Adaptive teaching – a recap
In a previous blog, we looked at the meaning of adaptive teaching and how it can be implemented. To recap:
Adaptive teaching occurs when teachers make changes to their instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Adaptive teaching can be planned prior to the lesson when considering how you will provide additional support and challenge and addressing this in lesson plans and resources. It may also involve adjusting your teaching ‘live’ in the lesson if pupils find the content more or less difficult to grasp than expected. Adaptive teaching involves three aspects:
- Ensuring you are using the techniques that evidence has demonstrated are most effective for all learners.
- Providing additional support if the material being covered is complex or if learners are likely to or do struggle to fully grasp the content.
- Providing additional challenge if the material is simple or if learners are likely to or do grasp the content easily.
In this blog, we will look at adaptive practice and adaptive questioning.
Adaptive Practice
Effective practice for all pupils
Effective practice is essential in ensuring that all pupils transfer the new content to their long-term memory so it can be recalled in the future. Practice may also help to identify learning gaps or misconceptions, allowing these to be addressed in future instruction. Effective practice for all pupils includes the following characteristics:
- Tasks are closely matched to learning intentions – Pupils remember what they think about and therefore, practice tasks should require pupils to think about the most important content and enable them to achieve the learning intentions.
- Multiple practice tasks in different formats – Rehearsing the same content in slightly different ways ensures that learning is cemented in pupils’ memories.
- Guided practice and scaffolding are provided when pupils are novices – Providing guidance, including models, checklists, exemplars, sentence starters, writing frames and verbal reminders, helps pupils complete tasks they would not be able to do so independently.
- Guidance-fading – Reducing this guidance over time transfers responsibility to the pupil gradually and prevents reliance on scaffolding. This may include moving from work examples to part completion problems to full problems for learners to solve, or reducing scaffolding, such as moving from a full writing frame, to sentence starters to only a word bank.
- Contingent guidance – This point emphasises the importance of any guidance or scaffolding that has been provided to pupils, being faded when their success and understanding have improved, as opposed to arbitrarily reducing it over time.
- Independent practice – Independent practice is needed to ensure pupils are able to complete tasks without support.
- Feedback on practice – Feedback should be provided on practice, including independent practice to improve pupils’ understanding and address learning gaps or misconceptions. This may be provided live, as pupils complete tasks or immediately after tasks have been completed.
Increased support during practice
We may need to increase support if the knowledge or skill pupils are rehearsing is complex, if we think our pupils are likely to struggle to complete practice successfully when planning our lessons, or if pupils struggle to do so during the lesson. This can be achieved through:
- Increasing guidance or providing more supportive scaffolds
- Removing guidance more slowly
- Providing opportunities for pupils to practice in pairs
- Giving higher levels and more immediate feedback
- Providing pupils with less complex tasks to complete initially.
- Allowing pupils more time to complete the practice tasks.
Increased challenge during practice
We may need to provide additional challenge if the knowledge or skill pupils are rehearsing is relatively simple, if we think our pupils are likely to grasp it easily when planning lessons, of if pupils are not fully challenged by the practice tasks during lessons. This can be achieved through:
- Providing pupils with more complex tasks to complete
- Reducing practice by moving on to new content
- Providing less guidance during practice and removing guidance sooner.
Adaptive Questioning
Effective questioning for all pupils
Effective questioning increases thinking by all pupils and allows teachers to assess pupil understanding and so address any learning gaps or misconceptions. Effective questioning for all pupils includes the following characteristics:
- Providing adequate thinking time between asking a question and requiring an answer.
- Everybody writes – Asking all pupils to write the answer to a question. This ensures participation and gives pupils increase time to cement and refine their responses.
- Paired discussions
- Whole class questions and checks for understanding, for example through the use of mini white boards. Again, this ensures all pupils think about the question and also allows the teachers to assess the understanding of all pupils at one time.
- Cold calling by asking the question, giving think time, and only then selecting a pupil to answer the question.
- Rehearsal of incorrect or unknown answers, for example, through choral response.
Increased support during questioning
We may need to increase support if the content being covered is complex, if we think our pupils are likely to struggle to answer questions successfully when planning our lessons, or if pupils struggle to do so during the lesson. This can be achieved through:
- Giving increased rehearsal opportunities by asking pupil to recite answers multiple times or asking the same question to a number of pupils.
- Supporting pupils to answer questions through additional prompts or providing them with helpful information.
- Asking less complex questions
- Allowing increased thinking time
- Increasing the opportunities for paired discussions
Increased challenge during questioning
We may need to provide additional challenge if the content pupils are learning is relatively simple, if we think our pupils are likely to grasp it easily when planning lessons, or if pupils are not fully challenged by the questions we ask during lessons. This can be achieved through:
- Asking higher-order questions
- Encouraging discussions where pupils respond to a classmates answer, for example, by building, agreeing, or challenging.
- Requiring in-depth responses from pupils.
Final thoughts on Adaptive Teaching: Practice and Questions
Adaptive teaching ensures that all pupils are challenged and supported appropriately, helping them to engage with and retain new learning. By applying adaptive strategies to practice and questioning, teachers can create improved learning experiences that respond to pupils’ needs in real time. The final blog in this series will explore how adaptive teaching applies to feedback and retrieval practice, further refining how we support all learners to succeed.
