TOPIC 4:

THE CHALLENGE AND VARIETY

OF DIFFERENTIATED
INSTRUCTION

1
 THE DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS

CHALLENGE VARIETY

a call to someone to participate in the quality or state of being

a competitive situation or fight to different or diverse; the absence of
decide who is superior in terms of uniformity or monotony.
ability or strength

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 THE CHALLENGE OF DIFFERENTIATION
• Differentiated instruction is inherent in quality instruction.
• Teachers differentiate to help each child learn and progress with methods that are
specifically tailored to the child's academic needs.
• In a perfect classroom situation, differentiation ensures that students master essential skills.
• This is part of the problem--no ideal situation can exist for a long period of time.
• Here is an outline on some of the drawbacks to differentiated instruction.

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 CLASS SIZE

• It is hard to implement differentiated instruction

in a classroom of over 20 students.
• The value of this teaching style lies in the
grouping of students by academic ability and
need.
• The ideal size for learning groups is three to five,
no more than seven.
• Therefore, a class of 30 students would
necessitate four or more groups, which is hard
to manage and teach effectively.

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PROFESSIONAL STAFF

• One teacher cannot differentiate alone.

• The teacher might design activities and
plan lessons, but implementation will
require the help of a classroom assistant,
at least on a part-time basis.
• Team teaching may work, but if the class
has two struggling groups of students,
more one-on-one help will be needed.
• Many schools cannot afford two or more
staff in a classroom at one time.

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 RESOURCES
• Differentiated instruction requires that a
variety of materials and resources be
available for students with differing learning
styles.
• For example, some students may learn a skill
by practicing at a website, some may need
to learn through the use of manipulatives and
hands-on activities, and others may need to
see a videotape of a skill being practiced.
• Whatever the method, these strategies
require that teachers have a great number
of available resources.
• Schools in low socioeconomic areas may not
have the advantage of these assets because
of financial concerns in their district and
state.

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ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT

• Differentiated instruction is quality instruction, but it may look

like organized chaos at times.
• Traditional principals who like for students to be at their desks
and work quietly may not like how a classroom looks if
students are moving from one activity to another, interacting
and getting up often.
• Teachers need to enlist support by talking to their principals
often about progress being made.
• If test scores are going up and students are making progress,
it will be easier to get the principal's approval.

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 PARENTAL SUPPORT

• Support from parents is an absolute

must for differentiated instruction to
have an impact, because students can
reinforce lessons learned in the
classroom at home.
• Teachers will need to communicate
often with parents about what their
child is learning and how their child
learns best.
• If a particular method seems
incomprehensible to the parents, they
may not be able to help their child or
may undermine progress that has been
made.

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 THE VARIETY OF DIFFERENTIATION

• Avoid rigid task differentiation.

• Get some better ideas for rich tasks that can accommodate all pupils and
stretch the most able.
• Rich tasks cover basic areas of learning but also allow for extension far
beyond them.
• Based on genuine exploration, intellectual excitement and challenge, making
sure that the tasks you set in class are rich expands your options and makes
the learning more enjoyable for both pupil and teacher.
• Use these 10 key principles for identifying and setting rich tasks to make your
lessons more stimulating for all pupils.

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RICH TASKS DEVELOP FROM A COMMON CORE OF KNOWLEDGE OR SKILLS

• Rich tasks are based on a common core of work, generally one that would be
covered by the class within their normal working day.
• The rich task provides for this basic level of learning but also offers
opportunities for learners to move far beyond it.
• In mathematics this might mean a task based around 3D shapes, for example.
In science it might be based around the parts of a plant.
• The challenge is to take these common classroom tasks and enrich them.
• The core will generally encompass an element of subject material that the
class needs to learn about or learn to do, such as labelling the relevant parts
of a flower.

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 ENCOURAGE GENUINE EXPLORATION OF A TOPIC WITH AN ELEMENT
OF OPEN-ENDEDNESS

• Rich tasks encourage learners to explore the subject material, rather than
merely provide an answer or complete a closely defined set task.
• Most rich tasks will have an element of openness to them, to allow for the most
able learners.
• This does not mean that there is no right solution or end product – rather, that
there will be a range of them.
• They may have an initial, well-defined task that all learners will be expected to
achieve and then move on to more open-ended tasks, or the entire task may
allow a wide range of possible responses..

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 DEVELOP ‘AUTHENTIC’ EXPERTISE

• A rich task generally enables learners to think and act ‘in role’.
• Whether this is as a mathematician, scientist or writer, they support the
development of expertise on the part of the pupil, to explore a context from a
particular perspective and to produce responses which enable them to
develop their voice as a potential or emergent expert.
• For many of us, this is the wider objective of more able education: expertise in
development.

