Hannah Setter 2136563 EDUC4720

Assignment 2: Differentiated Learning Experience

Name & Student Number: Hannah Setter | 2136563

Curriculum (Learning) Area of Lesson or Learning Task: Healthy Lifestyles Education
Specific Topic of Lesson or Learning Task: Health Promotion
Year Level/s: 10

Differentiation Choices

1. For this assignment, I have chosen to design a differentiated:

 RAFT

2. My lesson or learning task is differentiated to address differences in student:

 Interest
 Learning profile preferences

Context
This year 10 Health Education lesson ‘Health Promotion’ fits into the broader unit of ‘Healthy
Lifestyles’. The overall objectives of this unit are to recognise that health promotion is an
essential part in the development of positive community health outcomes. Students undergoing
this course will focus on the promotion of life long physical activity and investigate health
promotion strategies. The aim of the course is to equip students with the knowledge, ideas and
tools necessary to actively make healthier choices within their lives. With education and or
support, individuals and communities are able to use and apply their health knowledge.
Students will be given the opportunity based on their interest and learning profile preference to
choose from a range of roles to complete the R.A.F.T assignment.

This Specific lesson is lesson 1 in the 4th and final week of the Healthy Lifestyles unit. The unit
consists of 20 lessons, broken down to 5 lessons per week. Students have previously covered
topics and ‘big ideas’ regarding ‘Drugs, Alcohol and safe partying’, ‘Environmental Impact on
Health’, ‘Mental health, ‘Nutrition’, ‘Relationships’ and ‘Sexual activity and consent’. The idea of
introducing this R.A.F.T assignment to the students near the end of the unit is so that students
can apply their knowledge, understandings and skills to the learning task, in which will require
students to revise their existing knowledge established from the previous lessons to tackle the
big idea for the lesson/assignment. Students will be given this lesson along with the remainder
of the week to complete the R.A.F.T task. In class time will be provided to the students and
homework is recommended to those students who do not utilise their class time to their best
capability. All assignment information along with copies of the task sheet and marking rubric
(see appendix A) are provided on SEQTA (Saron Education Quality Teachers’ Assistant).

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Learning Objectives (ACARA, 2019)

By the end of Year 10, students critically analyse contextual factors that influence identities,
relationships, decisions and behaviours. They analyse the impact attitudes and beliefs about
diversity have on community connection and wellbeing. They evaluate the outcomes of
emotional responses to different situations.

They apply decision making and problem solving skills when taking action to enhance their own
and others’ health, safe and wellbeing.

Students critically analyse contextual factors that influence identities, relationships, decision and
behaviours to a satisfactory level

They analyse the impact attitudes and beliefs about diversity have on community connection
and wellbeing.

They evaluate the outcome of emotional responses to different situations

Students access, synthesise and apply health information from credible sources to propose and
justify responses to health situations

Content Descriptors: The big idea for this lesson is adapted from the following Australian
Curriculum content descriptor (ACARA, 2019).

 Evaluate factors that shape identities and critically analyse how individuals impact the
identities of others (ACPPS089)

 Plan, rehearse and evaluate options (including CPR and first aid) for managing situations

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where their own or others’ health, safety and wellbeing may be at short or long term risk
(ACPPS091)

As a result of engaging with and completing this RAFT assignment, students will
Understand that:

Health promotion is an essential part in the development of positive community health

outcomes.

Students will Know Students will Be able to (do) (Skills, processes)

That with education and or support, Identify different roles within the health sector
individuals and communities are able to and use and apply their health knowledge to
use and apply their health knowledge to respond to various tasks.
make a positive impact on others.
Apply decision making and problem solving skills
Various factors contribute to a healthy when taking action to enhance their own or
lifestyle other’s health, safety and wellbeing.

Maintain clear, consistent point of view, tone and

ideas relative to the role-played.

Essential Questions

How can ones understandings of health promotion enhance the health, safety and wellbeing of
others?

What internal and external factors might influence a healthy lifestyle?

What other intervention(s) could be implemented to support your product?

