To was great to reflect on adaptive teaching as part the INSET day today. We considered how every individual student learns differently and this is affected by a range of factors, including prior knowledge, ability and motivation. Students are very diverse and all at different rates, requiring different levels of support from teachers to succeed.

Nat spoke about adaptive teaching meaning that teachers adapt their teaching to make it appropriate for all students in their classroom. This has replaced the term ‘differentiation’ which – at times – problematically implied that teachers should create distinct tasks for different groups of students within the classroom. Adaptive teaching focuses on the whole class. It is important that you learn from experienced teachers ways in which you can adapt your teaching to respond to different students’ needs.

How to approach adaptive teaching

Before you begin to plan lessons, find out about the range of learning needs and different groups that are in your classroom. You can only adapt your teaching successfully if you understand the needs of the individual learners in your lessons.

Our approach should be to have high expectations of every student, and always to look for ways to support each of them to achieve the learning objectives. It is our professional responsibility, as teachers, to ensure that all students have the opportunity to achieve at their highest possible level.

Adaptive teaching strategies include scaffolding, modelling, retrieval and live marking. Take a look at the slides attached to see more approaches being used across the college and the areas we aim to grow this coming year.