Can I be that little bit better at.....changing the game?

Change is difficult.  It's been a running theme throughout this blog that there was a stage in my career back in 2009 where I begun to realise that what I was doing in the classroom probably wasn't as effective as it could have been.  Activities were designed before the learning or outcomes were planned.  Questions were machine gunned around the room without any care or consideration.  Feedback did little to benefit anyone but looked good on book trawls.  Differentiation became a logistical observer tick box nightmare and dented our photocopying budget.  The problem is though, as a teacher, it is very easy to fall into a routine without realising you've got there.  I had all the best intentions in the world to become the best I could be, but after a few years habits take shape.  At the 2012 SSAT conference Dylan Wiliam highlighted this issue by saying:

"Currently all teachers slow, and most actually stop, improving after two or three years in the classroom"

His point was that the environment is so challenging when we start teaching that we are forced to improve.  After we sort classroom routines and management strategies our progression begins to plateau and we can sometimes simply coast.  He stresses that it takes ten years of deliberate practice to develop expertise in our job.  This may be the case but ten years of constant refinement and improvement can be a difficult thing to keep on top of with all of the other tasks that make up the complex job of a teacher.

Naturally then we begin to develop habits.  Many of them are effective in the classroom and define who we are a teachers.  Unfortunately, there are habits that could do with refining or tweaking if we are to stay at the top of our game.  The thing is though, habits are tough to break.  To the annoyance of my wife I bite my nails.  It isn't the worst habit in the world but after a bit of reflection (or nagging) I consciously make an effort to reduce it.  In fact when I catch myself doing it I make the decision to stop.  However, after the two years that Wiliam talks about, do we realise the bad habits that we fall into and can we change them?  In his 2014 white paper 'Optimizing Talent: Closing Educational and Social Mobility Gaps Worldwide', Wiliam goes on to talk about the difficulty in changing habits:

What isn't required is an overhaul of our teaching.  We don't need to scrap everything we do and reinvent the way we approach lessons.  Not only is that unrealistic, but it is time consuming, incredibly difficult and hard.  Instead we need to be more pragmatic and identify key areas and work on them.  On the back of a number of low medal returns in track cycling, Team GB/British Cycling didn't throw the programme out of the window and start from scratch.  Instead they decided to focus on a few key principles.  One of these being that they needed to know more about their opponents than their opponents knew about themselves.  After the Athens games they went to every World Cup and World Championships and videoed the opposition and built a massive database which they used to their advantage.  It's so simple when you think about it.  So how can this apply to us in teaching?

"Great teaching cannot be achieved by following a recipe, but there are some clear pointers in the research to approaches that are most likely to be effective, and to others, sometimes quite popular, that are not.  Teachers need to understand why, when and how a particular approach is likely to enhance students' learning and be given time and support to embed it in their practice."

Professor Robert Coe from Durham University.

If we are going to change the game maybe we need to focus on core components of teaching and understand not just the what of them, but really get to grips with the why and the how.  Why is feedback effective?  How can we improve the way we approach planning?  Why is one particular questioning strategy better than another?  Asking questions like this, reflecting on what we do, and then refining our practice is a lot easier than starting from scratch.  So what have been the game changers in my own practice over the last few years?

Planning

Planning lessons is an area that has been widely talked about in education.  In fact I talked about it here.  How much is too much?  How much is too little?  Taxonomies or no taxonomies?  What makes up an outstanding lesson?  If there's one thing that has been highlighted over the years it is that planning is very personal to individual teachers.  One persons approach can be completely different to another and we shouldn't be trying too look for the 'magic formula' of what makes a perfect lesson.  In fact the varying contexts, school settings and students we work with means that a fantastically planned out lesson for one teacher may not work for another.  However, there are some key things that can make planning more effective and more efficient:

