General Introduction
This blog is part of my Differentiation and Adaptive Teaching Knowledge Base.
I use the terms differentiation and adaptive teaching synonymously. To me, they are the same, as genuine differentiation has always involved adapting your planning and your teaching to meet the needs of the learners in front of you.
For me, differentiation is all the practical strategies, activities and techniques teachers use to personalise learning.
For ease, we can break that down into my five categories of differentiation: Activities, Questioning, Words and Writing, Things the Teacher Can Do and Things You Can Ask Learners to Do or Use.
This blog falls into the category of activities.
Creating Variety Through a Task Mixture
Variety is engaging. We all like novelty and variation.
Certainty is important to humans, for sure.
But variety brings its own rewards.
Thinking about this in your lesson planning means thinking about how learners are perceiving your lessons.
A simple way to add variety, and therefore drive engagement, is to use a mixture of tasks.
This means learners have a variety of opportunities, each of which asks slightly different things of them.
By planning this way, you can help make sure different learners have the chance to play to their strengths on multiple occasions.
In turn, this will make them feel more at ease when faced with tasks that they might find more difficult.
Having a task mixture prevents learners from feeling that ‘we only do things one way’ (and what if that one approach happens to be a way that some learners find difficult to access?).
This brings benefits in terms of learning.
It also brings rewards in terms of psychology.
Variety creates interest and enhances motivation.
For proof of this, recall the tedium associated with a repetitive job.
Or the boredom that sets in when you have to the same thing over and over again.
You can use a mixture of tasks:
- In a single lesson
- Across a unit of work
- Across the year as a whole
One option is to develop a collection of task-types with which you feel comfortable and stick to these.
Or you might like to continue testing out different approaches to ascertain what works best for your various classes.
Personally, I find that different collections of task-types work well with different age-groups.
I also like to throw in completely different tasks from time-to-time to generate a sense of surprise and excitement.
Sometimes these hit the mark, sometimes they don’t.
Either way, it gives me good information I can use in future planning.
How does having a task mixture differentiate?
A mixture of tasks means that learners are being asked to do a range of different things.
There is therefore a high likelihood that the teacher will be playing to the strengths of a variety of different learners.
Avoiding repetition results in increased motivation.
This, in turn, leads to increased engagement across the board.
A mixture of tasks means different types of thinking.
Learners are challenged to use their minds in a range of ways.
This sees them interacting with content and ideas from various perspectives.
Thinking Further about Using a Task Mixture
An alternative way to judge whether you have a mixture of tasks is to look at what you are asking learners to produce.
This is like working backwards.
When planning a lesson or a unit of work, identify a mixture of products you would like learners to create by the end of it.
Once you have a list, use it as a starting point for planning the main activities you will use in your lessons.
Because you have a range of products, you will inevitably end up with a range of different activities.
You will have no choice but to plan a range of tasks to ensure learners can create the various products on your list.
Here are twenty possible products:
- Report
- Poem
- Essay
- Poster
- Advert
- Design
- Speech
- Role-Play
- Summary
- Story
- Comic Strip
- Article
- Presentation
- Booklet
- Comparison Table
- Mind Map
- Newspaper Front Page
- Model
- Portfolio
- Diary
So, for example, you might decide it would be beneficial for learners to produce a design, an advert and a mind map across a unit of work.
Having settled on these products, you can plan lesson activities that facilitate their creation.
These tasks must, by necessity, be different. Creating variety and giving you the benefits that this brings.
How does this differentiate?
A range of tasks means that learners have various opportunities to access and engage with the work.
There is a higher likelihood that all learners will find something in the lesson with which they can be successful.
The creation of different products requires various skills.
By having a range of products you want learners to create, you ensure that you play to different strengths your learners possess.
As noted earlier, variety enhances motivation and avoids the disengagement that can occur through repetition.
Using Discovery Learning to Create Variety
In discovery learning, learners are encouraged to discover facts and relationships themselves.
The teacher facilitates the learning by creating situations in which learners might make discoveries and work things out.
It is expected that learners will follow their own paths given a starting point the teacher has provided.
As a result, it cannot be guaranteed what specific learning will take place.
With that said, the learning that does take place will be led by the learners and is likely to concern things in which they are interested and by which they are motivated.
Discovery learning can take many forms.
It can be highly circumscribed or left open.
It can be something that a teacher calls on from time-to-time, or an approach that underpins all that a teacher does.
Here are some examples of how and when discovery learning might be used:
Group work
For example, learners are given a question that they must explore while working in groups.
They will come to ‘discover’ an answer to this question based on their joint explorations.
Providing some of the information and letting learners work out the rest
For example, learners might be given some background information concerning the years preceding the Great Crash.
They would then be left to infer what might have happened before investigating the facts to discover what actually turned out to be the case.
Setting learners independent tasks like a research or design brief
The rationale here is that learners are being taken in a certain direction and then left to make their own way (within the guidelines provided).
Experiments
Experimenting is, by it is very nature, tied up with discovery.
Experiments need not be confined to science lessons; they can be brought into other subjects through the use of a testing procedure (learners develop a hypothesis and then test to see whether it holds or not), although this might require some minor adaptations.
Investigations
These are like experiments.
Again, the nature of the act is such that it is closely tied up with discovery.
If you are investigating something, it is inevitable that discoveries are being sought.
In terms of using discovery learning to create variety, my view is that this is another approach you can add to your task mix.
I’m not in favour of an approach purely underpinned by discovery learning, as I think it undermines the central conceit of teaching.
Namely, that the teacher is an expert whose role it is to help learners to learn more than they can hope to achieve on their own.
But I do love discovery learning as an approach that we use judiciously in our teaching, to create variety and offer learners a different experience of learning.
How does Discovery Learning differentiate?
Learners are given the opportunity to direct their own learning.
There is clear purpose to what learners are doing, and this purpose (discovery) is tied up with human instincts concerning curiosity and the desire to know.
The sense of purpose enhances motivation – learners see that they have an achievable and meaningful goal towards which their actions are being directed.
Knowledge is presented as provisional rather than fixed.
Learners are encouraged to find things out for themselves, which is often motivational.
For some learners, a degree of scaffolding from the teacher is essential to ensure they can get the most out of discovery learning.
This sees the teacher assessing the extent to which learners can successfully engage with the approach and then intervening to give support where learners are having difficulties.
