The artifact I am providing is a differentiated worksheet titled Enlightenment Questions Worksheet. This worksheet was created to support freshman students in our resource room as they worked to complete an assignment from their general education Global Studies class. The original assignment featured the same questions but did not include any additional guidance. I modified it by adding hints and explicit instructions to scaffold their understanding and help them engage more effectively with the content. 

By adapting a general education assignment to meet the needs of students in the resource room, I provided:  

• Targeted Guidance through hints for each question, ensuring students had a clear starting point and understood what to focus on in their answers.

• Structured Expectations such as reminders to avoid copying directly from the slideshow, which encouraged critical thinking and personalized learning.

This approach enabled students to engage meaningfully with the material, fostering both independence and success. As a result, students who often struggled to connect with general education content were able to complete the assignment with improved confidence and accuracy. I also observed a marked improvement in their ability to articulate complex ideas like Hobbes’ and Locke’s views on government. 

Proposed Modifications: 

While the worksheet successfully supported student learning, I would make the following adjustments to improve it further:

• Changing the phrasing of Question #5: I would consider rephrasing this to something more accessible such as 'What did Locke believe the government should do to protest people's rights?' This change would clarify the question's intent and make it easier for students to connect Locke's ideas about protection to the concept of natural rights.

• Provide Sentence Starters: For students with language processing difficulties, I would include sentence stems for questions requiring longer responses (e.g., "Hobbes believed the purpose of government was to ___, because ____."

For reference, this is an image of the original worksheet that I adapted.