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 ENGAGE WITH A RANGE OF START AND END POINTS

• Learners come to tasks from a wide range of backgrounds – some may have in-
depth knowledge of a subject while others may have minimal knowledge;
some will be interested, some not so keen.
• A well-planned rich task will allow for this, providing a range of choices that
cater for all levels and abilities.
• By the end of a task all of the learners should have fulfilled the core
requirement, while some of the learners will have gone far beyond this. The
more open-ended nature of a rich task allows for a wide continuum of
responses, thus providing for a wide range of abilities.
• But at whatever level the student operates, genuine challenge needs to be
available at all levels of ability.

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ENGAGE IN HIGHER-LEVEL THINKING IN A SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT

• The open-ended nature of rich tasks will provide opportunities for higher-level
thinking, if the classroom environment supports this approach.
• If teachers comment positively on work that goes beyond the bare minimum
and are interested in different approaches to tasks, then learners will feel
encouraged and supported in responding to rich tasks to the best of their
ability.
• In a tightly constrained class, where there is one ‘right’ answer and the teacher
is the only authority, learners will focus on providing what they feel the teacher is
looking for.
• This will limit the richness of responses.
• We often see in observations that rich tasks can be part of the means to
develop a classroom in which risk-taking is seen as a safer option.

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 DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

• Rich tasks will ask learners to analyse, synthesise and/or evaluate in the course
of completing the task.
• Rich tasks are not about simple recall of facts or repetition of learned
procedures; they require higher-level cognitive processing.
• Facts and procedures may be the starting point for some rich tasks, but they are
not the end point.
• Rich tasks encourage learners to think creatively, work logically, synthesise their
results, analyse disparate optimus-education.com/Conferences 4 viewpoints,
look for common features or evaluate findings.
• This is not to say that rich tasks might not also include lower-level activities, such
as knowing (learning) the parts of a plant, but this knowledge will have arisen
from or be activated by a process of questioning and enquiry.

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 BECOME MORE CREATIVE IN THEIR RESPONSES

• Rich tasks will often give learners permission to be more creative in their
responses. As with higher-level thinking, the level of creativity will also depend
on the nature of the classroom – in a tightly constrained classroom learners may
not feel that creativity is either allowed or welcomed. Rich tasks also enable
learners to appreciate the value of variety and differences in perspective – a
really good example will also enable learners to see elements of beauty in a
context, an elegant solution or the imaginative use of humour.

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 EXERCISE MORE SELF-DIRECTION THROUGH ELEMENTS OF CHOICE

• An element of choice, both in task and in end product, allows learners to work
to their strengths and interests.
• Choices should be varied to ensure that learners encounter a wide range of
tasks and products over the course of the school year.
• If we look at just the synthesis level of Bloom’s taxonomy, this will mean that
learners may be asked to arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct,
create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organise, plan, prepare, propose,
set up, write.
• The end product could be written or oral, a model or a PowerPoint
presentation, an interview or a debate, allowing for a range of methods of
assessment.
• Choices allow learners to feel ownership of the task or tasks and research
consistently shows that this, in turn, will increase their level of effort, engagement
and enjoyment.

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 BECOME MORE INTERESTED AND MOTIVATED

• The range of choice and challenge in rich tasks make them inherently more
interesting to learners.
• Tightly constrained tasks with a set endpoint tend to allow the learners no
individuality in either their approach or their output.
• The interest is in the end product or solution, with little or no interest in the
process for getting there.
• In a rich task, learners have choices to make.
• Teachers will tend to be interested in how they arrived at their chosen endpoint
and why they made the choices they did.
• All of this makes the rich tasks more interesting for both the pupil and the
teacher.
• We have often observed teachers surprised at the quality of work that learners
produce as a result of such tasks.

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 DEMONSTRATE WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING

• Rich tasks can help in identifying able or gifted learners, particularly those who
are ‘hidden’ or unidentified.
• Their open-ended nature and high levels of challenge provide opportunities for
learners to show what they are capable of achieving.
• They also allow a finer-grained analysis of individual strengths and weaknesses
than tightly constrained tasks, linking to assessment for learning strategies.
• A rich task enables learners to produce different kinds of products, to present
their learning in a variety of ways and to be assessed at the level of their
potential as well as their current attainment.

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 Thank You
Xie Xie
Nandri
Kotoluadan /Pounsikou
u n i t a r. m y
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