• Plan collaboratively - As Hattie states in Visible Learning, planning is at its most powerful when teachers work together.  Collaborating with others allows ideas to be bounced around, lessons to be critiqued, subject knowledge to be extended and strategies to be shared.  Although finding time may prove an issue, it is definitely worth the effort to do so.
• Keep it simple - Are we spending our time trying to teach too much and actually over-complicating things in lessons.  Trying to cram in every detail, every fact, followed by a starter, plenary and a wide range of activities can make a 60 minute lesson look very messy.  Try and refine what you teach by identifying the core principles and spend time developing students understanding of them.  What are the two or three things that must be learnt so that students can then access subsequent information.  How can we share that in a way that is accessible for our students?  Focus on this, slow down the time spent on them and remove the messiness.  
• Learning first, then activities - It can be very easy to think of a new activity to hook students in or grab their attention.  Sometimes in this instance though we focus too much on the activity and not on the learning.  What do you want students to learn?  Will doing this activity help do this or just distract them?  Will it clearly help them acquire the knowledge or skills they need?  Does it take you longer to resource the activity than students spend using it?  If so, maybe rethink what you're doing.  Keep it simple instead.
• Make them think - Daniel T. Willingham's states that memory is the residue of thought.  When designing lessons check how much real thinking is taking place.  Will students spend time really unpicking information, questioning its value and discussing their opinions.  Will they be spending time thinking about applying knowledge to real contexts or challenging problems?  
• Backward design - What is the end point or goal and plan backwards until you get there.  Such a simple yet powerful approach which ensures you identify the various stages and routes to an outcome.

Biggest impact:

• SOLO taxonomy - Love it or hate it, SOLO has really allowed me to unpick a topic and its various components before teaching it.  By doing so it has allowed me the ability to identify core knowledge that I need to spend time covering.  Used purely during the planning phase, it helps me pull apart a topic and refine what I will teach.  It helps ensure that I find larger context to fit the new knowledge in so students see where it fits into the bigger picture.  Mapping it out also lets me create a journey or story, which I don't have to stick to, but helps me explain what it is that I am teaching.

Feedback

Feedback is incredibly complex and the focus of two of my blog posts here and here.  In fact we know that if done well it can have a very high effect on students learning in the classroom.  Unfortunately we also know that if it is done badly it can have detrimental effects.  Feedback has also begun to be applied unreasonably in some schools with increasingly high expectations in marking policies.  It can make an enormous contribution to teacher workload and see little results on what really matters; student learning.  Instead of adding to the complicated world, here are my three game changers for feedback.

• Feedback should cause thinking - Taken from Dylan Wiliam, if I am going to provide feedback, it had better make students think hard about it.  Throw away comments and the token 'Really good work' are now replaced with a number of strategies such as feedback questions and critique.  Students need to have a change in thought about misconceptions and actively try to correct them if things are going to move forward.  Feedback also needs to help students identify what has gone wrong and what needs to be done to get better.  Making them think is proving to be a great way to make them do that.
• Feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor - If you find yourself spending more time writing feedback than students do acting upon it, I'd rethink what you are doing.  Marking keys, burning questions, proof reading work before submission, critique and DIRT time are all ways in which students work harder than you and actually act upon the feedback you are giving.
• Feedback should close the gap from where students are and where they should be - Do our comments (or even peer comments) actually move the learning forward?  Do they help get students up to the level that they should be?  Would you understand your comments if you read them?  If there are no real misconceptions can we extend a student?

Biggest impact:

• Feedback questions - Such a simple strategy but ensures students engage with feedback.  When spotting misconceptions, put a number in the margin where the error took place.  At the end of the work, place a question which links to that number.  The question is a reworded variant of the original question, or simply a prompt question that forces the student to realise what mistake was made, and make them think about what the correct answer is.

Questioning

Leven and Long (1981) found that we ask around 300-400 questions a day whilst teaching.  That is a lot of opportunities to fully engage with students and assess their understanding (or effect their thinking).  It is therefore wise to reflect on how we approach questioning (as I did here and here).

