Differentiation 101 What to Do and How to Do It

Hello, my name is Rachel Orr. I'm currently working as a freelance education consultant, tutor, teacher and author. I have 26 years or more experience working in a primary school. 17 and a half of those years have been spent as Deputy Head and as Head teacher. Recently I was published by Bloomsbury books in their 100 ideas range. My book is all about differentiation and gives 100 ideas as to how you can differentiate across the whole curriculum. My webinar today is going to be about the do's and the don'ts of differentiation, and in particular how they can be used with maths. So when we think about differentiation, we need to think, what is it? It's not simply putting together 30 personalised lesson plans. Why do we need to be creative when differentiating? Our children learn in lots of different ways, just as we do as adults. And we need to think carefully about how we are going to meet their needs and be creative because one size does not fit all. Are we using too many worksheets? When you do a book scrutiny and you're looking through, do you see all of the books with the same worksheets in and. And the same piece of work churned out day in, day out? We need to think about why do we use worksheets? Is there a place for worksheets? How often do we use them? And then finally, we need to think about how do we make sure we do not put a ceiling limit on learning. Our children come to school if they come to nursery at the age of three and some of them may have only turned three in August, they they already come with a wealth of knowledge. Before teachers get their hands on the children they have been learning from the minute they are born. The sights they see, the sounds they hear and the smells and the tastes they experience. We are not filling empty vessels. Our children already have a wealth of knowledge and it's up to us to find out first what they know. The Latin word educare, from which we get the word education, means to draw out and move forward. And that's what we need to do with our children. And part of differentiation is knowing our children so well that we can draw out and tease out those individual moments for each child and really help them achieve their potential. It's good to be different and we do need to celebrate differences. We don't want a class of 30 children where they all follow the same thing and they're all interested in the same thing. We want those differences and they need to be respected because those differences are exactly where we get the sparks from in Our lessons, we want to encourage them to be unique. We don't want them to follow the crowd. They need to express themselves and be able to celebrate their own special uniqueness and fairness and equal opportunity. This doesn't always mean giving everybody the same task. We look at where children are at, but we do not want to put a ceiling limit on their learning. When we think about differentiation, we need to think about what that actually means and unpick it. And this is what the Education Dictionary tells us about differentiation. 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. That's what is being taught. The content of our lessons, the process, how we teach it, the different teaching styles we have when we're working with children, and then the product, how our students demonstrate what they have learned. The National Archives with the DFE many years ago brought out differentiation. And schools jumped on the bandwagon and began to think about do we need to plan and have these special individual learning plans for children? Having IEPs for every child in the class to make sure we're differentiating and personalizing learning? That's a tall order. It really is an impossible task. The National Archives tell us that all learners are different and they're all capable of some achievement. The biggie for me is this second bullet point. Every class is a mixed ability group. Mixed ability grouping enables us to have those sparks in every lesson. If we set children for maths, what happens to that lower ability set when their learning perhaps can be capped because of the actual range of abilities? Within a lower ability set, it will not be that vast and we end up teaching to a lower expectation. The children need exposure and they need to be exposed to the bright sparks. And the bright sparks need that challenge too. Knowing individual pupils well is essential to good differentiation. Again, drawing out building those relationships and sen children, they're still on that continuum of learning. Everybody can make progress at their level, but they don't need to be taught in discrete groups. In summary, then we're looking at adapting our curriculum. When we differentiate, that's changing what we are teaching. We're thinking about instructional modifications. We change how we teach depending on the different learning needs. Environmental considerations. Thinking about where we teach maths lends itself so well to outdoor learning being in a larger space. In fact, we want to have active learning and not just sitting at desks and heads down and trawling out pages and pages of computation. And then the people, resources we need to look at who is teaching and supporting the children in their learning. If you're lucky enough to have a ta, it is a highly skilled teacher who will deploy that TA effectively. Tas, often in some schools, are put with the children who are in the SEN group or working with lower ability children. How do we know that those children are getting quality first teaching if they're always working with the teaching assistant? The teacher needs to take charge. They need to build up an effective partnership. The teaching assistant can take the more able children the sparks and inspire them and give them the challenge. So the teacher really gets to know that lower ability group in the SEN group, because all too often it's the teaching assistant who can know more about those children equally. We need to teach children who maybe do require support, although all of our children are entitled to support whenever the need arises. But if we have lower ability in SEN children, we need to nurture them to become independent and not be dependent and reliant on having somebody there who perhaps will just give them a nudge and do the work for them. There are lots of myths. Sean Harford for Ofsted has blogged several blogs and waylaid a lot of fears for schools about what Ofsted do not expect to see. Inspectors don't expect work and tasks in all lessons to be tailored to meet each student's individual abilities. We know that it really is an unrealistic expectation. However, teachers should make sure that all students have opportunities to fill their potential, regardless of their starting points. It's not about an end product, it's not about getting all children to to that final part of meeting age related expectations, especially if their starting point is so far behind their chronological age. We're looking at content, process and product and in order to think about that, we need to make sure do we know our students are ready? Do we know what their interests are? Are they interested in what they're going to be learning? And obviously the key part is their learning. Are we getting the learning right? If a teaching assistant is working with a group of children, if they're just doing crowd control, then the learning isn't right to meet those children's needs. I often say to students on teaching practice or even just giving feedback to teachers in school, when as a head teacher, if you're working with a group of children as a focus group, you need to consider what is it these children are actually going to learn because of my input? If all you're doing is sitting there and keeping them on task or doing crowd control, then you're Wasting your time and their time. It means the learning's not right. If they can get on with it without you being there, you're not challenging them, you're not actually teaching them anything. So we need to think carefully about the learning environment we consider too. And differentiation is a teacher's response to learners needs. We need to be respectful with our tasks, the tasks that, that we create. We need to have flexible grouping. There are times in maths where you deal with quite difficult concepts, where you do need to teach some groups more discretely than others. So we need to be flexible. There's nothing worse than a child sitting on a table and they suss it out very, very quickly. They know where they stand in the ability stakes in their classroom and they're sitting there thinking, I'm on table four or I'm on red table and I've been on red table since the start of the year. And yet Johnny on blue tables moved three tables since we started. What is it with me? We need to think about that flexible grouping and not allow children to feel that they are not achieving and doing well. And obviously our ongoing assessment and adjusting our curriculum is there. When you're marking books, that's your planning for the next day. When you're giving feedback with children and taking their answers in a plenary and asking questions that informs your planning for the next day. So we're going to look at practical ideas for differentiation and I'm going to share with you 10 different ideas from my book that can be used with pretty much any subject. But I'm going to be quite particular today with maths. Before we move any further, I said about the do's and don'ts of differentiation. This is a big no no for me. Differentiation for me there should not be a worksheet in sight. If they can do the worksheet then they don't need it and if they can't do the worksheet, it's not going to help them. So first of all we're going to have a look at odd one out. And for me this is a great one because it is so versatile and there isn't a right or a wrong answer. It's a wonderful activity that everybody can access and you're looking at developing children's thinking skills and their reasoning skills. So I'm going to take three numbers, for example, asking children. And I would do this with nursery age children all the way up to year six, even with these numbers because we're looking at finding out which is the odd one out in this example, we're looking at three numbers and I would say to the children, I'd like you to tell me which number you think is the odd one out. But more importantly, I want you to give me the reason why. At a very, very basic level in nursery, some of the children might pick up on, well, 24's the odd one out because it's the only one that's got straight lines in it. They might not be able to tell me it's the number 24, but they'll be able to point to it. Other children might say, well, 39 is the odd one out because 39 is an odd number. Equally, 56 could be the odd one out because it's not. It's the only number there that's not divisible by 3. The possibilities are endless. And if children are sitting with a whiteboard at the start of a lesson and you put up an array of numbers and say, ok, you write down the number that you think is the odd one out with your reason why, you're going to have a lot of children who pick the same number. But then it's down to the teacher to say, let's share the different reasons why we found that number was the odd one out. The bright sparks will try to outdo each other with the more complex thinking and drill down and say, this number can do that and this one can'. But the lower ability children, the sen children, will still be exposed to all of that, to that bright spark. You can do the same thing with shapes. If I were working with early years, I'd have three hoops on the floor and I'd have the objects in the hoops so they can handle them, they can touch them, they can pick them up and they can hold up the cone and say, this one only has one point. Even if they don't know it's a cone, they can identify only got one sharp point, whereas the triangular prism and the cube have significantly more. Okay, not going to tell you to bog off. I'm hoping you're going to stay and continue to listen. You've heard of bog off, which is buy one get one free. This is a slightly different take on it. It's actually buy one get three free. And we're going to have a look at the four operations. Initially we start with a blank card, a triangle, and it's pre marked with the addition and the subtraction signs. And I'll give the children a calculation. The one cited here, 45 adds 60 is 105. I say to the Children, I'm going to give you one free gift and that's your free gift. 45 add 60 is 105. Now it's up to you to find the other three gifts and there are three of them. And by modelling it with the children writing on with the whiteboard pens, we can say, okay, 45, add 60 and we cover up the answer. What is it? Then we can say we've got 60 add 45, where they can see the relationship that it doesn't matter which order you add in. That's absolutely fine. And then you can work on the subtraction 105, take away 60 and the children can work out these free gifts. Similarly, you can do the same in multiplication. And as we know, in 2019 year six, children are going to be doing those multiplication check tests at the end of year six. This is a very practical way of securing and embedding. Too often we can teach addition, subtraction, division and multiplication in isolation. And children need to see those relationships to understand the associative and the commutative law. They need to understand that when they add they can work out the takeaway at the same time and not just be faced with pages and pages of addition calculations and then another day subtraction. They need to do them both at the same time and get that embedded hot chilli peppers Homework. Sometimes homework can be a bit of a divisive subject at times. You can have parents who say, oh, there's too much homework. And then there could be parents who are asking for more homework and it's trying to make it manageable. And teachers have enough on when they're marking books on a day to day basis to think about homework. I'm going to share two examples of homework with you. One being hot chili peppers. To try and make homework engaging, interesting, have value and purpose, but also make it manageable for teachers. And it's going to be a no marking homework and I'll come on later as to how we can get round about a no marking homework. So hot chilli peppers at the start of a term or a unit of work, you determine how long that's going to last and you are setting up a page of tasks to go into a learning log. The tasks will all be mathematically related, but you will differentiate them by scoring them against extra mild, mild, medium hot and extra hot. It's the piri piri chicken time and we have different ratings of the chili peppers. When the children choose these tasks, they can choose them in any order that they wish. Some children will automatically go for a one chilli pepper because they know it's not going to be too challenging. But you encourage the children to choose more and more and they only need to do one a week. It depends on your school's homework policy, and I think homework should be encouraged and not necessarily enforced. Family time is a big time at weekends, and if you've got working families to set homework on a Friday and expect it back in on a Monday can be quite an impossible task. And the whole idea of having a bit of a takeaway menu. You might have heard of takeaway homework on social media. The whole idea of a takeaway menu is that it can be pick and mix. You can choose what you want and it should be for the children to do with very little adult input. You might have a bit more input for younger children. And speaking of pick and mix, when I was a little girl, you could get a pick and mix for 2 pence and you got about 10 sweets in it. I think you can't even get one for that now. But pick and mix, you can embed an awful lot more maths into this by using money and set. Children, the task of you need to spend every week 25 pence and you actually mark your tasks with a monetary value. Penny tasks won't be as challenging as 20 pence tasks. Some children might think, well, I'm just going to do the easy tasks. But they'll soon become savvy to the fact that if they do just penny tasks, they're going to have to pick 25 different tasks. But if they do a 20 pence task and a 5 pence task, they can challenge themselves. I mentioned marking and not having too much to do at the end. Speed dating is one way of alleviating the marking workload. Parents and children want to know when they've done some homework that it's valued, it's had purpose and the teacher has acknowledged it. It's worth in advance if you go down this approach, letting your parents know. This is what happens when homework comes back into school so that they're not flicking through their child's learning log wondering why the teacher hasn't initialed it or ticked it or stuck a sticker on it. So with speed dating, you need to set aside time in a lesson. You determine when the homework has to come back in and you set aside, say 15, 20 minutes and that should cover it. Number the children 1, 2, 3 and 4. Ask number ones to find a number two and number three's to find a number four. They get two minutes to share with their friend that homework task. They chose just the one. And by the end the children should have shared three times themselves and also listened three times. You can take it a bit further because you might have a group of children who've all chosen the same task. You might have five children who did this particular task on fractions. They could come together as a small group, share what they've done and then put together an even more powerful two minute presentation to present in front of the class. And by doing this each week, you're acknowledging the value of homework, the purpose. The children know they're going to be sharing it with their peers and and they can see that there's value there and the teacher doesn't have to mark it. Rag Balls in a bag. One of my favorites. Most shops you can buy these little sort of pool balls. They need to be fairly light because you're going to cut a slit in them. Now, Rag Balls in a Bag for me is a questioning tool. Rag stands for red, amber and green, hence the colour of the balls that I have in the bag. By cutting a small slit in, as you can see here, they're very light. You can insert lots of bits of information. What I'm going to share with you today is inserting problem solving questions, but you can put absolutely anything relating to any maths topic. You can invite a child to come out to the bag and either pick a ball out blindfold or pick one out. Choosing a red ball is going to be the most challenging question and a child can read the question and decide, am I going to have a go at answering this? If it's a child who maybe isn't as confident and struggles a bit, you can give them the option of you can go and phone a friend and they can go and pick a friend, have some time together and come back. But a simple tool can be used in all subjects across the curriculum. But there are absolutely endless possibilities in maths for rad balls in a bag. Rag marking. I've mentioned the no marking in speed dating and it does concern me when you hear teachers talk about how many hours they spend at the end of a day marking books. This is a simple method. I'm not promising that I'm going to transform your marking workload overnight because it will need some training. But it's a simple method that may just help you mark more smartly. In order to inform your planning for the next day, you need three boxes. A red one, an amber one and a green one. And at the end of the day when you say to children you're going to put your books in a box, they choose which box they're going to put it in. Ideally, feedback is far better if you can mark the books alongside the child and give them that instant feedback so you can sort out any misconceptions, sort out any problems, and that child can do it there and then. But when you've got a class of 30, that's not always possible or practicable. The children choose which box. They'll need training because initially they'll all want to please you and they'll stick their book in the green box, which says, I was dead confident with that. I'm really happy with it. I didn't feel it was such a challenge. Those putting it in the amber box are saying, it was kind of okay. It was a bit iffy, but I really feel as though I need just a little bit more practice. And those ones in the red box are saying, boy, that was really tough. They're the books you mark first. They're the children who are saying, I'm really struggling with this. And if you didn't get the chance to pick up on that in the lesson, this is the opportunity mark those books first. Not saying you don't look at the other books, but it may not always be necessary to look at every single book at the end of every single day. Another Ofsted myth from Sean Harford. People think you've got to have pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of work in children's books. Ofsted does not expect to see a particular frequency or quantity of work in pupils books or folders. Ofsted recognises that marking and feedback to pupils, both written and oral, are important aspects of assessment. These are for the school to decide through its own assessment policy. Keys to Learning. I was teaching in Year four with one of the most inspirational teachers I'd ever come across and we had displays upon the wall and some were pretty generic. You had your tables up on the wall and key spelling words. But we discovered that there were certain things that there just wasn't enough room. And we came up with a little tool called Keys to Learning. I've got my set here. Ideally, they need to be pocket sized, but this is just for visual purposes. A simple key template and you can get four on an A4 page. Identify the concepts that children are struggling with. It might be for younger children. They need to know their number, bonds to 10, they need to know their complements to 100. It could be a tables fact here we have Addition vocabulary. This one demonstrates square numbers. Print them off, laminate them, cut them out and and stick them on a key fob. You can put a children's name and their photograph on. And the children love these because it is personalised learning. They like them in their pocket, easy and simple. And once you've created them, you can have a bank of them and they can be recycled. When a child says, I no longer need that to help me with my learning, they can put it back in the bank and choose the next one that they feel they need some help with. Bus stop. I wonder if you've played bus stop before. It's a game often associated with the letter of the Alphabet, where you have maybe a girl's name, a boy's name, a country, a car. This is education Bus stop. And in particular maths, Bus stop. So this is just one example where I have a number, double it, halve it, multiply it and so on. You can put pick the headings you want that are going to be determined by the concepts you need children to cover. If they're laminated, children can use a whiteboard pen and then they can just be cleaned off and used over and over again. You generate a number similarly to using the rag balls. I have another set of plastic balls which haven't got a slit in them and I've just written on numbers. And you can pick two numbers out, you can pick three numbers out and form a either a three digit number, two digit number. You might want to add the total of the numbers together to generate your starting number. And then children have to manipulate that number according to the headings and whoever gets to the end first shouts bus stop. And you could do it with a group around a table, do it with the whole class, and by changing the headings you can meet the needs of different groups of children. Beach ball. Active maths learning is so powerful. I mentioned earlier about thinking about the environment in which we teach, not just what we teach, but where we're teaching it. If it's a great sunny day, get out onto the field, get out onto the yard and use beach ball. One activity is simply to write the numbers in each of the segments. Odd numbers on the top, even numbers on the bottom. It can be kicked around, which engages those boys who like to kick a football and the girls who like to kick a football. It's interactive, it provides a hook for the children. They can start to see associations. They can kick it, catch it, and wherever their fingers lie, you decide what you're going to do with the Numbers that their fingers are touching. You might ask a child to add the numbers together or subtract them or to say which is the greater number. Even down to nursery children, you think of the gross motor skills that's going to be developed as well as their hand eye coordination as well. Lots of multiple skills that can be developed. You can write fractions on the ball. Different fractions determine a starting number. You might say 60. You throw the ball around wherever it stops. You might have music playing or have some children counting in order to get to a certain point. And whoever has the ball last, it might be which fraction is your right hand on? Okay, it's on the half. Can you half 60? And you start with 30 as the next number and you keep passing this around. Another interactive but accessible way for all children. One size doesn't fit all but they're not all doing exactly the same task because it changes continually. And dice let em roll. I like this little saying. A dice is very reliable. You can count on it. You can make cardboard dice. But if you can afford it, if you can buy these foam dice they have little plastic inserts on each face and you can just interchange these with absolutely anything. An example I'd like to share with you. I have two dice here. One has multiples of ten and tens of thousands and hundred thousand. And this dice has the four operations and the greater than and less than sign. You can start with a starting number that could be generated randomly from using a bag of balls with numbers on. And then the children roll the dice and have to manipulate those numbers. Very open ended, very explorative. You can change the numbers depending on the groups of children that you have. But it is engaging and it's hands on practical maths. And maths should always be hands on practical to start off with. Similarly, you can do it with shapes as well. A simple game in a circle with children roll the dice. Whichever one is face up. Can you describe the properties of that shape? Possibilities are simply end. So a whistle stop tour through 10 different ways to engage learners in differentiated maths. Practical ways. Time saving ways. This is my limit. Where's yours? Thank you.