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 the teacher can do.

Bloom’s-Based Questions

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives orders the standard elements of cognitive processing that teachers ask learners to do in the classroom.

The taxonomy runs as follows, from least to most challenging:

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

Subsequent research has suggested that the last two categories could be swapped over.

This is not too important for us here – synthesis and evaluation are always the two most difficult of the cognitive processes.

Using the taxonomy to structure the questions you ask is a good way to differentiate.

It lets you simply and easily tailor the level of challenge to the learner in front of you.

(For more on the Taxonomy, see my Bloom’s Taxonomy Knowledge Base.)

Here are three approaches you can use.

Approach One – Bloom’s Question Set

When planning a set of questions that learners must answer as part of an activity, use Bloom’s Taxonomy to ensure they are progressively more challenging.

Here is an example:

• What is a definition of democracy? (Knowledge)
• What is the meaning of democracy? (Comprehension)
• Can you name two countries that are democracies and explain how you know that they are? (Application)
• What are the key features common to all democracies? (Analysis)
• How might you alter the political system in the United Kingdom so that it is more democratic? What would your changes look like? (Synthesis)
• To what extent do you agree that democracy is the best political system that exists? (Evaluation)

Approach Two – Discussion Questions

Use the taxonomy to underpin the questions you ask learners during discussion.

If you want to challenge a learner, ask them a higher-level question.

If a learner is struggling, ask them a question from one of the lower levels.

You can also try asking a series of question that gradually ascend the taxonomy.

This is a good way of developing the confidence of a learner who feels they are struggling with the work.

A series of correct answers to more concrete questions will aid them in having a go at an abstract, higher-level question.

For example, you might start with two or three quick-fire knowledge questions, followed by a comprehension question and then an analysis question.

The knowledge and comprehension questions help build confidence, get the learning thinking about the topic and prime them to recall key vocabulary.

This then becomes a scaffold through which they can more easily tackle the challenge of the analysis question.

Approach Three – Bloom’s-Based Lesson Segments

One way to plan lessons is to break them down into smaller segments and to assign an overarching question to each.

The tasks you plan are designed to help learners answer each of the relevant questions.

You can use Bloom’s taxonomy to underpin the questions that head each section.

As the lesson progresses, so the questions move up the taxonomy, getting more complex each time.

For example, a teacher might divide a science lesson on photosynthesis into three segments.

The first is framed by a comprehension question, the second by an analysis question, and the third by an evaluation question, which ensures a progressive level of challenge through the lesson as a whole.

How does using Bloom’s Taxonomy help you to differentiate?

The taxonomy orders cognitive processes from least to most difficult.

Using it to structure questions, activities and/or lessons means the teacher can tailor all of these to meet the needs of their learners.

By gradually working their way up the taxonomy (in a question-set, in discussion, or through the course of a lesson), the teacher will challenge all learners, helping them to make progress no matter what their starting point is.

Using more concrete, lower-level questions is a good way to help learners who are struggling to access the work.

The success they experience from answering these helps build engagement and motivation.

It also forms a scaffold that helps them access more challenging questions.

Focussing on Evaluation and Synthesis

Evaluation and synthesis (or creation) are two of the harder things we ask learners to do in the classroom, as indicated by the fact they are the top two levels of the taxonomy.

They offer many opportunities for challenging learners and for stretching thinking.

We can look at each in turn, to see how they can help us to differentiate.

Evaluation

Evaluation involves making a judgement.

To do this, you need a certain amount of understanding of what is being judged, as well as what is being used to make the judgement (the criteria to which the judgement refers).

The better you understand both the criteria and the thing itself, the more likely your judgement will be clear, persuasive and nuanced.

Here are three ways you can use evaluation to challenge your learners.

Plan tasks and ask questions that require learners to make a judgement

These could be part of the main task, or they could be extensions that learners come onto as a challenge or reward for completing the core work.

Here’s a list of evaluation keywords you can use to underpin questions and tasks:

• Appraise, Argue, Assess, Critique, Defend, Evaluate, Examine, Grade, Inspect, Judge, Justify, Rank, Rate, Review, Value.

Notice how they all refer to the same general act – that of evaluation – but that they each also refer to something qualitatively different.

To defend an idea is different from justifying an idea.

Ranking a set of items is different to examining them.

Evaluating a source is different from rating it.

The beauty of having an evaluation word list is that it increases the range of evaluative questions and tasks you can plan for your learners.

This creates variation, which tends to be motivational, and lets you challenge different learners in different ways.

Challenge learners to identify and explain what it is that they are using when they make a judgement

This is tricky and therefore challenging.

When we make a judgement, we refer to some set of criteria.

This is what our judgement is against.

So, for example, if you are studying World War Two and a learner has just finished evaluating a source, you would ask them to explain what it is they used to judge the strengths and weaknesses of the source.

They will have to think about how they came to their judgement.

Were they thinking about validity? Reliability? Veracity?

In this example, we might ask the learner to have a think about how they made their judgement, and to then produce a set of five bullet points anyone could use to make a judgement about a similar source.

Extrapolating this out we can say that a simple, yet highly challenging, extension task is to ask a learner to:

• A) Reflect on how they came to a judgement.
• B) Create five bullet points someone else could use to make a similar judgement.

Give learners a judgement for which they must develop a defence

This works particularly well if it is something unusual, unlikely, or that the learner does not agree with.

The process here involves working backwards.

The evaluation has been made, now reasons must be found for it.

You are asking learners to think differently about evaluation.

Instead of coming to a judgement themselves, they must defend a judgement you have given them.

Here are some examples, from different age groups:

• ‘Goldilocks should have eaten all the porridge.’ How could you persuade me that’s right?
• ‘Magnetism is more important to understand than gravity.’ Can you defend that statement for me?
• ‘The English Civil War was of little consequence in the long run.’ I’d like you to try to defend that statement for me, please.
• ‘1+1 = 3’ Can you defend that?
• ‘The human mind is impenetrable to analysis.’ I want you to create a defence for this statement, using what we’ve already studied this term.

Synthesis (Creation)

Synthesis, or creation, involves the development of that which is new.

This might come through the forging of connections, the bringing together of separate items or the application of the imagination to what we already know.

It is difficult.

It is easier to stick with what there is than it is to create something which, heretofore, happened not to be the case.

Here are three ways you can use synthesis/creation to challenge your learners.

Ask learners to make connections across the curriculum

You might like to encourage learners to begin by looking for simple or obvious connections and then challenge them to develop some that are more unusual.

If learners struggle with this, choose an area of the curriculum for them and ask them to make a list of all the things they can think of that connect to that area.

Once learners have a list, it will be easier for them to start making connections.

The list is a concrete scaffold they can use, one that also frees up space in their working memory.

Extend the challenge by asking learners to create a ‘connections map’ visualising how what they are studying connects to different areas of the curriculum.

To make the challenge even greater, you can ask learners to indicate the relative strength of the connections by making the connecting lines they draw more or less thick.

Challenge learners to create a question they believe only an expert would be able to answer

With this challenge, learners must think about what they have learned and compare this to what they imagine an expert would know.

From here, they must develop a question they believe only an expert could answer.

(And creating questions is a form of synthesis.)

For example, a group of Year 4 children might be learning about dinosaurs.

The teacher could challenge the whole class, or a handful of more-able learners, by asking them to create a question about dinosaurs they believe only an expert could answer.

If the teacher can answer the question, or anyone else in the class, then learners need to go back to the drawing board and try again.

You can extend the challenge by asking learners to come up with multiple questions, by asking them to research and answer any questions they create, or by asking them to create a question so fiendishly difficult it couldn’t even be answered by an expert.

Propose a Link

This strategy is a fun, quick way to challenge a learner who has completed their work.

Grab a book and ask the learner to pick a page number.

Open the book at this page.

Next, ask them to give you three numbers between 1 and 30.

For each number they have picked, go to the respective line of text on the page of the book.

Select one word from each line.

Focus on nouns and verbs for the best impact.

Give your learner the three words you select.

Explain that they have three minutes to make as many links as possible between the random words and the lesson topic.

Increase the challenge by asking learners to create a story encompassing the random words and the lesson topic.

