With differentiated instruction, I was able to use tiered activities through which all students work with the same important understandings and skills, but proceed with different levels of support, challenge, or complexity.
I offered manipulative supports for students who needed them and varied the length of time a student took to complete their task in order to provide additional support for a struggling learner or to encourage an advanced learner to pursue a topic in greater depth.
Papyrus is a plant found along the Nile river and was once a technique that was used by Ancient Egyptians to create paper. My students watched a brief video on the technique used to weave the pieces together, and had learned about what these papers were used for in the culture. Students used torn strips of paper towels and a mixture of white glue and water to create their pieces. Using the same technique weaving the pieces together, once dried they had to create an image to represent what best interested them so far in our unit of study. The Ancient Egyptian artists had strict rules which my students had to follow when creating their images, such as making sure a head is always sideways so the eye looks like it is looking directly at you. Body position, foot angulation and lots of colour were some other specifications students used when drawing. I had a ton of resources from the library that students referred to when doing this activity, to help give them ideas of images they might want to try and re-create.