Research for Teachers

For much of my teaching career, I believed I was differentiating writing effectively.

In practice, however, much of my differentiation focused on reducing workload rather than increasing access. I shortened word count requirements. I reduced the number of required paragraphs. Sometimes I offered students a “simpler” prompt alongside a more complex one.

At times, these adjustments were necessary. But increasingly, I began to wonder whether I was actually helping students become stronger writers or simply lowering the cognitive demand of the task.

Reading The Writing Revolution 2.0 fundamentally shifted the way I think about differentiation in writing instruction. Instead of differentiating primarily through outcomes or task reduction, Hochman and Wexler argue for differentiating through scaffolding while maintaining access to rigorous thinking. Their approach emphasizes modifying the level of support students receive while still engaging all learners in meaningful analytical work.

One passage in particular stayed with me:

“Give all students the same stem—for example, ‘The British invaded the colonies’—but ask some students to provide complete sentences for all three conjunctions while asking others to write a sentence for only one or two conjunctions” (Hochman et al., 2024).

What struck me was not simply the strategy itself, but the philosophy behind it.

The expectation remains intellectually ambitious for all students. What changes is the amount of support, structure, and cognitive load.

That distinction matters.

Moving Beyond “Less Work”

In English Language and Literature classrooms, writing tasks can quickly become cognitively overwhelming. Students are simultaneously expected to analyze ideas, organize arguments, embed evidence, maintain academic tone, and manage sentence-level conventions. For struggling writers, reducing the length of the assignment may temporarily reduce frustration, but it does not necessarily teach them how to write more effectively.

Research increasingly suggests that novice writers benefit from explicit instruction in sentence construction, text structure, and disciplinary writing practices (Graham & Harris, 2018). Similarly, cognitive load theory reminds us that working memory is limited; students can become overwhelmed when too many demands compete simultaneously (Sweller et al., 2019).

What I appreciated about The Writing Revolution was its recognition that differentiation can occur within the same task rather than through entirely different tasks.

Students can think about the same text.
Students can engage with the same essential question.
Students can participate in the same classroom conversation.

But the level of scaffolding can vary.

What This Looks Like in Middle School

Recently, while teaching An Inspector Calls in Middle School, I began rethinking how students approached analytical writing about responsibility and social class.

Previously, differentiation might have looked like this:

• Some students wrote a full analytical paragraph.
• Other students wrote only a shorter response.
• Some students received a simplified prompt.

Now, I increasingly try to differentiate through the writing process itself.

For example, students analyzing Inspector Goole’s role might all begin with the same sentence stem:

Priestley presents Inspector Goole as…

Some students may then complete a full “because-but-so” activity:

• Priestley presents Inspector Goole as persuasive because…
• Priestley presents Inspector Goole as unsettling but…
• Priestley presents Inspector Goole as transformative so…

Other students might focus on completing only one conjunction successfully.

Importantly, all students are still engaging with the same literary analysis.

Similarly, while teaching Thank You, Ma’am, students might practice sentence expansion:

Roger felt ashamed.

Some students expand the sentence using who, when, where, why, and how. Others may focus only on who and why. The intellectual goal remains consistent: helping students connect textual details to emotional meaning.

I have also started applying these ideas with students reading Uglies during literature circles. Rather than reducing analytical expectations, differentiation can occur through guided sentence structures:

• The society in Uglies values conformity because…
• Tally begins questioning the system when…
• Westerfeld critiques society by…

These structured responses help students rehearse analytical thinking before moving into larger paragraph writing.

What This Looks Like in High School

The same principle applies in High School classrooms, although the complexity increases.

While teaching Nervous Conditions, for example, students often grapple with layered themes involving colonialism, gender, education, and identity. Previously, differentiation may have meant simplifying the analytical question for some students.

Now, I am more likely to maintain the same conceptual focus while differentiating scaffolds.

Students may all respond to the same inquiry:

How does Dangarembga portray education as both empowering and oppressive?

However, some students may receive structured sentence frames:

• Education empowers Tambu because…
• However, education also limits…
• Dangarembga suggests that…

Others may independently develop a comparative analytical paragraph.

Similarly, when studying Frankenstein, students frequently struggle with embedding quotations fluently into literary analysis. Instead of shortening the assignment, differentiation may involve varying the degree of support during sentence-combining activities.

Some students combine:

• Victor creates the creature.
• He rejects the creature.
• The creature becomes isolated.

Into:
After Victor creates the creature and rejects him immediately, the creature becomes profoundly isolated.

Other students may work with fewer sentences or receive transition words to support cohesion.

Even poetry analysis can benefit from this approach. While studying Carol Ann Duffy, some students may independently analyze shifts in tone and structure, while others receive guided analytical stems such as:

• Duffy creates tension through…
• The imagery suggests…
• The speaker’s voice changes when…

Again, the goal is not to reduce thinking. It is to support students into increasingly sophisticated thinking.

Differentiation as Access

One of the most important shifts in my thinking has been realizing that differentiation does not necessarily mean changing the intellectual destination.

It may instead mean changing the pathway students take to reach it.

Research on explicit writing instruction consistently demonstrates that students benefit when writing skills are taught directly rather than assumed to develop naturally through exposure alone (Graham & Harris, 2018). Studies on disciplinary literacy also emphasize the importance of scaffolded academic language instruction in helping adolescents access complex texts and analytical thinking (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

What The Writing Revolution helped clarify for me is that struggling writers often do not need easier literature or permanently simplified expectations. They need carefully scaffolded opportunities to practice the thinking and language structures expert writers use automatically.

That realization has changed the way I think about equity in English classrooms.

Reducing the amount students write may sometimes be appropriate. But increasingly, I am asking myself a different question:

How can I maintain rigor while providing more strategic support?

That feels like a much more meaningful form of differentiation.

References

Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (2018). An examination of the design principles underlying a self-regulated strategy development study. Journal of Writing Research, 10(2), 139–187. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2018.10.02.02

Hochman, J. C., Wexler, N., Maloney, K., & Lemov, D. (2024). The Writing Revolution 2.0: A guide to advancing thinking through writing in all subjects and grades. Jossey-Bass.

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.78.1.v62444321p602101

Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. (2019). Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later. Educational Psychology Review, 31(2), 261–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5