• Provide thinking time - With the average gap between asking a question and asking for an answer being less than one second (Walsh and Sattes 2005), is it no surprise that sometimes the depth/quality of students answers isn't as good as it could be.  Providing wait time, or even using a strategy like snowball questions, jigsaw groups or think, pair, share can be very helpful in giving students the time to formulate a high quality answer.
• Inclusive questioning systems - Using strategies like Doug Lemov's 'Cold call' or the simple 'No Hands up (with hands up)' method ensures that every student in the class is included in the questioning that goes on.  Check whether you keep asking the same people for answers.  If you do, maybe try one of these methods (here).  Once the culture is formed and the environment is safe for students to contribute, the confidence in sharing answers increases (as does the learning).  Hinge questions are also a great way to get a whole class providing an answer.
• Modelling & constructing exceptional answers - Stepping away from 'I don't know' or poorly constructed answers is very important.  If this happens try modelling answers with students.  Scaffold their responses so they learn how to provide a well constructed answer.  Highlight exceptional answers and explain why.  Write key points from students answers on the board.  Use ABC questioning.  All of these methods help ensure students know what a good answer is and begin to share them themselves.

Biggest impact:

• 'No hands up (but with hands up) - Using a simple system where students initially refrain from putting their hands up to answer a question.  It has allowed me to create an environment where all students know a question could be posed to them at any point.  More students stay focused and answers have developed in quality over time.  I also allow hands up after a few answers are taken to allow those students who wish to add to the discussion the opportunity to do so.  From experience I would recommend staying away from random name generators or whizzy name selectors.  Although they allow questioning to be truly random, they slow down the lesson and become tiresome after a while.

Differentiation

The various abilities and needs of students in your lessons mean that we need to tailor how we teach each one.  It doesn't mean that differentiation needs to add to workload or contribute to an over-complicated lesson.  Differentiation should also be for the students we are providing it for, not observers or tick box scrutiny.  I spoke a lot about a sensible approach to differentiation here.

• Differentiation doesn't need to be visible or just for observers - Differentiation is for your students.  It shouldn't be about ticking off a component of a lesson and definitely shouldn't be pointed out purely for the benefit of an observer.  Differentiation is subtle, personal and ingrained in what we do.  It isn't a short term fix but a longer process of planning.
• Differentiation is teaching (and very responsive) - It's the conversations we have, the bespoke feedback we give, the way we differ questions between groups of students.  Differentiation is very responsive and happens regularly within the classroom without us even noticing.
• Aim high and support up - Scrap must/should/could outcomes and set high expectations for all.  Use models, examples of excellence and worked examples where possible.  Show students what they should be aiming for (and even surpassing) and help scaffold students up towards that outcome. Using graphic organisers to help map out ideas, or even dropping in a few A-level questions.  As Daniel T. Willingham said, we shouldn't make the tasks easier, instead we should make the thinking easier.

Biggest impact:

• Modelling and examples of excellence - Simply demonstrating exceptional work either through modelling or using examples (professional work, my own work or student work).  By doing so, students can see the high expectations that we are aiming for.  By modelling the process, individuals can also see the steps/thought process that was taken so that they can develop similar approaches (or not) themselves.  Modelling and using high quality examples has definitely become a prominent feature in my classroom.

Literacy

Literacy has such an importance in learning.  Establishing how to write effectively and communicate in a coherent manner is something we should all be teaching our students.  With the push for improved literacy in schools, there has become a view that 'literacy' in teaching has become a bolt on.  At it's worst it's become a tick box rather than a core component of our teaching.  I've talked extensively here about how we are all teachers of English and identified a few ways that we can help improve verbal or written communication in our lessons.  As a non-subject specialist, here are a few things that have worked well in my classroom:

• Demonstrate great writing - Showing students what great writing is has been an important element of my teaching.  Using articles or examples of excellence, students can see first hand what we are aiming for.  As a class we can deconstruct it, analyse it, critique it and discuss what has made that piece of writing great.  We can then begin to model and scaffold how the writer has created their work.  Spending time in lessons to talk through detail and process has allowed students the opportunity to learn from others and endeavor to implement similar ideas themselves.
• Build up vocabulary - Of the many ways I have found effective in improving students vocabulary it has been encouraging reading around my subject.  Many of my lessons include articles where students naturally pick up subject specific words which are used within context.  We read, we discuss and we take.  We can keep glossaries of new words and even use techniques like @TeacherTweaks vocabulary upgrade to get students to review their writing and improve its academic quality.  Spend time on words as they will benefit students writing in the long run.
• Build up confidence in structure - Showing students the fundamentals of sentence and paragraph structure is worth focusing on.  I am no English teacher so don't feel confident looking at the technicalities of writing.  What I can do though is use simple scaffolds and strategies to build a foundation with students before allowing them to be creative.  The use of Doug Lemov's 'At first glance' sentence starters helps students include a better quality of academic writing.  Using Helen Handford's 'Four Part Process' for writing excellent sentence that include definition and meaning have shown my students the fundamentals.  Even initially using an essay structure like I.D.E.A (Identify, Describe, Explain and Apply) helps get the basics right before removing the shackles and encouraging freedom.

