Teaching challenge

Mr Jones is using formative assessment regularly and becoming increasingly skilled in analysing what he learns from it. He is confident he can identify the knowledge gaps and misconceptions pupils face. However, he is uncertain how best to adapt lessons to meet pupils’ needs. Should he create tailored activities and resources for individual pupils? How can he meet pupils’ individual needs efficiently?

Key idea

Teachers can use information about pupil understanding and needs to target support at the whole class, groups and individuals.

Evidence summary

Using information from assessments to adapt lessons

Mr Jones designs assessment tasks and analyses the information they provide to allow him to adapt his teaching to meet pupils’ needs. When teachers know what their pupils have understood, and use this information to adapt their teaching, pupils’ achievement increases (Speckesser et al., 2018). Mr Jones should also collect information about pupils’ needs and possible strategies, particularly for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, by working closely with colleagues including the SENCo, families and pupils. However, using information on pupil needs to adapt teaching is challenging as it requires teachers to decide how to respond rapidly and there are no perfect solutions. Pupils learn at different rates and require different levels of support. In any class, when seeking to understand pupil differences including levels of prior knowledge and barriers to learning, at any one time some pupils will be ready to move on and others may need further support.

Learning styles and individualisation will not be effective or sustainable

Mr Jones could design a different lesson or task for every pupil, but this would be a mistake. Pupils have distinct learning preferences: some prefer to read, some would rather listen, some might prefer group activities. Mr Jones could try to create distinct activities for different groups. However, no evidence exists that tailoring learning to pupils’ preferred learning styles is effective (Pashler, et al., 2008). The authors of this study were adamant that “limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number” (Pashler, et al., 2008, p.105).

Similarly, Mr Jones might try to design individual activities around individual pupils’ current knowledge gaps or misconceptions. The problem with this approach is that it requires Mr Jones to spend a huge amount of time planning and setting out activities for individual pupils. It also robs individual pupils of the chance to benefit from the teacher’s expertise by forcing them to overcome their knowledge gaps and misconceptions individually (Sadler, 2010). Mr Jones is more likely to be successful if he prioritises designing tasks to support the whole class or groups within it first. Once the majority are experiencing success, he can then responsively support groups and individuals during the lesson where this is feasible.

Common tasks and flexible grouping

Mr Jones can best meet the needs of individuals by identifying the needs which several pupils have in common. Mr Jones should still build relationships with individuals and seek to support them with specific individual needs, such as seating visually impaired pupils at the front of the class and providing large print resources or providing a story about dinosaurs if he knows this will be particularly motivating for pupils who usually struggle to focus. However, many pupil needs are shared by the rest of the class: many misconceptions are common to pupils learning specific subjects so he can address them simultaneously.

For example, many pupils use apostrophes unnecessarily for words ending in a plural ‘s’, add the numerators and denominators separately when adding fractions, and believe that air tubes distribute air around the body. Likewise, Mr Jones is likely to find knowledge gaps which are shared among many pupils since they are based on not having been introduced to (or not recalling) past content. While Mr Jones can look for opportunities to work with misconceptions or knowledge gaps held by all pupils, if one individual pupil has a specific need, he can dedicate individual time to them.

Having identified the need of several pupils, Mr Jones may decide to:

Work with the whole class: Planning new explanations and additional learning tasks for the whole class. This gives him the opportunity to reiterate key ideas and give all pupils additional practice.
Group pupils: Putting pupils together into small groups based on shared need. For example, all pupils who got question seven wrong or who missed the last lesson. This kind of within-class grouping tends to prove effective and to benefit pupils at all levels (Steenbergen-Hu, et al., 2016). It enables groups of pupils to benefit from more of Mr Jones’s time and expertise as he can explain a misconception or overcome a knowledge gap with all pupils who hold it at once. This also makes it a more efficient way for him to use his time. If an individual pupil has a specific need, perhaps linked to special educational needs or a disability, Mr Jones can devote additional time to them: his grouping of other pupils increases the time he can spend with the individuals who need it most.

Nuances and caveats

In adapting lessons – and particularly when working with small groups with specific misconceptions – Mr Jones should continue to convey his high expectations of pupils (Murdock-Perriera & Sedlacek, 2018).

Pupils with special educational needs or disabilities are likely to need additional levels of support. Mr Jones should seek specific strategies to support these pupils with specific learning barriers where appropriate, such that they can meet these high expectations, e.g. sitting a visually impaired pupil at the front of the class and providing large print resources so that they can complete common class tasks successfully.

Teaching assistants can provide further support but they need to be prepared for the lesson by the teacher and used to supplement, rather than replace, the teacher (EEF, 2018). For example, the TA could support pupils to successfully correct the apostrophes in their work after the teacher has explained correct usage.

An ongoing dilemma for Mr Jones will be when to review a topic and when to carry on. His work identifying the most important core ideas within a subject and a topic should make it easier for him to prioritise this.

Another dilemma for Mr Jones is whether to give pupils feedback. As pupils benefit from accessing material several times to learn it (Pashler et al, 2007; Dunlosky et al., 2013), it will often be more efficient to use strategies like modelling content, not least as written feedback adds to teacher workload leading to learning gains, especially if it is not acted upon (Gibson et al, 2015; EEF, 2016).

Key takeaways

In considering how to adapt his teaching to meet pupils’ needs, Mr Jones needs to know that:

the value of formative assessment is in allowing teachers to understand and respond to pupil needs
targeting learning styles is ineffective and individualised tasks for all pupils are prohibitively time-consuming
adaptations should focus on the misconceptions and knowledge gaps identified, particularly when they are common to many pupils

Cookies on Support for early career teachers