Differentiation by Support and Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction.

Differentiation is a teacher’s response to learner’s needs and therefore can be planned or unplanned, long term or short term, explicit or subtle. You cannot differentiate for every student and every need, all of the time, but being able to adapt and respond in the moment is just as important as planning support in advance.  As Mary Myatt says true differentiation is a paradox. It is about having incredibly high expectations for every child. It’s about regarding these as an entitlement. It is about offering demanding, concept rich, complex work. And the differentiation bit comes in through ‘unpacking’. This means through high quality talk, questioning, checking for understanding, modelling, explaining. The most effective form of differentiation is through Dylan Wiliam’s responsive teaching – preparing for the top and supporting students to get there, rather than deciding in advance which students will perform which tasks.

We must resist the temptation to dumb down.

Differentiation by support, not curriculum!

This means that our expectations of the students are high, and we inspire all to work towards the highest learning goal.

Using Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction as illustrated in the diagram below:

My Humanities Faculty collectively came up with the following principles of instruction that enable differentiation by support:

1. Challenge and engagement:

a. The basic access entitlement of students with particular learning needs. Inclusion of accommodation for DLN (learning support/SEND students) and EAL students. E.g., extra time, differentiating directive terms, allowing students to listen to audio, reading aloud so that students can access language, allowing Google Translator for vocabulary lists to use in tests.

b. Setting work that is challenging for the top end. That is knowledge and content rich for all students within the class.

c. Initially engage the students by asking them to write a letter to you as their teacher to gauge their interests and literacy levels.

d. Refer to any notes on students from the LMS at the start of courses.

e. Pre-testing to get to know the students and their prior knowledge.

f. Provide extension opportunities through for example longer essays responses for students to excel.

2. Explanation:

a. What is the challenging content you will teach students and how will you explain this clearly? Does this prepare them for further education and beyond?

b. Differentiate through different levels of example sequences of…

– A range of positive examples of a concept

– The limits of the concept by negative examples

c. Differentiate through conversation with students.

• Use students with the next level of mastery as coaches for other students.
• Use students as peer buddies strengthening each other in different skills e.g., reading/ writing, analysis/ detail, vocabulary/ structure.
• Use students as peer partners e.g., writer/ presenter, divergent/ convergent thinker partners.
• Plan lessons so you can act as a coach to a group of students as part of a peer coaching lesson.

3. Modelling:

a. Using worked examples across a range of different achievement levels. Or ask the students to moderate a work sample such as a C or a D. Show the students what success looks like.

b. Example sentence starters/ language examples for quality written work. 

c. Revision practices and study skills are explicitly modelled, taught, and used in the classroom, as well as developing the ability for students to use these practices outside of class time.

d. Model appropriate metacognitive strategies to students depending on their range of ability. Model how to discuss learning and self-reflection with a focus on developing students’ ability to articulate their strengths and areas of improvement.

e. Providing a glossary of terms at the beginning of units to reduce cognitive load.

4. Deliberate Practice:

• Expect students to gather information from a range of resources rather than one key textbook.
• Provide subject reading lists to encourage students to read above and around the topic.
• Provide resources for students to take learning to the next level.

5. Questioning and Assessment:

a. In practice, there is one main form of easy differentiation: Same resources; Different questions.

• Questioning linked to level of mastery.
• Move from closed to open.
• Move from shallow to deep.
• Increase level of probing.
• Differentiate ‘waiting time:’ 10 seconds or longer for ‘richer’ responses.
• Expect all students to always answer in sentences but at the top end expect students to answer in paragraphs to encourage deepened responses.

b. Adjust your teaching plan in response to formative feedback, for example adjust the lesson pace or re-teach certain concepts.

c. Check-in regularly and make the learning visible by gathering data with formative assessments and instructional practices such as questioning techniques and exit tickets (formative activities at the end of the lesson to evaluate the learning progress). Adjust your teaching plan in response to formative feedback, for example adjust the lesson pace or re-teach certain concepts.

d. Purpose, relevance and success criteria of assessments are planned and, if needed, differentiated for student ability.

e. Using group and targeted interventions to remediate learning difficulties and enhance high achievers.

6. Feedback:

a. Utilising formative data for differentiation of T & L strategies.

b. Giving feedback on student work against prior achievements rather than against other students’ work.

c. Differentiate verbal feedback.

• Differentiate improvement strategies.
• Differentiate improvement tasks and feed forward activities, such as reflection and goal setting.

Additionally, here are 3 blogs that exemplify ideas that aid differentiation by support (not curriculum).

https://thinkingaboutteaching.blog/2022/07/18/four-ways-to-think-about-differentiation/

Differentiation

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