Lesson Planning – Why You Need to Differentiate!

To differentiate is to provide access. It’s very rare that a classroom will be filled with a group of learners who all understand the content both procedural and conceptually, at the same pace, with the same strategies, and with the same reasoning. In fact, it may not exist at all. Instead, you will have groups of students who’s understanding is similar whether that is, they got it down and really need a challenge or they are in between and need fluency, or even not sure where to start and need significant support. Differentiation takes care of that, right away!

I remember in my first year of teaching, I was just going through the motions. I planned a lesson with no strategy in mind about how I would reach students who struggled and how I would challenge students who were high achieving. All of my students worked on the same worksheet, answered the same questions and received the same exit ticket. The students who struggled, continued to struggle. The students who excelled, continued to excel. The gap got wider and wider.

The first piece of feedback I got in my first observation meeting was on differentiation. I can barely spell this word without using spell check y’all! The red squiggly lines never fail me! But the fact of the matter is–you HAVE to do it if you want to see real growth among your learners. And if you’re like me and growth is important, then you will take it serious.

Differentiation requires significant planning time. I am not going to make this sound sweet at all. It requires more planning and to be real, it takes me an entire prep period to write one lesson plan. If you check out one of my lesson plans, which can be downloaded for free, you will notice immediately that all sections of the lesson is differentiated. Everyone is grouped into a group which I form based on data which I typically get from diagnostics, exit tickets, quizzes, etc. My groups are also very flexible and I often change them on a day to day bases or every few days. I use three main groups, Group A – high performing students exceeding standards, Group B – middle performing students meeting standards, and Group C -low performing students approaching standards. Students are grouped from the Do Now all the way to the Exit Ticket. Everything is literally differentiated.

Why this works? Not only is everyone being challenged according to their level of knowledge, but also students feel successful when their assignment or assessment is achievable. If what they are expected to understand is too hard, you will lose some students in the process. Students will become distracted easily or even decide to distract others, and then you have a behavior problem on your hands. Students who feel the material is too easy are also not being challenged and thus will also become distracted, distract others or disengaged all together and unwilling to do the work. There has to be a balance, a method that’s effective in supporting all the learners and ensuring that everyone is challenged. Differentiation leads to academic achievement. This is why differentiation is so important.

Differentiation is also a great motivator! In my experience with differentiating content, students don’t like to see themselves in Group B or Group C. They work hard to get into Group A and stay there. If they are absent or missing a lot of class, they know right away that they end up in Group C because the likelihood of them returning to class and knowing how to do the work is small. So differentiation also helps with boosting attendance. I will also have students even tell me that they feel confident to do a Group A problem and I give them the opportunity. I don’t allow however, for students to do a problem that is not challenging enough, so asking to do Group C work if they are typically exceeding expectations. I also teach into self image and confidence. I frequently push students to challenge themselves and to be proud about not knowing the answer right away and having the desire to figure it out. There’s no fun in knowing all the answers. The fun is figuring out how you got it and whether your methods can be replicated with understanding by other people in the room. When that happens, then students feel really successful! I also remind students to be confident especially when they start saying things like, “I was doing fine in this class until you started teaching cubes”, or “I know I’m going to fail my quiz tomorrow, so do you have extra credit opportunities available?”. My answer to all of that is always, be confident!

So I would like to know, do you differentiate in your lessons? How much has your planning time increased by spending the time to do this? Let me know if you have figured out how to meet the needs of all of your students and still not spend too much time planning!

Thanks for stopping by Rm 321! Find me on Instagram and see what’s going on in my classroom! Check out my TpT Shop for more resources.

~ All Things Teach Rm 321