Suggestions for Secondary Math Classroom Differentiation

Teaching Tactics / Description
Avoid Memory Overload / Assign manageable amounts of practice work as skills are learned. If students can do 5-10 math problems effortlessly, skill has been achieved, time to move on. Present the practice work in a variety of ways to involve many multiple intelligences.
Build Retention / Provide review within a day or so of initial learning. Provide supervised practice to prevent students from practicing misconceptions and misrules. Peer tutors can assist in practice. Employ novelty, like mnemonics.
Don’t Abandon
Traditional Instruction / Vary your strategies. Make professional judgments when traditional instruction outweighs use of differentiation. Balancing traditional instruction for concept understanding with differentiation on a weekly basis allows for an appropriate mix of activities and will create an effective classroom learning environment where the needs of all students can be met.
Ensure Skill Comprehension / Concept should be completed independently with high levels of success before moving on to new skills. Teacher could use peers to do periodic review activities.
Guess, Assess & Tear Out
(Flexible Grouping) / Use professional judgment to determine which students know skill. (guess) Pre assess those students with a few practice problems (assess -warm-up), divide (tear out) students -those who don’t know (direct instruction), those who know some (guided practice group), and those who know (enrichment activities). Subdivide the class early and often in a semester. Teachers can tear out heterogeneous groups, some who grasp the concept with those that don’t for peer tutoring options.
Meaning Transfer / Use local school & community data as resource to increase student motivation and involvement in math. Rewrite word problems with local community information (Antietam Battlefield, Rose Hill Manor) or teenage interests (technology, texting, music, in style clothes, shoes…) Align math concept with interest level in community or world so students can transfer meaning to the concept and retain more readily. Homework assignments can be video capture of concept in community using their cell phone and attaching to e-mail to you (i.e. linear is everywhere)
Modify Tear Out Activities / Activities can be modified to address different multiple intelligences. Assess class for multiple intelligence style (http://www.internet4classrooms.com/di.htm), think about activities and how they could be remolded to address the way students learn best.
Teaching Tactic / Description
Multiple Activity Planning / Diverse classrooms necessitate content to be presented in multiple ways. Subdividing the class to do different tasks that practice same skill allows for engagement and understanding of concept. Many ideas can be found, already created, in manuals for math curricula. (Labeled enrichment or alternative teaching ideas).
Partial Credit / Provide partial credit for work shown in multiple step problems or for graphic representation of the solution.
Reduce Interference between concepts / Separate practice opportunities until discriminations between them are learned and mastered. Once mastered emphasize the decisions students must make in determining which concepts seem to conflict with each other.
Reduce Process Demands / Pre Teach component skills of algorithm and strategies, and by teaching easier knowledge and skills before teaching difficult knowledge and skills.
Require Fluent Responses / Offer a variety of methods for presenting responses, such as oral, group work, written work, pictoral work, and so on. Students should show work, but differentiate by allowing response to be varied to learning preference.
Reuse Tear Out Activities / Use enrichment activities for students who know concept at a later time for students the students who did not, but got instruction and now need to be enriched… (Flexible Grouping does NOT mean reinventing the wheel, work smarter, not harder)
“Test the waters” of differentiated instruction tentatively / Start in a class you feel comfortable with-a classroom that is working well, with a math concept that students know well. This will increase teacher and student comfort zone. After that expand to more challenging class groupings.
Tie Students in Emotionally / Students must sense emotional safety before learning. An emotional hook could increase math learning. Create relationship of math concept to current scenario in students’ lives. (i.e. Who can go on a school trip, attendees at a school function, manipulation of troop data during war, etc.)
Use Differentiated Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms / Differentiation in inclusive classrooms is an effective strategy for student achievement, with both general educator and a special educator in the class monitoring grouping is more easily managed.

Adapted from Bender, William N. (2005). Differentiating Math Instructions; Strategies That Work for Secondary Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.