devices, such as PCs in Bea’s and Rebeka’s ICT room lessons, or mobile phones in Emma’s and Tímea’s lessons, they could work independently without the pressure of immediate peer comparison. For example, applications like Quizlet and LearningApps made it possible to practice vocabulary privately and receive immediate feedback. If students did not understand something based on the automatic feedback they received, they sought the support of the teacher, which happened on multiple occasions, for example, in Emma’s, Tímea’s, and Rebeka’s class. In such cases, the teacher offered support discreetly, which clearly reduced the anxiety associated with learning languages in a group setting (Liu, 2006; Madill, 2016). In all of the observed lessons, students appeared calm, ready for experimentation, and not shy to ask for help when needed.

Finally, all the observed lessons were characterised by student motivation and engagement. As has been discussed in Section 2.2.3.2, the observable signs of these two constructs may not be easily distinguishable as they are closely intertwined and their manifestations overlap (Ainley, 2012; Cleary & Zimmerman, 2012; Henry & Thorsen, 2018; Martin, 2012; Philp & Duchesne, 2016; Reeve, 2012). As a result, following recent research on the topic (e.g., Baralt et al., 2016; Philp & Duchesne, 2016), I treated these two constructs together under certain observable signs. In the observed classes, signs of engagement and motivation included active participation in discussions, such as giving feedback on each other’s Flip video assignments in Rebeka’s class and debating advertisements in Tímea’s class. Some other observable signs of motivation and engagement were smiling and laughing during activities, for example, when singing ‘Old Town Road’ in Kamilla’s class, playing a drawing game on Skribbl in Bea’s class, and doing a VR tour of Stonehenge in Rebeka’s class. Besides, I could also observe students being focused and on-task, during, for example, the reading and listening exercise on unusual British festivals assigned by Bea on the British Council website, Rebeka’s Stonehenge Nearpod activity sequence, and Emma’s Summercraft activity where students created postcards and brochures and could use their phones for research and checking vocabulary. Finally, I also observed eagerness and excitement in the lessons, for example, during games such as Kamilla’s Quizlet vocabulary practice task, Bea’s Kahoot revision game, and Rebeka’s listening comprehension game on Gimkit.