Divide to Differentiate
Divide your class by ability level to effectively differentiate and appropriately challenge all students.
By Stef Durr
Do you currently differentiate assignments in your middle or high school classroom? How do you ensure that you’re providing appropriate and challenging material to each of your kids? Consider dividing your class into learning groups to meet learners where they are and push them toward improvement.
How Can I Differentiate in the Classroom?
Planning different assignments for each level of learner might not be practical or possible five days a week. However, designing a differentiated lesson the day you roll out a new standard can ensure that all members of your class are appropriately challenged, and allows you the opportunity to spend more time helping those without the foundational skills to successfully mastery the standard at-hand.
Step One: Assess Your Students
Start a new unit or introduce a new standard with a quick, in-class pre-assessment. If you’re lucky enough to have a school subscription to online testing services, such as ActivProgress, quizzing your class and getting quick, meaningful feedback is a breeze. Another way to do this is to present a short quiz and have your class members trade and grade.
Step Two: Divide Your Class
You can have two levels, three levels, or even more if it makes sense. I typically shoot for three learning levels in my classroom. If the pre-assessment had 10 questions on it, divide your kids like this:
- Group one (1-3 correct)
- Group two (4-6 correct)
- Group three (7-10 correct)
Step Three: Provide Practice Opportunities
Provide the two higher-level groups with independent practice while you pull the lower group aside for small group instruction. If you build in stop-and-jots, turn-and-talks, etc., you can pop around to individual students to monitor their progress and clear up any misconceptions.
Lesson Planet has hundreds of thousands of resources to help you locate the appropriate assignment for each learner, so before you endeavor to create all of these assignments yourself, select a topic, an accompanying standard, and a grade level to browse our teacher-reviewed resources.
Step Four: Gauge Student Learning
After grappling with the material independently (or in the small group), it’s essential to see what skills your learners have developed so you can plan the following day’s lesson. Design a mastery check that will re-evaluate their proficiency and possibly move them into a higher learning group. If you can grade these before students walk out the door, you can provide them with homework according to their current level.
Step Five: Reinforce by Providing Leveled Homework
On their way out the door, have your kids grab a leveled homework assignment. These assignments should be distributed based on the numbers indicated in the mastery check, not the day’s pre-assessment (as many of your learners might have shifted). It doesn’t have to be a lengthy assignment for your class to benefit; having three to five targeted questions will allow them the opportunity to practice and hone the skill while telling you which pupils have mastered the objective.
Step Six: The Follow-Up Lesson
Are your learners prepared to deepen their understanding of the standard? How many need more independent practice? Is anyone still struggling with the basic foundational skills? Consider these questions when you go about planning for the follow-up lesson, or lessons.
More Articles on Differentiation:
Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help you identify the stages of learning in your classroom.
Meeting Your Students Learning Needs With Differentiated Instruction
Particularly useful for the younger set (think elementary school), this article discusses strategies to help you differentiate for all levels of learner.