Teachers understand the importance of adaptive teaching, but what does this look like in daily practice? Is it just differentiation by another name? And what role does assessment play? Ben Fuller explores
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The Early Career Framework defines adaptive teaching as providing “opportunity for all pupils to experience success, by adapting lessons, while maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations” (DfE, 2019).

This is a very different mindset to the old practices of differentiating by task or outcome, which often had the effect of placing a ceiling on what some children might achieve.

Adaptive teaching starts from the premise that all children are entitled to access the curriculum and that we can achieve this by implementing appropriate adaptations and being responsive in our teaching. This can be broken down into two areas:

  • Adaptations made in advance, during lesson planning.
  • Using effective formative assessment strategies in our teaching, so that we can be responsive to children’s needs in the moment.

 

Planned adaptations

In planning adaptations, we must start by knowing our children well – being clear about what they know, understand and can do, and which knowledge and skills are less secure.

The adaptations that work for some may not be appropriate to others. For example, some children might benefit from a short pre-teaching activity, introducing some core topic vocabulary and helping them to understand what these words mean and how we use them.

Other children may need support with articulating their reasoning and might therefore benefit from the use of a speaking frame or some sentence starters.

Other forms of adaptations include the use of concrete resources, scaffolding, technology and so on. To this end, the Education Endowment Foundation’s SEND five-a-day tips are worth checking out (see Aubin, 2022) – these ideas can benefit all children and are not restricted to those with SEN.

When we plan these adaptations, we should not make assumptions about which children will need them. Our assumptions can be flawed: just because a particular child often needs support does not mean that this will be the case in every area of learning. All children can surprise us with the prior knowledge they bring to a situation.

This is why assessment is so important – we need to seek good evidence of what children already know and understand, as well as uncovering misconceptions and gaps in knowledge. Low-stakes assessment, particularly discussion-based activities, such as concept cartoons, are ideal for this.

 

Being responsive in the moment

This is where effective formative assessment comes into play. Formative assessment is about actively seeking to discover precisely what learners understand (and what they don’t yet understand) and responding to that information so that your teaching and feedback are accurately pitched to their needs.

Monitoring how well children are understanding the substance of a lesson, during the actual lesson, is a powerful way to become a responsive teacher.

By asking effective questions at key points during the lesson, and by quickly scanning all the children’s responses, teachers can make well-informed decisions about whether the class is ready for the lesson to advance or not.

Professor Dylan Wiliam calls these questions “hinge-point” questions (2011). Hinge-point questions often take the form of a multiple-choice question, with a carefully designed range of possible answers.

Children might be asked to respond by holding up a mini-whiteboard showing their answer, or to use other form of quick response, so that the teacher can quickly scan the room to see all responses and then decide how best to proceed.

Does the concept need further explanation? Are some children clear and ready to move onto some independent learning, while others receive further instruction, scaffolding, or other resources?

An effective multiple-choice hinge question is one where the wrong answers (or “distractors”) tell you something useful – revealing common misconceptions or specific misunderstandings.

This helps you to know where to go next in your teaching. For example, in a maths question, the distractors might represent answers that would be found if a common calculation error was made, or if a key word in the question had been misunderstood or substituted (e.g. “adding” instead of “multiplying”).

This diagnostic approach is so much more useful than just seeing who is right and who is wrong – it actually indicates to the teacher where and how children are going wrong, so that they can target that error in their teaching.

It also reveals every child’s understanding of the lesson, whereas a hands-up approach may only highlight what one or two learners are thinking (our sister magazine SecEd has written in more in-depth about the use of hinge-point questions – find this article here).

 

No opting out

Establishing good classroom habits, e.g. in the appropriate use of resources and having high expectations of behaviour for learning are, of course, essential.

A classroom culture of “no opting out” when responding to whole-class questioning is required. This comes back to formative assessment being low-stakes. Children will be more willing to engage if they are confident that there won’t be negative consequences to being wrong – in fact there will be positive consequences as they will receive the support they need.

The goal of adaptive teaching is to ensure that no child is left behind. By actively seeking to find out which children are not “getting it”, and then responding swiftly, we can improve our chances that all learners will achieve the intended curriculum outcomes.

 

Tips for adaptive teaching and assessment

  • Meet children where they are, not where you think they should be – avoid making assumptions.
  • Understand the curriculum progression and where the potential barriers and misconceptions are.
  • Provide written scaffolds (flipchart, working wall, writing frame etc) for children to reference for guided or independent practice during lessons.
  • Inform your teaching with the reasonable adjustments and classroom adaptations identified and agreed for children with SEND.
  • Model the use of adaptations so children understand how they can select and use additional resources – “I can look back at the working wall”, “I will get a number square to help me”.
  • Repetition helps children to use new scaffolds with growing familiarity and confidence, so use a range of consistent adaptations over time and across lessons.
  • Use Q&A techniques that quickly show you what every child is thinking.
  • Plan your questions in advance – you won’t be able to craft them on the spot.
  • To determine whether it is okay to continue, ask hinge-point questions at crucial moments in the lesson.
  • Pose an interesting question at the end of the lesson – perhaps in the form of an “exit ticket” – to confirm whether or not children understood the core substance of the lesson.

 

  • Ben Fuller is lead assessment adviser with HFL Education. Formerly Herts for Learning, HFL Education is a not-for-profit organisation providing services, training and resources for schools, including access to advisers and subject experts. This year Headteacher Update is working with HFL Education to publish a series of subject-specific best practice articles. Find all the articles in this series via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/hfl-education  

 

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