Biggest impact:

• The four part process - A process borrowed from Lee Donaghy (who borrowed it from Helen Handford), it is a fantastic way to structure sentences with students.  It asks individuals to identify the thing being written about, add a verb, define it and then add meaning.  Like any other framework, the end result is a sentence that can be read as a complete entity.  The process isn't finished there but requires students to then go away and refine/redraft it further until as a class we have created an amazing sentence.  Co-planning, modelling and high expectations is key.

Making it stick

Remembering information so that students can use it over the long run is an important factor.  Helping students store information so that they can use it in future learning, discussions, debates, answers and exams has become increasingly more important.  The work of cognitive scientists and psychologist is extremely complex but fascinating.  Although we are still learning more about how the brain works every day, there have been some interesting strategies that could be extremely helpful within education (even if just as a starting point):

• Using desirable difficulties - Robert Bjork's term 'Desirable Difficulties' refers to a number of strategies including frequent low stakes/high impact testing, spacing out the retrieval of old information over time, and interleaving topics together.   The combination of these ensures that information is retrieved at numerous points throughout the learning process, and more importantly, over time.  Small mini tests that focus on old topics during starter activities, identifying where two topics link and spacing out when we revisit old parts of the curriculum are just some of the simple things we can embed into our curriculum, schemes or lessons.
• Helping working memory - There is still so much to learn about the brain, its functioning and capacity.  However, the discussions around working memory is one area that even though I am a complete novice in, is still an area I find is helpful to know when designing lessons.  With its limited capacity, do we make lessons to fussy or distract students from what we really want them to understand?  Does making them design a powerpoint about the 'principles of training' make them think more about what clip art/animation/font to use rather than really learning the content?  Do our explanations confuse students or overload their working memory?  Keep things clear, simple and focused has been my biggest lesson learnt.
• Make them think - Daniel T. Willingham talks about memory being the residue of thought.  So how much of my old approach to lessons really got students thinking, and thinking hard?  Check back through your planning.  Instead of copying a definition from a book, could they not answer an exam question which forces them to use the definition in context?
• Three is the magic number - Although in lower school settings, Nuthal's research of student learning in the classroom brought out a point that really stuck out for me.  In it he found that for a student to really learn, understand and remember a concept, they would need to encounter it on at least three different occasions when being taught it.  I now ensure that I check through my plans and groups of lessons to see if I am asking students to use this information in a variety of ways numerous times.

Biggest impact:

• Cumulative tests - We use cumulative tests in a variety of ways now.  All of our unit exams and assessments used to be block tests which just focused on what was just taught.  We now include questions from every topic so that students retrieve information from units that were taught 2 months, 6 months or even a year prior.  Although we have yet to see the full impact of this, students are more able to recall topics that would previously have been forgotten.

Data

Data can become one of those time consuming tasks that adds to our ever increasing workload if we are not careful.  For a long time a created spreadsheets and did very little with them.  Data can have great impact on teaching and learning if we use it correctly.  So what have I learnt about data?

• Are we collecting data just to say we have collected data? - If it's not going to change teaching and learning or help move your students learning forward then don't waste your time.  To often we keep records for 'others' to check.  Follow school guidelines, refine what you do and create a system that helps you make a real impact.
• Does data improve T&L? - Compare data with your colleagues and department.  Talk about what others are doing in certain topics to get great results.  Borrow ideas from them or co-plan.  Look at what areas your classes have struggled in and evaluate whether the way you taught it was the problem.  Make data be a part of your professional improvement.

Biggest impact:

• Data to make a difference - Still very much in its early days, we have begun to share data across the department.  Now at meetings we fully scrutinise key areas and talk about what we did, how we taught it, what exactly students got confused with (with exams and tests on the table in front of us to do so) and how we can teach it better next time.  It's about using data to make teaching and learning better, and to help improving us collaboratively.

