This blog is written by Jade Pearce, who also leads on our adaptive teaching CPD workshops.
Adaptive teaching is crucial in enabling teachers to address any misconceptions or gaps in learning, ensure all pupils received the support or challenge they need and respond to learning in real time. So, let’s address some of the common pitfalls that teachers may fall into when implementing adaptive teaching and how they can avoid them.
So, what are the most common pitfalls, and how can teachers avoid them? Read on to explore:
1. Adapting to prior attainment rather than understanding
Adaptive teaching can be defined as adapting your instruction to meet the understanding or learning of all learners. For example, a teacher may decide, after doing a whole class check for understanding, to re-model a task, chunking the model and practice into smaller steps, if pupils were not able to successfully complete the task themselves. This is an important distinction as it shows that under adaptive teaching, we are responding to the understanding or learning that pupils demonstrate in the lesson, as opposed to adapting based on prior attainment, which was often the case under differentiation.
2. Trying to adapt ‘live’ in the lesson, with no prior planning
One of the myths of adaptive teaching is that it must be competed ‘live’ in the lesson. This may include the teacher:
- Making up additional practice questions if pupils have struggled.
- Setting more challenging practice tasks if pupils have completed the planned tasks with ease.
- Re-explaining a concept in a different way if pupils’ comprehension after the initial explanation is weak.
This is rightly seen as very challenging, especially for less experienced teachers who may not have years of experience of teaching the same content to fall back on. However, the concepts of proactive and reactive adaptive teaching show that this is not the case.
Proactive adaptive teaching occurs prior to lessons during lesson planning, when teachers plan the ways in which they will provide additional support and challenge, if it is needed. This may include
- Thinking about how they will simplify their explanation.
- The additional practice questions they will set if needed.
- The scaffolding they will provide if pupils struggle to complete independent practice successfully.
Reactive adaptive teaching then occurs during the lesson, when teachers use assessment to decide whether they need to enact the adaptive teaching they planned in advance. It’s not one or the other: adaptive teaching does not have to done only live in the lesson in response to pupil needs, but can be planned and thought about in advance.
3. Only adapting at a whole-class level
Adaptive teaching can be enacted at three levels:
- Adapting for the whole class
- Adapting for a group of pupils
- Adapting for individual pupils
It may be tempting to only put adaptations in place for the whole class, for example if the vast majority of pupils have struggled to understand a new concept or have been unable to complete their independent practice successfully.
However, it may be more appropriate to do so for a small group or induvial pupil. For example, a small group of pupils may have demonstrated weak understanding of how to complete a process or task during the ‘we do’ and subsequent whole-class check. In this case, the teacher may need to group these pupils together to perform additional teacher-led modelling, whilst allowing the rest of the class to begin their independent practice.
4. Falling into differentiation
When trying to meet the needs of all learners in adaptive teaching, a danger is reverting to differentiation; adapting the task, content or support provided based on pupils’ prior attainment rather than the understanding they demonstrate that lesson.
Firstly, this may happen if teachers start to pre-empt the levels of support or challenge they think pupils are likely to need, as opposed to providing this in response to assessment and pupil learning. This then lowers expectations for some pupils, who are provided with additional support when they may not need it. Whilst teachers can plan the potential additional support or challenge they may provide in advance of the learning, they should not decide which pupils this will be provided for.
Secondly, teachers may slip into differentiation by setting different tasks or content for pupils, as opposed to setting the same expectations and tasks and covering the same content, with different levels of support. This can be avoided by planning the content and tasks for all pupils, only adjusting how pupils then cover this content or complete these tasks.
5. Not using whole class assessments
Under adaptive teaching, providing support or challenge contingent on pupil learning is key. Therefore, it is crucial that teachers assess and gain evidence of the learning of all pupils. Only then can the right level of support be provided.
However, many teachers have built up habits such as asking questions to individual pupils that do not lend themselves to whole-class assessment. It is easy to fall back into these habits, and this is, therefore, a pitfall that must be avoided. Planning how you will assess pupils at each stage of the lesson and ensuring that those methods that allow for whole class assessments, such as mini white boards are always used is key to overcoming this.
This is the second blog by Jade Pearce exploring deeper into the nuances of Adaptive Teaching. You can also read the first blog in the series, Adaptive Teaching: 5 Essential FAQs for Teachers.
For more practical guidance on putting adaptive teaching into practice, check out Jade’s book Demystifying Adaptive Teaching: How to Teach to the Top. It provides practical strategies and advice to help teachers respond to pupils’ needs while maintaining high expectations. To explore these further, book one of our Adaptive Teaching CPD workshops.
