Introduction
Overview
In this course, you will examine how to identify when to adapt your teaching in the classroom
and what approach to take. We will look at creating differentiated learning resources and
developing strategies to establish an inclusive learning environment in classrooms.
Learning Objectives
On completion of this course, you should be able to:
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explore advice about meeting the needs of individual learners and select and adapt
materials relevant to your practice.
identify when to differentiate and what approach to take in teaching.
develop the skills to devise your own differentiated learning resources and activities.
understand that differentiation does not have to be too elaborate to be effective. For
example, realising that creating distinct tasks for different groups of pupils may not
always be necessary or effective.
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What is Adaptive Teaching?
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The word 'differentiation', now also known as Adaptive Teaching, means the action or
process of differentiating or distinguishing between two or more people or things.
Effective differentiation should not be overly elaborate and does not constantly mean
the need to create different tasks or resources for different groups of pupils, as this
may not always be effective, though such things could prove useful at times.
John Hattie in Visible Learning (2009) found the effect of differentiation to be among
the weakest in terms of effectiveness on learning. Try talking to expert colleagues
about when adaptive teaching is effective. For example, intervening in lessons to work
with individual pupils or small groups may be more efficient than planning elaborate
lessons for different groups of pupils. For more information on this, read What is
Visible Learning? (Jane Moffat, Ealing Council).
What steps would you take to enable all your students to be actively involved using
the process of differentiation? Make a note of your thoughts to compare them with
the content that follows.
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Managing Learning: Differentiation
This video shows the different types of differentiation and examples of lessons in
history and science. Watch the video and then tick the key terms related to each
strategy in the tick list below.
You can download the transcript for Managing Learning: Differentiation if you wish
to.
Adaptive Teaching (Differentiation)
Study the presentation on Differentiation (now referred to as adaptive teaching, the
principles in the presentation are still relevant) to find out more about how you adapt your
teaching to meet your pupils' needs. You can download the transcript
for Differentiation presentation.