And so?

I started the 'Can I be that little bit better...?' series as a way to talk openly about my professional development.  Cultures are changing, errors have been made, practice has improved and a lot of thinking has happened on my part.  There is still a long way to go and improvement can always be made.  What I have done though is decided that good teaching is more than just adding strategies to your game.  It's a lot more than that.  It's an understanding of our craft.  Part of this is knowing the fundamentals that underpin effective learning and consciously trying to refine them.  It's then about trying to be a little bit better at using them in the classroom.

Can I be that little bit better at.....understanding why I might be getting differentiation wrong

There are a few things in education that either scare me or confuse me.  One such thing is the term differentiation.  When I trained as a teacher we discussed the fact that students vary in ability in lessons.  This is common sense and something anyone would be able to tell you.  If I remember back to my own school days, every lesson I was in put me in a different academic standing.  Some lessons I flew in, some I struggled and some I just plodded along.  It's obvious then that students in lessons may require additional support, help or challenge.  Now this thought sits very comfortably with me.  But this sounds so simple.  Why then does the term 'differentiation' wake me up in the middle of the night with screams of terror?

A few years into my teaching something changed.  All of a sudden (and I'm not sure where it came from) people were talking about the fact that we need to be planning detailed lessons that highlighted and catered for every single student in the classroom.  The word flew in like a whirlwind and numerous strategies and ideas were left in its path.  Suggestions of designing a lesson numerous different ways, creating thirty different worksheets for thirty different students, changing the outcomes for the different abilities in your lesson, utilise students learning styles, that it should be clearly visible to an observer how I was differentiating for every student.....  It all got a bit overwhelming and if I'm totally honest, a little bit far fetched.  Luckily for me our school stayed pretty grounded and kept things in perspective.  But the worry of whether I was doing it right still lingered.

The differentiated worksheet

The reason that this particular face of differentiation bothers me is that it seems very unrealistic on teachers.  I am fully aware that the students in my classroom are very unique and learn in very different ways.  Experience tells me this.  I understand that some prefer different approaches and various forms of interactions.  I understand that students differ in the type of instruction they need.  They're not battery hens where a one size fits all system works.  But what for me felt like hysteria around differentiation a few years back gave me the feeling that what was expected wasn't for the students, but for other groups of people.  It felt like there was an expectation that every lesson had to be uniquely tailored to all students.  Now that takes time.  And I tried it for a while.  Believe me I did.  I spent hours on each lesson thinking how I could ensure every student was catered for.  But ultimately it became an impossible task and I felt fraudulent when I eventually only did this level of planning for things like observations.  So how could I manage this effectively and be realistic, and a bit more effective, in helping cater for students in my lessons?

As part of my renewed focus on my practice over the past few years I started to think of ways that I could scrap this view of differentiation, and simply look at ways that I could instead provide challenge for all.  In fact I'm not even sure what I'm talking about is differentiation anymore.  With it I began focusing on approach that would ultimately work for me and my students.  So what lessons have I learnt?

Differentiation isn't a short term fix
For me differentiation felt like a series of short term solutions.  'How could I adapt this part of teaching for this part of this lesson for this student on this day' became stuck in my head.  What I've learnt is that differentiation isn't about that at all.  It's not about one off strategies and doing things in isolation.  These can help but for me it's much better than that.  Differentiation is all of those tiny subtle things we do on a day to day basis.  The things we do naturally with the various students in response to their needs.  The hundreds of conversations, questions, discussions and pieces of advice.  These small moments that happen consistently on a daily basis makes a much bigger deal in the long run.

Sometimes you may not even know you're doing it
There are times in our profession, especially in observations, when we feel we have to make every action in our classroom visible.  But sometimes differentiation will happen and you may not even notice you've done it.  I worry that we expect differentiation to be the adapted worksheet or different task.  Something we know we've done and can point to in lessons.  Something we can physically hold on to and say 'here it is!'.  Or worse, something we go out of our way to make visible for others to observe it.  But differentiation may simply be the bespoke feedback you've given or the way you've demonstrated something differently to a student.  It's the way we respond to students needs.  It's helping students move forward.  As I've just said, it's the tiny conversations we have.  Those small things happen every single lesson and we may not even notice or recognise it.  That for me is differentiation.

