Differentiation in the classroom has always been challenging. This is especially true when getting to know a new class, and particularly this September, when gaps in learning between pupils in your class are likely to be wider than ever.
But even when you know a class well, they can still surprise you. How many times have you realised at the end of a lesson that a child has excelled, completing all the work you set at a particular level and was really ready for a further challenge to deepen or extend learning? Or, conversely, that a child really struggled with something you thought they would grasp easily?
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My solution is to encourage children to choose their own level of differentiation that’s right for them. Here are five ways to manage this style of differentiation in your classroom.
Pupil-led differentiation
1. Talk to the children about their learning
Before you start differentiating in this way, it’s important to talk to children about the importance of choosing a degree of challenge that is appropriate for them, rather than just the same one as their friends. Watch out for particular characters in your class who you may need to target for this; for example, those who lack confidence and may be tempted to start with the easiest option, or those who may initially see this as a competition and go straight for the most difficult option to try to “beat” their friends.
I manage this by emphasising children’s individual progress and effort. I make a real effort to praise this during lessons, and reward those children who challenge themselves with something a little outside of their comfort zone. I also speak to children about their choices to better understand their thinking and, especially in the early days, make recommendations about appropriate levels of challenge where needed.
2. Get it, get up, get on
When you’re introducing a concept, tell children that once they’re confident that they understand (once they’ve “got it”’), they can “get up” from the carpet, and “get on” with their independent task. This allows you to share more examples with those children remaining in the focused teaching group than you would ordinarily or to identify a group for additional support.
This is quite a different way of working, so it can take a while to get it right. Make your expectations about noise levels clear before children start. Resources should be clearly labelled and accessible to children so that they can begin independent work without disrupting the rest of the class. It’s also important to remind children that they can rejoin the main group if they find the independent work more challenging than they were expecting.
3. Sequenced challenges
One of the most straightforward ways of making this work is to structure your lesson content into sequenced challenges, which get progressively more difficult over the course of a lesson. I usually colour-code these (starting with red, then orange, yellow, green, etc) to help me see at a glance which level of challenge children are working at.
I identify three different starting points that children can choose from, and explain these carefully. Children can choose to start at the beginning of the learning sequence (which usually allows children to consolidate something from the focused teaching) or move on to applying this in a different context (orange/yellow) or to an open-ended investigation (blue/purple).
From their individual starting points, children then work through the challenges in sequence. This makes progress really visible to children - they can see how work is getting more challenging as their understanding develops. It also really supports the planning process by ensuring that you build in opportunities for children to progress across the course of a lesson.
4. Differentiated checklists
For writing, I often produce differentiated checklists. Usually generated in discussion with the class, these lists feature what children could include in their writing, getting progressively more difficult as we move towards the bottom of the checklist.
For example, basic punctuation and grammatical features may be near the top of the checklist, and then more ambitious structures (semi-colons, colons, brackets) will be further down. Children use these checklists during their independent work, ticking off features as they include them. In this way, the checklists become an assessment tool to identify next steps, as well as an aide-memoire and motivating tool.
5. Build in assessment opportunities
One potential challenge of working in this way is that children may complete a whole lesson’s worth of work which is too difficult for them, making loads of mistakes and potentially consolidating misconceptions. To avoid this, I build very regular assessment opportunities into lessons. This could be by establishing “answer stations” around the classroom, where children can mark their work before making any necessary corrections, or seek help if they need it. We also use calculators to check working in maths, or have regular mini-plenaries throughout lessons to share answers and strategies, and address misconceptions.
Involving children more openly in differentiation doesn’t just save you a headache or that extra line on your lesson plans. It teaches them to evaluate their learning and consider for themselves their next steps in how to improve and develop. I’ve found this can help children to become motivated, independent learners, and lead to some children really surprising you with how much they can do. In short, it can be the first step towards taking ownership of their own learning journey.
Kirstin Mulholland is a lecturer in education at Northumbria University
