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 things you can ask learners to do or use, also called self-scaffolding.

Plan First – Get Learners Thinking Before They Start Doing

Encourage learners to plan their work before they start.

This is metacognition in action, with learners actively engaging with their own learning.

Planning brings multiple advantages:

• It gives you an opportunity to think about what you want to do and why you want to do it.
• It provides a structure you can then follow.
• By creating a structure in advance, you remove various processes, like ordering, arranging and designing, from your mind. This frees up your working memory to focus on the next step in your plan.
• A plan, therefore, acts as an extension of your mind. It is a tool you can use to help yourself target your effort more effectively.
• A plan is a reference point that can assist you if you get lost (which is more likely to happen the larger the task you have undertaken).

It is not always appropriate to create a plan.

Tasks that have multiple elements, that require the creation of a large piece of work, or that require a sustained, consistent response (as in an essay) are those for which a plan is most useful.

However, if you teach your learners how to make plans, they can decide for themselves when they wish to use them.

(And don’t forget, you can train your learners to make very brief plans, either in their minds or on a piece of scrap paper, before they start smaller or simpler activities.)

Here is a set of rules for making plans

• Keep it simple.
• Divide the task up into smaller sections.
• Work out what each smaller section will involve.
• Make a brief note of this.
• Put the smaller sections into an order.

Two important points for learners to remember when using plans are:

• Don’t let plans become too detailed. They should be a guide to help you with the work.
• Because plans are only a guide, they are not set in stone. If you go off plan or need to change your plan, do not worry. If you have a good reason for doing it, that’s fine.

Sharing all of this with your learners is helpful.

As is modelling how to plan and showing learners the difference between a good plan and a bad plan.

The latter creates a contrast, helping fix in learners’ minds what it is you want them to do.

To illustrate, consider for a moment the task of assembling a flat-pack bunk bed.

What would a good plan look like for this task?

What would a bad plan look like?

No, I mean a really bad plan. Like the worst plan you can think of.

Now you have your contrast.

And contrast helps fix meaning in our minds.

How does getting learners to plan help you to differentiate?

Plans are a tool that all learners can use to make difficult or complex tasks easier to complete.

Plans free up learners’ working memory so they can concentrate on completing the task itself.

Therefore, plans make tasks more accessible.

If tasks are made more accessible, there is a higher chance that more learners will be able to succeed in them.

This increases motivation and engagement.

Metacognition in general is beneficial for all learners and has been shown to have a marked impact on achievement, when used effectively.

(This point is relevant for all the strategies shared in this post.)

Break It Down – Teach Learners to Simplify

Breaking something down into smaller pieces means that what was once large and unwieldy becomes simpler and more accessible.

When we break something down, we simplify it.

And we simplify our engagement with it.

Consider a steak.

If you try to eat this in one go, it will not be easy.

If, however, you cut the steak into little portions then the whole task becomes an absolute cinch.

Encourage your learners to break down tasks into smaller parts so that activities are easier to complete.

Begin by talking to your learners about what this process entails.

Demonstrate how to do it using an activity from one of your lessons.

Talk learners through the differences between tackling something in total and dealing with smaller elements one at a time.

An easy metaphor is that of a staircase.

Imagine standing at the bottom of a staircase and believing the only way to the top was in one giant, massive leap.

We’d never think that.

We know it’s not sensible.

Realistic.

Plausible.

Instead, we start at the bottom and take it one step at a time.

That way, we get to the top.

And it’s easy.

The advantage of a staircase is that the steps are provided for us.

When it comes to a big task, it’s up to us to turn it into a series of little steps.

But the principle is the same.

If you want to go further, try this approach.

Divide learners into groups of three.

Give each group a piece of paper containing five large or complex tasks.

Ask learners to work with their peers to break each task down into a series of smaller parts.

When sufficient time has passed, bring all the groups back together and develop a whole-class discussion in which ideas are shared about the breaking down of each of the tasks.

Finally, ask each group to produce a couple of paragraphs explaining why it is beneficial to break large or complex tasks down into smaller pieces, and how you can do this.

Going through this process gives learners an insight into how to break tasks down and why to break them down.

They can then put what they’ve learned into practice.

This means you can say to them in future lessons: ‘If you are having difficulties or you are not sure how to start, try breaking the task down into smaller pieces – just like we did in our previous lesson.’