Discussion of Pre-Assessment:
How and Why the different Roles, Audiences, Formats and Topics:

Throughout the previous 3 weeks of this 4 week healthy lifestyles unit of work, students have
had the opportunity to engage in a variety of diverse learning opportunities (formative
assessment to guide development of centre tasks and allocation of students to appropriate
tasks), including discussions (think, pair, share), journaling (weekly journal entries), tiered
learning targets, carousel brainstorm activities, debate and even creating responses to scenarios
in a range of different ways (poster, multimedia, role play etc.). Based on observations and
information gathered from pre and post assessment tasks throughout the 3 weeks of this unit,

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annotations have been recorded finding that a large number of students in this class have
shown an interest in orally presenting their work, thus the provided option for ‘public speaking’.
Additional to this, there are a group of students in this class whom find an interest in creativity
and art, hence annotations have been noted in that they enjoy finding creative ways to present
their work. An example of this was the eccentric carousel brainstorm poster in which was
presented in class in week 2. For this reason, I have provided under the South Australian
Government Employee, the opportunity to create a health promotion poster. Moreover, a large
percentage of students in the class find interest and comfort in responding to tasks in a written
manner, and therefore I have provided two options for a written response, one a magazine
journalist and one a social media team member creating an ‘Instagram’ post along with a
caption (keeping it relative to the age group and interests of the students in my class). Finally, I
have provided a ‘negotiated’ option for students who may wish to create their own R.A.F.T, or
mix and match from the provided task sheet. This enables those students with particular
interests to also have the opportunity to complete the task based on their interest. This way as
the teacher I can use student’s skills or ideas familiar to them as a bridge to ideas or skills less
familiar to them (Tomlinson, 2001, p.52). Alternatively students may find an interest in a certain
topic (big idea) covered in the unit and may want to use this topic and create their own R.A.F.T.
This element of student independence is essentially required for interest-based differentiation.

Assignment Description
Part 1

You are to select one of the below roles and complete the associated tasks:

Task Cards:

Magazine journalist:
You are a magazine journalist for the popular magazine ‘Healthy Lifestyles’. You have been
asked by your editor to write an advice column on “Positive and negative relationships”. It is
important that your column highlights a modern perspective that highlights what a positive and
negative relationship is and strategies to identify issues within a relationship. You will aim to
give your readers understanding and knowledge around relationship health so they are able to
make positive choices.

Word count: 400 – 500 words

ShineSA social media team member:

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You are apart of the ShineSA social media team. Your job it to promote a positive message to
your 80k followers surrounding consent and/or safe sexual activity awareness in the form of an
Instagram post.

Requirements: the post must include an image and a strong engaging caption.

Public speaker:
You are a public speaker promoting ‘knowledge is power’ surrounding drug/alcohol use for
students ages 15-18. This will be presented as a recorded oral presentation.

Length: 4-5 mins

South Australian Government Employee:

You are an employee of the South Australian Government required to produce a public health
campaign for young adults ages 15-25. You need to create a health promotion poster that uses
both images and short paragraphs providing information on the topic of safe partying that
promotes strategies that young adults can implement when our partying.

Size/length: one (1) A4 poster/flyer.

Negotiated:
If there is an area of interest you believe would fit the theme of this activity please speak to the
teacher and negotiate an alternative topic and come up with an outline together.
Students can even ‘mix and match’ between different rows to create a unique RAFT.

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Role Audience Format Topic

Magazine journalist Reader of ‘Healthy Advice column (400-500 Unpacking positive and
lifestyles’ Magazine. words) negative relationships
and their effect on
individuals.

ShineSA social media Followers on your page Instagram post Consent and sexual
team (80k followers) activity awareness post.

Public speaker Students aged 15-18 Oral presentation (can Drugs/alcohol

promoting be recorded 4-5 mins) information session
‘knowledge is (promoting awareness
power’ about a drug or alcohol)
An employee of the South Australian Health promotion Safe partying campaign,
South Australian community members poster or flyer that promotes a strategy
government asked with a target audience of that young adults can
to produce a public 15-25 implement when
health campaign. partying.
Negotiated: Negotiated Negotiated Negotiated
If you have an idea
that is not listed
above, please
negotiate with the
teacher about
another area of
interest.

Part 2

Reflect your final product considering the following:

 What is your intended purpose of the product?
 How does the product enhance the health, safety and wellbeing of others?
 What influence this can/will have on your chosen audience?
 What other intervention(s) could be implemented to support your product?

