What is Differentiation & How Can It Be Used?

Over 11 years ago, I heard the phrase differentiation for the first time.  I found myself asking “what is differentiation?”  I found myself thinking back to when I was at school and realising that at the time everyone more or less got taught the same content in the same way.  Thinking back to then in comparison to how I teach now, you come to realise contrary to what the press would have us believe, things are much better now.    In part that is to do with a greater degree of differentiation within schools and especially within lessons.

The definition of what differentiation is:  Differentiated instruction is the way in which a teacher anticipates and responds to a variety of students' needs in the classroom. To meet students' needs, teachers differentiate by modifying the content (what is being taught), the process (how it is taught) and the product (how students demonstrate their learning).  What I think this actually means is that you don’t need to treat every student the same.  Because no two students are the same, should we teach any two students in exactly the same way?  After 11 years of teaching the only conclusion that I can make is “NO!”  So, the challenge is “how can we differentiate effectively without having to teach 25 lessons at once.”

Over the last 11 years the face of differentiation has changed drastically.  At one point differentiation consisted of producing a range of individual tasks or activities for each student to work through and then to mark each individuals work using a different set of criteria.  Whilst this seems like the ideal situation, in the world of full time teaching you physically don’t have enough time to do this without killing yourself or building a time machine.  Below I have tried to outline some of my ideas about how I differentiate and a few different approaches I use.

Know your audience:  I know that this can be easier said than done, however, over time this is what everything else I do with differentiation is built on.  On taking over a class it’s important to make sure you know what level your student’s should be working at, and if you get the opportunity, talk to their previous teacher to help you get a feel for them.  There are many important advantages to knowing your audience in term of differentiation:

• You can sit your students in specific groups based on their ability.
• You can direct specific questions to different students based on how much stretch they need to get the most progress out of them.
• If you are working with students that have been put into sets based on their ability range, you can either increase or decrease the difficulty of the content you include.
• It allows you to differentiate by task as you’ll get to know what works for your students.
• Using various Edtech, it allows you to set individualised homework for those students who need that extra bit of challenge to enable them to hit those top grades.

Objectives:  A few years ago, there was a point where every objective needed to follow Blooms, be levelled so that progress could be shown against the objectives and needed to follow the all, most, some model.  Whilst this seems like a good way to construct differentiated objectives, it never quite hit the spot for me.  The issue with focusing too much on blooms was that I focused too much on trying to fit the model rather than on the content of the objective.  The problem with having all my objectives levelled was that students would often only work to their target level instead of trying to push themselves to a higher level.  The biggest issue however, is the all, most, some part of objectives.  The problem was that lots of students did the all part, then didn’t go any further.  So, the question is how to use objectives to enable differentiation within a lesson?  The trick I use is to have reasonably generic objectives based on the content but without telling students differentiate my expectations of student outcomes to tasks based on my objectives in accordance to the level that individuals should be working at.

Differentiation by task:  Would you teach a top set using the same lesson as you would a bottom set?  As much as I’d love the answer to be yes, I think I’d have to say no!  If you work in a school where students have been put into sets based on their ability then you need to consider what extra support you need to put in place to support lower ability students, and how to step up your activities to challenge higher ability students.  Below are some things that you might find helpful to think about when differentiating the tasks within your lesson:

• Not all your students will learn in the same way so you need to plan a range of different tasks that will enable all your students to access the lesson.
• Use open ended tasks.  By using tasks that have more than one solution you can allow lower ability students to access the content whilst at the same time allowing higher ability students to stretch themselves.
• If your using exam questions with students, especially long answer ones, break the question up into smaller pieces with advice on how to answer each piece.  This works well with low ability students.
• Consider the level of questions you are using.  If you use a programme like exampro, the exam questions are levelled 1-3.  If you have a lower ability class you might want to use lower levelled questions, and with a higher-level class vice versa.
• Consider the content you are teaching students.  There is very little point I trying to teach high level concepts to low ability students as they will become disillusioned when they struggle to understand it.  At the other end of the spectrum think carefully about how you can use the content to stretch students.  Do you have to teach them everything or can you challenge them to find things out for themselves?
• The pace of the tasks within your lesson is vitally important.  With some classes, you’ll need to keep the pace fast in order to stretch you students, whilst with other classes you’ll need to take it more steady to enable them to access the content.  With low ability students, don’t be worried about spending longer on tasks even if it runs into the next lesson.
• Think carefully about your Power Point.  Lower ability students will find a slide with lots of writing on difficult to access.  In terms of differentiation, you need to change how you present content dependant on your audience. 
• Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic and through words. Not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups or individually. While some students may benefit from one-to-one interaction with a teacher or classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Questioning:  Possibly the easiest way to differentiate is by questioning.  Once you know the level that your students need to be working at you can target them with specific questions.  You can use open questioning to stretch higher ability students, or can use closed questioning to often help convince lower ability students that they are making progress.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can differentiate within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk