Simplify Differentiation in Your Math Block
We are still chatting about differentiation and the power of simplicity when it comes to altering assignments for different levels of learners in your classroom. I shared last week that when I first started teaching, I thought that differentiation meant prepping for different levels of assignments for different groups of students in my room every day for every subject. It’s no wonder that I was exhausted those first few years!
I have learned that this is not the way. Differentiation is important, and I do believe it’s the key to helping students of all levels access material. If you are constantly giving students work that is too easy for them, what good are you doing? They will not grow. You will simply be exposing them to things they already know, which isn’t the purpose of school.
And, if a student is consistently exposed to work that is too hard for them, not only will they not master the material, but they may start to develop negative internal thoughts about themselves as learners.
We need to provide opportunities for each student in our classroom to be successful, and to gather the tools they need to build up to the content that they need to master by the end of the year.
Today, my differentiation tip is to change the expectations and directions for the same assignment according to the different learners in your classroom!
Bloom’s Taxonomy
We all remember Bloom’s Taxonomy from college, right? Depending upon how deeply a student understands something, you may push them to a deeper representation of what they know.
For students who are just beginning to understand a concept, you may simply want them to identify the correct answer. Identify as one of the verbs near the bottom of blooms taxonomy. The students are simply solving the problem and producing the answer. Or, if you want to take it a little bit lower, they are identifying the correct answer from eight list of options.
Students who have a deeper understanding of that same concept can first identify the answer, but then move on to explaining their thinking about the answer. Or, even better, you can use the verb “create” from Bloom’s and ask them to create their own problem that follows a similar model.
Change the Expectations
The point of changing the expectations is NOT to let some students off easy. The simple task of identifying the correct answer may be a lot of work for one student while it can be done in a snap for another. The purpose of changing the expectations is to push each student to their maximum working ability for that skill.
The maximum working ability of one student may simply be to follow steps to solve a problem. The student one desk over may be fluent with problem solving, and could be pushed to go deeper with drawing a picture of their thinking, writing out an explanation of the steps they took, and more!
This simple tip can save you hours of creating and re-creating assignments that look completely different from each other. Instead. prep one assignment, but print different sets of directions for different groups!
Resources for Simple Differentiation
I wrote in this post about how Numberless Word Problems were perfect for simple differentiation with one assignment. I also think they work well for simply changing the expectations. One group of students could be expected to simply solve the problem, while the next group could be asked to go deeper.
But, if you’re looking for more ideas, my shop is full of math resources that could reach multiple levels of learners with simple tweaks in the directions! Math Menus, Mini Math Projects, and Math Crafts are all examples of projects you could give students, but make the directions slightly different! You can reach so many different learners, without stressing a bit over the planning!