Task differentiation

For a lot of teachers, differentiation can mean endlessly tailored versions of different worksheets. A richer and more straightforward differentiation sets tasks that avoid the rigidity of tiering your class.

Use these 10 approaches to task differentiation to spice up your planning.

1. Concrete to abstract

Thinking in the abstract is an important element of developing originality. Gifted and talented learners need to be able to manipulate abstract ideas and to use these flexibly within and between subjects. This is not all rocket science – abstract thinking can be as simple as learners suggesting rules that they can then use to make deductions.

2. Simple to complex

It is often said that more able learners require tasks that are more complex in resources, research, issues, problems, skills, or goals than less advanced peers. However, simplification is a skill in itself and an important test of a more able child is their ability to be able to précis ideas and argument.

3. Basic to transformational

Higher order thinking is basically about making new thinking out of old – making sure that the learner is required to think for themselves, which usually involves producing something that is not the same as they were given.

4. Fewer facets to multi-facets

More able learners need to be given meaningful choices in their learning – creating questions and hypotheses to explain increasingly complex ideas, spotting patterns and testing their ideas to see if they work.

5. Smaller leaps to greater leaps

Learners advanced in a subject often benefit from tasks that require greater mental leaps in insight, application, or transfer than less advanced peers. Scaffolding-out challenge is one of the greatest dangers in task design. Sometimes planning templates take learning theory too literally; this is most evident in the atomised straitjackets of the must-could-should type approaches which some schools believe Ofsted want, but notably many HMIs say they don’t!

Planning for more able learners

Your planning needs to cover the following elements.

• Pace: develop challenging work and plan subject-specific activities that offer authentic learning and different starting points.
• Activation of prior knowledge: build on what pupils know and encourage mastery.
• Grouping: use a variety of grouping strategies to motivate, engage and stretch G&T pupils.
• Support: ensure other classroom staff and/or other G&T learners are primed to support progression, and that learners can self-select support as needed.
• Self-direction and negotiation: develop independence to allow G&T pupils greater choice in their learning.
• Extension: set different objectives or alternative task ceilings, allowing for greater flexibility and more meaningful customised work.
• Dialogue and higher-order questions: create questioning classrooms. Allow time for thinking and use high-level language.
• Complexity: develop this in all curriculum areas, using diagramming and mind mapping to demonstrate understanding.
• Rich tasks: design these to ensure activities for G&T challenge and interest, to allow exploration.