One Objective, Three Kinds of Access
Mr. Delgado teaches pre-K in a Title I school; his class of 18 has a 35-minute art block on Fridays. He plans a printmaking lesson: children incise a drawing into a foam tray with a ballpoint pen, roll tempera with a brayer, press paper, and peel a print. His goal is for children to discover that a print is reversed and repeatable. Three children need support. Lila (4.6) has cerebral palsy affecting her right side and uses a whole-hand palmar grasp; she cannot hold the pen with enough pressure to incise. Marcus (4.3) has autism; he recoils from wet paint on his hands and covers his ears when the brayer squeaks. Sofia (4.9) is a dual-language learner who follows "roll the paint" but not "press hard so the line shows." Four other children finish in five minutes, then crowd the table and start painting their hands. There is one sink and no drying rack.
1. How do you differentiate for Lila, Marcus, and Sofia while keeping the same learning objective?
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The principle: hold the concept constant and vary access. The concept is a print is reversed and repeatable; nothing about these three children requires abandoning it.
- Lila: change the tool, not the task. Tape the foam plate to the table so it does not slide. Replace the ballpoint with a short, thick-handled dull pencil or a foam-wrapped stylus, or let her press texture into the plate with a textured roller or a plastic fork. If pressure is still impossible, pre-score a light outline and let her add the marks that matter. She should make every choice about the image.
- Marcus: remove the sensory barrier rather than the activity. Nitrile gloves or a brush instead of a brayer, ear defenders, and a warning before the squeak ("this is the loud part"). Offer a no-hand-contact route: place paper over the inked plate and roll with a rolling pin. Keep him at the table with the others rather than at a separate "safe" table.
- Sofia: pair language with gesture and a photo sequence card - draw, roll, press, peel. Check understanding by having her show you on scrap paper before materials are distributed, and put the key words in both languages on the card.
None of these lowers the objective. They change the route.
2. What do you do with the children who finish in five minutes, in a way that deepens learning rather than filling time?
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Fast finishers are a design problem, not a discipline problem. The mistake is to treat more of the same as an extension; the fix is a second layer of the same idea.
Set up a small "what happens if…" station and teach it once:
- Pull a second print in a different color from the same plate and compare the two. Which is darker? Why?
- Register a second color: print, then print again slightly offset, and look at what the overlap does.
- Make an edition: three prints, numbered 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, and talk about why an artist makes more than one.
- Ghost print: press a second sheet onto the used plate without re-inking.
- Print on something else: a folded card, a fabric square, a long strip for a class frieze.
Post these as picture cards at the table so children can choose without waiting for an adult. The extension keeps the child thinking about reversal and repetition instead of producing more product, and it keeps the table occupied - which is what stops the hand-painting.
3. How would you know whether each child met the objective?
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Assess by asking the child to predict and explain, not by judging the print's neatness.
Before the peel: "What will your paper look like - the same as the plate or different?" After: "Show me where your drawing went. Why is it backwards?" A child who can point to the reversal and say "because you press it" has the concept, even if the print is smudged.
Collect three things per child:
- A photo of the plate and the print side by side (documentation, not a grade).
- One sentence of the child's own explanation, written down verbatim.
- A note on which part of the process the child managed independently - incising, inking, pressing - because that is where the differentiation lives.
For Lila, record whether she chose her own marks and made the print. For Marcus, whether he stayed engaged through the sensory demand. For Sofia, whether she used the sequence card and the vocabulary. Keep the same conceptual question for everyone so the data are comparable across the class.