Differentiation should be simple
Over complicating differentiation has been my downfall in the past.  It shouldn't take hours of my planning time but instead be part and parcel of what I do.  I don't need over complicated resources, activities or tasks.  Making things more efficient and manageable is a much better way to go.

More work isn't differentiation - is it?
There were times when all I did was provide more work for those who were flying which meant less work for those who weren't.  Is this differentiation though or is it just simply setting more tasks.  I'm not sure I know the answer.  I guess that if we do provide more work, it should firstly be something that extends students rather than being much of the same.  Secondly we need to make sure that there is a culture that everyone is expected to have the same output otherwise some students may produce two or three times the amount than others.

30 different worksheets for 30 different students isn't realistic
Yes every single student in your class is different but spending hours creating unique and bespoke resources can be very time consuming.  If it will help, if it will challenge, if it will support and if it will be used again then go ahead and make it.  If you feel that simply planning your explanations, your questioning, your feedback or demonstrations would be a better and more effective part of a lesson, maybe the worksheets can wait.

Don't make the task easier, making the thinking easier
Adapted from Daniel T. Willingham, this little nugget of advice has really stuck with me.  Instead of making the outcomes of tasks easier for different groups of students, structure the thinking behind it that little bit better.  A colleague of mine said a few months back that ultimately, every student in her class, regardless of ability, will have to sit the exact same exam with the exact same time limit as everyone else.  Making tasks easier for some just means that they will know less.  I have to agree.  Gone are the 'must, could, should' objectives and differentiated endpoints.  Instead every student has to learn the same key content, but, the way each student thinks and gets there may be different.

Differentiation is about knowing your students
I can't think of many things more important to help you teach your students.

Focusing too much on a group
I found myself guilty of focusing on specific groups of students that I actually took my eyes of those that remained.  Pinpointing under achievers or stretching the more able is important, but what I did when doing this was forget about those not in these groups.

And finally, differentiation is responsive
If you have a firm grasp on your group and you use various forms of evidence, assessment or data, you can plan differentiation into your lessons effectively.  Equally, if you know your students and know the difficult parts of the topics you teach, you could probably plan and adapt your delivery differently at these 'sticking points'.  Being prepared and planning differentiation is important.  However, I fell in love with the term coined by Andy Tharby; Differentiation the responsive way.  Most of the differentiation we do in lessons happens in response to the events that unravel.  Yes we can plan until the cows come home but it's the moments in a lesson when you have to rephrase an instruction, give a prompt when someone is stuck, pose a tough question that spins a student on their head when they are flying.  We never know what will happen in lessons.  We work with students so why would we.  Having experience, skill and expertise in our teaching means we can respond to differentiating when it jumps out on us unexpectedly.

So my approach to differentiation has changed and I hope for the better.  Instead of trying to plan numerous resources and creating an extensive range of activities, my focus is to respond to students needs in the lesson.  Planning to pinpoint sticking points, looking at tailoring questions, giving personalised feedback and helping support every student to achieve the same high aspirational goal is the key.  So how am I doing it?

1. Data, assessment and information that I'll actually use
Data is important but too often we can focus on the wrong things.  Regular marking, questioning students, homework scores, test result, quality of book work.....are all things that help me build up a picture of how my students are doing.  Years ago I would mark books because I had to.  Now I take books to help me see who needs help, who needs to be stretched and who needs a rocket firmly placed.  Paying attention to these details helps you understand the individuals and allows you to have those all important conversations.