How does getting learners to break things down help you to differentiate?

Breaking a large or complex task down into smaller elements makes it is easier to do.

It is therefore likely that more learners will be able to access and complete the work.

By teaching learners how to break tasks down you are giving them a metacognitive technique they can use on their own.

This increases independence and motivation.

Giving learners a tool with which to simplify difficult or complex challenges is a way of empowering them, regardless of their starting point.

Encourage Learners to Use Thinking Aids

A thinking aid is anything that extends learners’ minds and helps them to access the work.

They are tools learners use to self-scaffold.

A piece of scrap paper frees up space in working memory, meaning a learner can do more than if they try to do everything in their minds.

That’s how simple a thinking aid can be.

But how many learners either forget to use scrap paper, or choose not to?

Here are four further examples of thinking aids you can encourage learners to use.

Words on the wall

Display keywords and definitions on the walls of your room.

Encourage learners to use these when they are doing their work.

Explain that the displays are there as thinking aids.

The aim is to help learners improve the quality of their language. Spoken, written, or both.

Model how you would use the keyword displays if you were a learner.

Encourage learners to leave their seats and look more closely at the displays, if they need to.

You can even award points when you see evidence that learners are using the displays (adding an element of intrinsic motivation into the mix).

Dictionaries

The ultimate reference tool for all language-users.

Dictionaries offer a significant extension of the mind as they hold information far in excess of what we can store on our own.

In addition, that which is stored in dictionaries is fixed.

Therefore, we can use it to check the validity of the things we remember.

(Like when a learner uses a dictionary to check a tricky spelling, instead of only relying on recall.)

A dictionary is a scaffold that lets a learner go beyond what they can do independently.

Many learners are reluctant to use them.

Yet they remain the simplest, quickest way a learner can self-scaffold key elements of their literacy.

Thesauruses

Thesauruses function in a similar way to dictionaries – they are fixed collections of accumulated knowledge concerning the relationships of similarity and difference between words.

They can be used and consulted by learners in the same way as dictionaries; the benefits that learners get from using them are similar in form albeit different in terms of content.

Again, a thesaurus is a thinking aid.

A tool, if you will, that sits in the learner’s environment and which they can access with the express intention of doing more than they are currently capable of achieving on their own.

It is worth explaining this to learners.

Helping them understand not only the benefits of using a thesaurus, a dictionary and so on, but also sharing the metaphor of tools.

A carpenter has a collection of tools in their workshop.

They use these to do more than they can do with just their hands.

So too with learning.

There are tools all around us.

Tools we can get learners into the habit of using, so they have greater control over their learning and are consistently able to do more than they could otherwise manage on their own.

Mnemonic Devices

These are memory aids and come in different forms.

The aim of a mnemonic device is to make memorisation and subsequent recall easier than it would otherwise be.

They help make information sticky.

So it sticks in our minds.

You can share mnemonic devices with learners and encourage them to use these independently.

They are thinking aids, speeding up, simplifying, or altering the process of storing and retrieving information.

Here are some examples of the different types of mnemonics you can think about sharing with your learners:

• Musical mnemonics. Like the alphabet song for learning your ABCs.
• Acronym mnemonics. Like SOH-CAH-TOA in trigonometry (Sine = Opposite + Hypotenuse; Cosine = Adjacent + Hypotenuse; Tangent = Opposite + Adjacent).
• Acrostic mnemonics. Like Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain (colours of the rainbow).
• Model mnemonics. Like Freytag’s pyramid for remembering five-act structure in drama.
• Note organisation mnemonics. Like using flashcards to revise.
• Visualisation mnemonics. Like the memory place technique (as favoured, purportedly, by Sherlock Holmes).

How do thinking aids help you to differentiate?

Thinking aids do some of the work for learners.

This helps them to move on in the task, to access the work and to complete everything that has been set.

Thinking aids extend learners’ minds.

They are scaffolds and, when learners use them independently, become self-scaffolds.

In either case, they help learners to do more than they could manage on their own.

Encouraging learners to use thinking aids encourages them to be independent.

This is because they are led to see how they might work through difficulties themselves.

Learners who are more independent are in a better position to access and engage with the work, no matter where they are at in terms of their learning.