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Explanation:

An important and valuable feature of clever education is having a plan to engage or ‘hook’
students on the topic at hand. According to Tomlinson (2001), engagement is a nonnegotiable
of teaching and learning. Tomlinson proposes that the two most influential and related
influences for engagement are student interest and student choice (p. 52). In accordance to
student interest, student-learning profile is an additional way in which we learn best as
individuals. Students know certain ways in which learning is effective for them and others that
slow them down or make learning feel difficult (Tomlinson, 2001, p.60). In other words learning
profile is a general term relating to factors that may influence the way in which students prefer
to learn (Doubet & Hocket, 2015, p.211). These ideas combined have assisted in the reasoning
behind the creation of the R.A.F.T assignment seen above.

R.A.F.T is an abbreviation that stands for Role, Audience, Format, Topic (Tomlinson, 2003), and
was initially intended as a format to encourage students’ writing across the curriculum. The
beneficial feature of creating a R.A.F.T task for students is the flexibility in ways to design
differentiated R.A.F.T activities across curriculum areas and to allow students to work with
content in different ways.

This assignment is differentiated for student interest and learning profile. In respect of this
R.A.F.T assignment, students are able to work with the content provided throughout the 3
weeks in a variety of ways. Although the R.A.F.T is an interest-based form of differentiation, this
has also been combined with other types of differentiation. For example according to Tomlinson
(2001), it is achievable to have a task that combines common elements for a whole class, some
readiness-based components, some interest-based components and some learning-profile
options. Although it may be convenient to categorise learning tasks into specifics, it is not
necessary to spate the categories in assignments or planning (p.58). Differentiated instruction in
this case is underpinned by an understanding of learning profiles in terms of preference and
thus providing opportunities for all students to learn/ demonstrate learning in a range of ways
(Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011, p.138).

As you can see above in the R.A.F.T assignment, students have the option to ‘negotiate’ R.A.F.T
for themselves. This is an example of a differentiated learning task in itself and also called a
‘negotiated criteria’. Students have the opportunity aids in contributing to the criteria in which
may be of more personal interest to him/her. This opportunity creates an atmosphere of
lifelong learners and encourages learning to be fulfilling, consuming and deeply satisfying

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(Tomlinson, 2001, p.58). The idea of differentiating by interest in this R.A.F.T assignment is to
increase the level of motivation brought to the area of work. When students have a current
interest in a subject or theme, they might also bring further prior knowledge, thus more ‘mental
energy’.
In differentiating in response to student learning profile, this task uses several approaches. The
overall goal of the assignment is to measure student growth in ways that allow each student to
display how much they know, understand and can do. Although this R.A.F.T assignment is an
end of unit assessment, it allows for flexibility and choice for students to express their learning.

A key benefit of the R.A.F.T assignment is the consideration of various perspectives on different
issues and ideas (Sousa, 2011, p.155). The choices provided above have varied modes of
expression for students to choose from, more specifically, two of Gardner’s Numerous
Intelligences have been used (verbal-linguistic, visual-spacial) (Sousa, 2011, pp.140-155).
This R.A.F.T assignment exhibits an understanding of high quality learning goals as a basis for
effective differentiation (Wiggins, 2011, p.71). The use of the ‘Understanding by Design’
framework allows for clear learning objectives (Know, Understand, Do), to be strictly aligned.

Finally, as mentioned previously in the discussion of Pre-Assessment, Tomlinson (2013) suggests

that educators should collect official data ‘once or twice’ a semester and build on that official
assortment of information with vigilant conversation and observations through the year (p.44).
Thus, such records would inform the design of the tasks. It is additionally significant to note that
all tasks are respectful in terms of providing opportunities for higher order thinking and
authentic transfer of skills (Doubet, 2015, p.212).

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References

ACARA. (2019) Australian Curriculum. Retrieved from https://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum

Doubet, K., & Hockett, J. (2015). Differentiating in Response to Student Learning Profile. In
Differentiation and the brain: How neuroscience supports the learner-friendly classroom
(pp.137-164). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press Inc.

Doubet, K., & Hockett, J. (2015). Designing Differentiated Transfer Tasks For Assessment. In K.
Doubet & J.A. Hockett, Differentiation in Middle and High School: Strategies to Engage All
Learners (pp.207-253). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2003). Fulfilling the promise of the differentiated classrooms: Strategies and
tools for responsive teaching. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson., C, A (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms. ASCD

Wiggins, G., McTighe, J. (2011). Essential questions and understandings. In G. Wiggins & J.
McTighe, The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units (pp.70-88).
Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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Appendices
Appendix A
Rubric

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Appendix A (part 2)

Marking Rubric for R.A.F.T Assignment

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