2. Seating plans
Now I have tried a million different seating plans in my lessons.  For a while the consensus for some was to have more able and less able sat together.  The idea was to have direct support there when the lower ability student needed it.  It allowed students to feel confident that the person next to them could help them and in return, the more able student would reinforce their understanding by explaining it to their peer.  At the end of Year 11 I regularly get students to evaluate my teaching so I can tweak in preparation for my next group.  Out of all of the things, this type of seating plan took the biggest hit.  The higher ability students in the class highlighted their dislike for such a plan.  They felt that when they wanted to extend themselves they had to come back to help those who were struggling.  They also felt that discussions were limited and never grew with much depth.  The less able enjoyed the support but benefited more from my intervention.  Over the last few years I now group students based on their results.  After unit tests or exams, the groups are reworked.  Those that consistently achieve around the A*-A grades work together.  Those around the B grade sit together.  And this goes on.  And it changes every unit.  Now is it working?  Well if I had to group students without any sort of data but purely on knowing my students they would be roughly the same groups.  It means that I can go to every group and pose a slightly different question or challenge their thinking.  On one table I may pose a question that gets them to reinforce a key piece of information.  On another table I may ask students to think about the impact this topic has had on another.  It isn't full proof but it allows me to provide 6 or 7 differentiated pieces of instruction, questions or feedback very quickly.

3. Oh no, not SOLO - The Marmite of eductaion
Love it or hate it but using SOLO taxonomy to plan my lessons allows me to think through the different stages or a topic.  It really helps me break down the components and begin to formulate a plan of delivery.  This allows me to identify possible sticking points and create simple contingencies or interventions.  The system also allows students to have different entry points.  I can work with some students developing the important content knowledge that they need whilst helping others tie this topic into other areas we have covered.  The taxonomy also allows students to go back a level as well.  I worry some feel that we need to get to the top to EA as quick as we can where as we can actually spend a good lesson or two developing students uni/multi-structural knowledge go back and forth until it is secure.  For me it's a real help.

4. Conversations
More than anything I now try to spend time chatting to my students.  Lesson time doesn't allow me to have numerous 1:1 chats, primarily because I have to get through the teaching.  One thing I have done is design a rota where I aim to chat to 4 or 5 specific students every lesson.  Over the course of a few lessons I have had a conversation with every member of the class about their progress, where they are at, what needs to be improved and where need to go to move them forward.  The conversation is bespoke, it's unique and it's tailored to that student.  By using a rota as a guide combined with the general hustle and bustle of getting around your class, I now try to ensure I have real conversations with students about their learning.  Some are longer than others, some are more direct than others, but ultimately they happen and they happen regularly.

5. Bespoke feedback
Feedback, in my own personal opinion, has to be one of the best methods of differentiation.  What I say to one student will be different from what I say to another.  The tailoring of this feedback can prompt a student to become unstuck or stretch their thinking beyond the curriculum.  Each student is individual no matter how similar their grades may suggest.  What you say can be hugely important and is such a vital part of our craft.  Marking falls under this category as well.  It may be slightly more time consuming than generic comment stickers or stamps, but I aim to give every student at least two feedback questions when I mark.  Yes two students may have a similar grade or mark, but they have probably had a different experience doing that work.  Knowing my students allows me to provide personal feedback that works for that individual.  Feedback in my eyes in key.

6. Questioning
There's a real craft in using questioning to support, stretch and challenge.  Planning questions for key parts of the lesson is advisable but the art of being responsive and posing them in real time is a real skill.  There are those students whose bewildered faces suddenly become enlightened when a rephrased question you pose gets them unstuck.  There are those able students who think they've done it, only for you to spin their head with a higher level question.  Having such questions at the ready may come over time with increased confidence in your subject and increased experience.  But, along with the bespoke feedback you give, what can be more effective and more efficient in terms of differentiation?  In my eyes, not much.

7. Examples of excellence
No book has inspired me more than Ron Berger's 'An Ethic of excellence'.  The book shares numerous stories of how Ron gets students from a young age to create work well beyond their years.  It is a masterpiece and a must read.  Throughout the book Ron explains how he uses 'examples of excellence' with his students to demonstrate the high quality of work they need to produce.  He doesn't expect lower ability students to create any less work than a more able.  In fact he aims students to produce professional pieces of work such as architect designs and town radon reports.  The choice of excellent examples is a fundamental building block in the process.  By sharing outstanding or high quality work with students, you can inspire them to achieve work beyond what they probably believed.  The examples help students understand where work could lead to and the dissection and unpicking of it helps to make the steps to greatness concrete.  Collecting examples from industry, media articles and from students is easy to do and can be brought out when units or schemes are taught again in the future.

