Effects of Differentiation Strategies and Student’s Ability to Choose on Learning Jo Walker, Mathematics Teacher I have observed that younger students often lack the mature learning skills required to tackle multi-stage contextual problems efficiently or have the study skills to push themselves to the limit of their abilities. Some students seem afraid to make choices and sometimes lack the self-belief in their own understanding, preventing themselves from following their own correct plan to a solution. From my observations of the first time Year 9 GCSE students were offered a simple choice, they looked afraid and uncertain. We had reviewed some areas of maths that they had covered before, spending time on those they had forgotten or where they still had misconceptions. They then had a range of questions covering these areas and of differing complexity. The instruction was to decide what they needed to practise and ensure they challenged themselves, only do questions which made them think and skip some if they decided it was too easy after all. Gradually they made their choices, in some cases just working through questions and finding it easy, I suggested that they try a hard one then move on. At the end of the lesson they wrote a sentence outlining areas to work on and set their own homework. The feedback was positive in terms of students valuing the time to work on their own weaknesses. When I used this again they were much more comfortable making their choices, some students preferred to decide which questions to do in pairs so they could work together rather than what they individually required.
There are several different ways to differentiate tasks, but the articles I read examining younger students show that a student’s ability to make the correct choices independently is essential. I decided not look at differentiation via questioning as this is imbedded in my natural teaching style and design of resources. To be able to look at the effects of age on making choices I looked at year 9 to 11 students, all of whom are studying the same syllabus and were taught by me so the effects of age on responses can be examined without differing teaching styles playing a part. When actually applying differentiation in lessons I feel it is important not to pigeon hole students into an always support / always main / always extend group as I have found that students can be more able in one area compared to another, or can suddenly be inspired when several areas click together so jump from main to extend for instance. Therefore I will always try to set up tasks so that pupils can choose where to start but understand that they can change their mind if their initial choice is too easy or too challenging. My classroom set up and my ethos is to promote discussion and my classes make the choice of how to work, either alone, in pairs or small groups. I looked at the following styles of task: Differentiation by outcome – investigational / problem solving tasks where students make decisions about how to tackle a given problem, how to write up their findings and how far to generalise results using algebra. Differentiation by outcome – through trial and improvement, learn about a previously unknown area of mathematics.