S'more Info Session — Differentiating with Flint

00:00 Welcome

Teddy Lane explains that the recording will be posted to the Flint webinars page and YouTube channel, and invites attendees to ask questions in the chat throughout.

00:35 Agenda and speakers

Two teacher spotlights come first: Glenn Ames, assistant head of school at Rectory School, and Joseph Shannon, a literature and humanities teacher at Chartwell School. Teddy then demos ways to differentiate in Flint along the UDL guidelines, including leveled readings for different grade levels and English language learners.

01:19 Glenn Ames: assignments that repeat every unit

Glenn argues that differentiation starts with the task, not with giving some students fewer questions. He uses about five assignment formats in every unit. Each time a teacher introduces a new format, students spend their effort learning the directions instead of the content. With formats that repeat, students already know what to do, and Glenn can refine each format from student feedback over the years.

04:30 Reading assessments and raising the rigor

In Glenn's reading assessment, students read three paragraphs and write two sentences linking a cause, an effect and a long-term effect. Getting all three right earns 87 points, and students reach 100 by using words from the unit's vocabulary list. When a student keeps scoring 100, Glenn lowers the points for the cause and effects, so that student needs more vocabulary words to reach the top score.

09:01 Summary sentences

For each paragraph, Glenn gives students seven vocabulary words. Students write a one-sentence summary that follows a set sentence pattern, using at least six of the words in under 22 words. Using all seven earns bonus points. Because students know the format, they can pick it up anywhere, whatever the content.

11:03 Sparky coaching a student

Glenn has built a Flint activity for each of his formats. He walks through one student's chat in his summary sentence activity. Sparky explains the sentence pattern, asks the student to share a first draft, and starts with a question: who or what is the subject? The student's first attempt is accurate on content but misses the pattern, and Sparky points out what to fix without writing the sentence for them.

Glenn says teachers are often reluctant to use AI because they worry it will give students the answer, and that a well-designed task prevents this. His students can now go to practice or dinner and come back to the activity right where they left off. Glenn reads his students' chats often, and he stepped in when one student replied "IDK".

16:34 Three years of results

Glenn has used these activities for three years. He reports that his students show high growth and high achievement on the MAP Growth tests his school gives every trimester. Teddy adds that differentiation also means letting students who are ready push further.

18:24 Joseph Shannon: differentiating at Chartwell

Joseph teaches at a school for students with learning differences. A student who is cognitively advanced but has severe social anxiety may sit next to a student who needs a lot of extra help, and both need to reach the same learning objectives. Designing every assignment several times takes more time than teachers have, and Flint helps him do it.

20:58 Rubric-based feedback

Joseph doesn't use Flint for every assignment, and he has students write on paper too. One feature he values is uploading a rubric so that Flint gives students targeted feedback on their work against it. Like Glenn, he notes that Sparky doesn't hand students the answer, and that an activity can show a specific message when a student types "IDK".

21:49 A 1984 game

Activities can be games with win and loss conditions. While his class read 1984, Joseph set up a scenario where students meet Winston in the Ministry of Truth's mess hall and try to get him to confess his thoughtcrime. Advanced and struggling students crowded around each other's screens trading hints. Students who struggle with academic tasks but understood the book could take part fully. His advice to new users: put everything you want into the activity's instructions.

24:04 Catching up a student on The Crucible

One student was struggling with The Crucible, let alone connecting it to the House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s. In five to ten minutes, Joseph built an activity at that student's reading level to walk him through the first two acts. The student's summary showed his strengths and stretches: he handled concrete questions but struggled with inferential ones. The Create Follow-up Activity button builds a new activity aimed at those stretches. After finishing, the student did well on the more complex whole-class assignment.

26:50 Whole-class strengths and stretches

For the whole-class activity connecting The Crucible to McCarthyism, Flint summarizes what the class did well, such as naming names to survive, and where students struggled, such as quotes without context and stamina on long reflections. Joseph used to find these patterns by grading every assignment himself. Flint now does that work, so he can respond to his students' needs faster.

28:32 Reusing last year's assignments

Joseph asks Sparky to find his Crucible assignments from last year, then asks it to add sentence frames, a paragraph frame or a word bank for this year's students.

29:14 Joseph's key takeaways

Sparky uses Socratic questioning instead of giving answers, and Joseph recommends saying so in the activity's instructions. Automatic summaries show which students need help and with what, without grading fatigue. Joseph calls AI "the most effective helper monkey" he has ever had: teachers still need to read what it produces, but it makes his planning much faster. He encourages teachers to experiment, especially with games.

32:13 The three UDL principles

Teddy introduces the UDL guidelines: design for the edges of a class, not the average student. Multiple means of engagement get students invested in the content. Multiple means of representation give students different ways to take in information. Multiple means of action and expression give students choices in how they show what they understand. The rest of the session focuses on engagement and representation.

33:33 Engagement: a translation simulation

Teddy demos a science activity on translation, from mRNA to a chain of amino acids, with an interactive simulation beside the chat. Students choose a storyline, either a real-world case on sickle cell disease or a puzzle. They then choose how to work through it: decoding codons using the codon wheel handout from class, dragging amino acids to build the chain, or explaining in writing. The simulation gives immediate feedback on mistakes. The teacher view shows each student's rubric scores, strengths, areas of improvement and a suggested follow-up activity.

38:23 How Teddy built the simulation

Teddy uploaded the UDL guidelines as a PDF and asked Sparky for the simulation. He refined Sparky's first draft by sending screenshots of what to change. It took him about 30 minutes, and the simulation is in the Flint Public Library: search for "translation simulator" and copy it into your school.

40:15 Leveled reading: one text, three grade levels

In a 10th grade comparative government class, Teddy uploads a dense academic text comparing democracy in the United States and Australia. He asks Sparky for three versions in one request: 8th grade with simpler vocabulary and shorter sentences, 9th grade with moderate simplification, and 10th grade at full complexity with extension questions. Each comes with a vocabulary list, and all three keep the same section headings, so the whole class can discuss the same sections.

42:35 English language learners and read-aloud

Teddy then tailors each version further. The 8th grade version for English language learners gets shorter sentences and Spanish cognates for key vocabulary. The 9th grade version gets a "before you read" box and a space to summarize after each section. For students who need the text read aloud, Sparky builds an activity that gives the document section by section and reads it to them.

44:35 Representation: the box-volume problem

Teddy uses a classic modeling problem from IB math: cut a square of side x from each corner of a sheet of paper and fold up the sides to make a box. Students often struggle to connect the size of the cut to the box's volume. Teddy first asks Sparky for an image of the problem.

47:33 A simulation, graph, 3D model and video

Sparky then builds a 2D simulation with a slider that changes the cut and shows how the box's sides change, including the cuts that leave no volume. A graph lets students check the volume function they write. A 3D model lets them rotate the folded box and change the cut, and a video explains the whole problem.

50:15 Sharing artifacts in the Resources tab

Teddy shows how to add these artifacts to the class's Resources tab, so students who get stuck can choose the version that works best for them.

51:24 Q&A: changing instructions mid-activity

An attendee asks whether a teacher can change an activity's instructions while students are working in it. Teddy says yes: students refresh the page and rejoin their session, and Sparky then follows the updated instructions.

52:32 Suggestion: highlighting words during read-aloud

An attendee suggests highlighting each word as Flint reads a text aloud, as some accessibility tools do. Teddy says Flint doesn't do this yet and thanks them for the idea.