Lesson content

Video transcript

Presenter intro: Harry Fletcher-Wood

Really effective teachers are fascinated by how pupil learning is going. They ask lots of questions both during and after the lesson to identify how knowledge is taking shape. As well as asking questions, effective teachers do something with the information that they gather. Effective teachers adapt their teaching in response to what they find out. Adapting teaching helps teachers to provide targeted support and is likely to increase pupil success.

Presenter main

Adapting lessons to meet pupils’ needs is about using the inferences made from formative assessment to make better decisions. Learning is a complex process and pupils need lots of support along the way, such as more practice or opportunities to correct misconceptions. Pupils learn more when their teachers know what they’ve understood and adapt their teaching in response.

In order to adapt lessons to meet their pupils’ needs, teachers first need to understand what those needs are. This can occur through effective design and delivery of formative assessment, looking out for particular misconceptions as they circulate, asking carefully targeted questions and examining the pupils’ work.

Once teachers have collected data, there are several ways they can use it. One way is through using whole-class or group feedback. This allows teachers to address common errors or misconceptions for multiple students. Another way teachers might adapt lessons to meet their pupils’ needs is through further support. This might be done through additional practice or scaffolding.

Sometimes a teacher might decide to adapt teaching in future lessons. Teachers might plan time to respond to common misconceptions or errors. Depending on how important the concept is, a teacher might use the start of a lesson, or in some instances a whole lesson, to explain or reteach concepts to pupils.

Pupils’ needs will differ across the class. And it can be tough to balance the needs of the whole class and the needs of individuals when adapting teaching. It’s important that teachers continue to support pupils individually. This can be done through one-to-one conversations, working effectively with teaching assistants and working closely with the special educational needs coordinator in their school. Many pupils will have preferences about how they learn. However, the idea that tailoring teaching to pupils’ preferred learning style will benefit them is not supported by evidence.

Pupils are likely to learn at different rates and require different support from their teachers in order to succeed. Carefully planning lessons in advance to help your pupils to access and remember what they learn is essential. The teachers can’t always predict what will happen when they teach something. Seeking to understand the differences in pupil learning and responding appropriately is a key part of teaching. This is what adapting teaching is all about. At its best, adapting teaching can ensure teachers target support effectively, both for individuals and groups.

Presenter exemplification framing

In the next example, you’ll see a model of how to adapt a lesson in response to formative assessment information. As you watch, pay particular attention to the following:

• Considers carefully whether intervening within lessons with individuals and small groups would be more efficient and effective than planning different lessons for different groups of pupils
• Builds in additional practice or removes unnecessary expositions

Exemplification: Ambition Institute coach

In this example, imagine I will be teaching a class about the process of photosynthesis. Prior to the lesson, I’m going to spend a short amount of time thinking about the misconceptions I might encounter and planning how I respond.

First, I need to identify the misconceptions I think my pupils might have. I thought about this when planning the lesson and when designing a formative assessment. These are the misconceptions I anticipate.

• Plants eat the soil and use it to grow
• Plants breathe in carbon dioxide
• Plants don’t respire So, next, I need to consider who is likely to hold these misconceptions and how significant they are. I need to ask how many pupils are likely to hold the misconception. One or two pupils or perhaps the whole class. Will the misconception get in the way of learning now? Or can I address it later? The answers to these questions will determine my next step.

Finally, I need to think about how I might adapt the lesson, if the misconceptions arise. I have several options that I can choose from, including breaking the content down for pupils further, reteaching something they’ve got wrong, or coming back to the content in another lesson. All of these options could work for either a whole class, a small group, or an individual.

Let’s look at my list of misconceptions one by one. The first potential misconception identified is: plants eat the soil and use it to grow. So this is a legacy misconception that will have been ironed out for many in primary school, but may still persist for a small number of pupils. I’ve planned to address this in my main exposition when they first meet the topic in key stage three. But we know that this is a common misconception and can be highly persistent. And so, I will make sure to check for evidence of this when I’m circulating during the independent practice task. If pupils are making this mistake, I’m going to break down the content further with them on a one-to-one basis, and get them to look at the word equation for photosynthesis to consider where the different reactants come from. To further support their thinking, I might direct them to think about where all the soil would go if this was the case. However, as it shouldn’t be too widespread and is planned into my initial exposition, I don’t anticipate that I will need to address this with a whole-class reteach.

The second misconception pupils might have is: plants breathe in carbon dioxide. From experience, this is a common mistake that comes from pupils’ difficulty with the correct term, which is absorb. This piece of tier two vocabulary is abstract, and unfamiliar to pupils. Absorb is a challenging yet important piece of subject-specific vocabulary that pupils need to be confident understanding and using moving forwards in order to succeed in this topic and many others. And if it’s not clear, there will be a barrier to future learning. While I explicitly taught the term absorb when introducing photosynthesis, I now want the pupils to recall it and check they haven’t confused it with the concept of breathing. Therefore, before moving on to the independent practice, I will use a true or false quiz to check if the class hold this misconception. If they do, I will reteach this key concept to the whole class, by A: explaining that breathing is something that animals do using their lungs and plants don’t have lungs, and B: describing how absorb can be used in a variety of contexts. And they will always refer to a substance or chemical being drawn into something.

The third possible misconception I need to prepare for is: plants only photosynthesize, they don’t respire. I think it’s likely that a lot of my pupils will hold this misconception. They know the animals respire and now, they are being taught that plants photosynthesize. So, it seems like a natural dichotomy to them. However, it’s crucial to note this misconception is not going to prevent them from properly understanding the process of photosynthesis within this lesson. I don’t want to allow this misconception to develop and grow unchecked. And so, if it appears in the pupils’ work I’ll individually correct them briefly; however, I won’t spend a great deal of time on it, or reteaching the whole class, as it’s not what they are directly learning about at this point. In a future lesson, I have planned to attend to this conflict and dedicate time to explaining it, considering its implications. Pupils will find it easier to engage with the misconception when they know more about the processes of photosynthesis and respiration.

Presenter exemplification analysis

There are several important ideas to highlight in this model. First, the coach carefully considers common misconceptions and mistakes. As they do, they think about how significant the mistake is and which pupils are likely to make it.

Next, they plan how they respond to misconceptions, varying their approach depending on how many pupils it affects, and how significant the issue is.

Throughout the model, the coach considers carefully whether intervening within lessons with individuals and small groups, would be more efficient and effective than planning different lessons for different groups of pupils.

By anticipating and planning their response in advance, the coach will be able to adapt more effectively in the moment. They know which problems to address immediately, and which ones to pick up in a subsequent lesson.

Presenter key ideas

In this video, we’ve considered the importance of adapting lessons to meet pupil needs, and some of the ways in which teachers might do this. Before we finish, read the key ideas that the video has covered. Which of the following ideas did the example illustrate the best?

• Adapting lessons, while maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations
• Considering carefully whether intervening within lessons with individuals and small groups would be more efficient and effective than planning different lessons for different groups of pupils
• Building in additional practice or removing unnecessary expositions

Presenter summary

There are no perfect solutions when it comes to adapting teaching. But, when teachers adapt their teaching effectively, it helps them to target their support better, so that it addresses pupils’ needs. If we do this well, pupils should learn more.