A Teacher's Guide to Differentiating Activities

This is a guide to the way Inquisitive differentiates activities in lessons and assessments, used by over 70% of Australian primary schools. It's informed by research and has been developed and refined across thousands of classrooms.

Differentiation is the adjustment of teaching and resources for students according to their readiness to learn, particular interests and preferred ways to learn.

The reason for differentiating is to maximise the potential for students to learn successfully, taking account of their abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and their cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

The lesson scaffold is the order and design of activities, including the supports and guides that help students learn.

An effective scaffold should be intuitive to understand, and easily adjusted or targeted to students. The objective is for a high percentage of students to understand new concepts, with opportunities for all students to be extended.

Generally, supports and guides are progressively reduced as lessons unfold, depending on the age of students and the relative difficulty of an activity.

To simplify understanding and using the lesson scaffold, activities are categorised as Core (green circle), Deeper Learning (blue square) or Challenging (black diamond).

This reduces the cognitive load on teachers who would otherwise need to interpret complex data sets to deliver differentiated instruction. Less time spent interpreting data means more time spent directly supporting students.

It also builds the systematic development of critical and creative thinking into the schema itself.

The goal is for teachers to enjoy teaching and students to learn with purpose and depth.

Core activities (green circle) are designed to be accessible to all students, giving multiple opportunities for success in answering the focus question or achieving the learning intention. One way to help students early in a lesson is to ground learning in what they already know about a topic.

In this activity from the lesson Weather Patterns, students surface their prior knowledge of weather before moving to more sophisticated ways to organise their thinking and add in new information.

Core activities are also designed to be highly accessible with explicit explanations and strategies.

These are visual and simple, with minimal cognitive distractions, since understanding often begins with pattern recognition. As there are specific parts of the brain for recognising every number, word and concept, simplicity of presentation matters.

Explicit explanations and strategies can also set up visual cues woven into activities. For example, in the lesson Map of the Solar System (Science, Year 5), mystery icons on the map represent phenomena in the solar system, guiding students as they conduct their research.

Deeper learning occurs when students take what they've learnt in one context and apply it in another.

Since Core activities (green circle) are designed for all students, at least one Core activity should involve deeper learning, with students demonstrating their transference of learning.

In the lesson Weather Patterns, students in Year 1 learn about forecasting weather. It's visually scaffolded to require nothing more than drawing as students demonstrate their transference of learning.

Visible Thinking Activities use graphic organisers for students to structure, express and share their thinking. They're ideal for scaffolding concepts and can be tailored to suit Core, Deeper Learning or Challenging activities.

As well as requiring students to transfer learning from one context to another, Deeper Learning activities (blue square) involve more complex concepts and often require students to organise and expand their thinking.

Deeper Learning activities lend themselves particularly well to guided inquiry, as opposed to open inquiry.

In the deeper learning activity from the lesson Weather Patterns, students organise their understanding of weather into a Venn Diagram.

Challenging activities (black diamond) require a significant leap of critical or creative thinking to answer successfully. They demand extended thinking and responses, and can involve independent research.

To think critically, students must approach problems with an open mind and provide a reasoned answer, conclusion or idea. For example, in the lesson Weather Patterns, students synthesise information from a range of websites to decide whether it's better to walk or run in the rain.

To think creatively, students use skills such as designing, inventing, devising, constructing and imagining to produce something innovative and original.

It takes a creative leap to answer the question. For example, the lesson When Seasons Change (Science and Technology, Year 1) requires students to devise a new name for each season, with reasons for their choices.

For consistency, the differentiation method used as students are learning can flow through to the summative assessment of their learning.

This gives a clear basis to understand student progress relative to their previous classwork.

It also lets students choose which level they'd like to demonstrate their learning and ability, nurturing intrinsic motivation.

Inquisitive uses three types of assessment: Unit Rubric (as learning), Assessment with Differentiation (of learning) and Student Self-Assessment (my learning).

This approach of using multiple forms of assessment and feedback is supported by the principles of the Evaluate Domain in the 5E Pedagogical Model.

Inquisitive Differentiation is designed to simplify the use of rubrics within schools and across systems, while maintaining a clear delineation of student ability and progress.

One benefit is reducing the cognitive load on teachers who would otherwise need to interpret complex data sets to deliver differentiated instruction.

Across school systems, Inquisitive Differentiation enables one consistent, transparent schema to measure the progress of students, teachers and schools within an academic year, and over many years.

The Teaching Blog was established by Inquisitive as an open repository to simplify and consolidate research and content for teachers and schools to use on a non-commercial basis.

Inquisitive Differentiation is the copyright of Inquisitive and is part of the Teaching Blog.

It's free and open for schools and school systems to use, provided you comply with the Terms of Use and attribute clearly and fairly to Inquisitive.

If you're a commercial publisher, contact Inquisitive for permission to use it.

Head of Education: Sarah Rich
​Telephone: 02 9969 1885
​Email: support@inquisitive.com