How does focussing on evaluation and synthesis help you to differentiate?

Both require high-level thinking and a good command of the relevant ideas and information.

Questions and activities based around these processes are a surefire way of challenging learners and stretching their thinking.

Evaluation causes learners to think critically about what they have studied.

This is challenging because it involves an active reassessment of what they have already processed.

In addition, it pushes learners to go beyond simply assimilating knowledge.

Synthesis causes learners to think about what they have learned in ways that are new and imaginative.

They are pushed to manipulate what they know and to look at it from a different perspective.

Five Ready-Made Challenge Strategies

As an added bonus, here are another five easy-to-use strategies you can call on to stretch and challenge the thinking of your learners.

Insoluble problems

Much of philosophy centres on problems that appear to be insoluble.

Use these to challenge your learners.

While they may not come to a definitive answer, the process of thinking about them is challenging.

You can come up with a list of insoluble problems and have these on hand, ready to use with your learners.

Either those who are more-able, or those who finish the main activities before their peers.

Here are some examples of insoluble problems, to get you started:

• What is art?
• Can security and freedom coexist?
• What is the nature of the mind?
• Do we have free will?
• Are some judgements better than others?

Article Bank

Create an article bank containing laminated newspaper, internet or magazine articles that are relevant to your subject, relevant to a topic you are teaching, or simply interesting.

Keep these to hand and, when a learner finishes their work before the rest of the class, let them choose one of these to read and analyse.

You can also provide a set of questions for learners to think about, if you like.

For example:

• What is the article about?
• Do you agree with what you’ve read?
• What questions does the article make you think of?
• If you were going to write a follow-up article, what would it be about?
• How would you summarise the article without using any words?

This is a great strategy to use over an extended period.

An A Level physics teacher could create an article bank they then use with learners across a two-year course.

But so too could a Year Six teacher create an article bank for budding scientists in their class that they use over the course of a year.

This or That

Give learners a difficult choice and ask them to decide on and justify the option they think is best.

For example:

• Should Little Red Riding Hood have been more careful, or better prepared?
• Should we spend more money on schools, or hospitals?
• Is it better to set up in a 4-3-3 formation, or a 3-5-2?
• If I’m making a chair, is it better to use hard wood, or soft wood?
• When writing a story, should you think of the ending first, or the beginning?

There’s one caveat you need to throw into the mix, to make sure the level of challenge stays high.

Learners must make a choice and then justify it.

That’s the game!

They are not allowed to say: ‘it depends.’

They have to come to a decision – and then try to convince you that they are right.

Translation

Ask learners to translate something from one medium into another while retaining as much of the original meaning as possible.

Here are five examples:

• During a lesson on Jane Eyre, you might ask a learner to translate one of Mr Rochester’s speeches into an image.
• During a lesson on human anatomy, you might ask a learner to translate a list of major bones into a song that aids recall.
• During a lesson on ionic bonding, you might ask a learner to translate what they’ve learned into a decision tree.
• During a lesson on identifying verbs, you might ask a learner to translate the process of identifying a verb into a cartoon strip.
• During a lesson on fractions, you might ask a learner to translate three fifths into a physical model.

All these are tricky, illustrating how translation of this nature asks learners to take what they have learned and think about it from a different angle.

Perspectives

When a learner finishes their work before the rest of the class, challenge them to reimagine it from a different perspective.

The point of view which you or the learner chooses will depend on the nature of the work.

An example is as follows.

In a lesson looking at human rights, learners might have been asked to write an essay on what single right they believe is most important.

Learners could then be challenged to write as if they thought another right was more important, as if they thought no rights were important, or as if they thought the original right they chose was in fact unimportant.

All of which will be challenging for them.

How do the different strategies differentiate?

Specific challenge tasks can be used as extensions to stretch the thinking of more-able learners.

They can also be used as extensions that the whole class strives to try and reach.

Such a situation can be achieved by lauding those who reach the tasks and by creating an atmosphere of excitement around learners’ attempts to get to grips with them.

Careful planning of challenge tasks helps ensure they are accessible – while still being difficult – for all learners.

The key difference comes in the work that learners create in response, with learners making progress relative to their various starting positions.