8. Modelling
Modelling is not a new idea but one that is used so regularly in the classroom.  And is it differentiation?  If we go by any technical definition it might not be.  In my classroom though, modelling is an essential component.  Over the years I have begun to use students work as it happens.  Sharing students work with their peers can be very helpful.  Like with examples of excellence, models happen there and then.  They can incorporate greatness, errors, and process of thinking.  They help students who are struggling see the next steps.  By working as a class to refine a sentence it can help the more able progress their work further.  If we use models in the right way, they become an important method and can provide so much in terms of moving everyone forward.

9. I scaffold and structure
As Daniel T. Willingham talked about, I shouldn't be making the task easier.  Instead I should support the thinking that is needed to get there.  And I totally agree with this.  Within my lessons students are expected to produce excellent pieces of work.  Some will get their by themselves.  Others will need varying levels of support.  What none of them needs is for me to make tasks easier and expect lower standards.  Using a variety of scaffolds is very helpful.  Using ideas like the four part process for writing excellent sentences is one great tool that pops up again and again in my class.  For some students it becomes the guide that they really need.  For others it is just a simple reminder of what to include.  For others it is irrelevant as they write with confidence, style and elegance.  Ideas like Dough Lemov's 'At first glance' sentence starters has also been a great way to develop, support and extend.  Simply providing three words of differing academic difficulty (although all of them are still quite high) forces students to think and adapt the subsequent sentence they craft.  Designing and displaying these starters is quick and effective.  The important thing is that these types of scaffolds become redundant the more skillful the students become.  And that's what I feel scaffolding and using structures (like PEED, IDEA and so on) should do.  Help when it's needed but then disappear when ready.

10. Graphic organisers
I rarely produce a worksheet for lessons anymore simply because of the balance between the time it took to produce it, compared to the time the student actually used it.  Instead I have a bank of graphic organisers which I can tweak and tailor when needed.  The beauty of these resources (such as double bubble maps, compare and contrast maps) is that they can help students keep track of the information before working with it.  The less able in the class can use them to record key points and then manipulate them.  The more able can use them to find more detailed connections and relationships.  The organisers are excellent and can be used flexibly from one lesson to the next.  Adding prompt questions or even high level statements can support or stretch abilities.  They can also help scaffold and structure work.  A complex essay can be quickly mapped out before becoming a plan for the subsequent drafts.  Graphic organsiers in my classroom have made things a lot clearer for students and have a place for all ability levels.

11. A level beyond the curriculum
I've thought a lot that we shouldn't simply be restricted by the curriculum we follow.  Yes students must know, cover and learn information that may come up in exams, but we can go beyond to really enlighten them.  I've been dropping a few AS level PE exam questions into lessons.  I use them for two reasons. Firstly, when something becomes difficult, showing them something at a more advanced level demonstrates the bigger picture and has helped students understand the topic better.  Doesn't sound right does it?  Secondly, they provide a great challenge when students have finished work and shows them that a topic isn't finished.  There is always something more to learn.

12. Expect excellence
And finally, I set the expectation that every student can produce great work.  I know that links into the Growth Mindset ethos, and some might argue that not every student is capable of producing great work, but I do set the aim that we all can achieve a high standard of work.  And I demonstrate how.  Redrafting work shows that things do get better when we act upon feedback.  Using techniques like the literacy upgrade shows that by improving the vocabulary we use in answers or essays, or work becomes more academic.  By spending time with a peer/group/class removing redundant words I show that we don't all need to waffle and in fact we can become much clearer in our writing.  Demonstrating these small things makes a big difference and changes habits.


And so?
And that final point is the big deal for me.  It's the small things that make a big difference over time.  Like Sir Dave Brailsford's Marginal gains, the aggregation of all of these little strategies improves the outcome over time.  Are some of these things differentiation by definition?  Most probably not.  But I have learnt that I can't make lessons 1:1 or bespoke to every student every lesson.  That takes too much time and is unrealistic.  Instead I can put in manageable strategies and spend time doing the things that matter.  In my eyes, if you asked me outright, I'd say effective differentiation (for me) is talking, questioning, challenging, marking and responding.  I call it teaching.  So can I be that little bit better at differentiation?  I probably can, and probably a million times better.  But I am not super human.