The Puzzle: Blog

By: Emily Madan

Emily is an accomplished instructor with Manhattan Prep. She started her teaching career in Philadelphia schools, working to teach chemistry and physics. After a year of high school level teaching, Emily expanded into test preparation, helping adults achieve their dreams of grad school. In the classroom, she loves bringing concepts to life and her greatest thrill is that moment when a complex topic suddenly becomes clear. We are thrilled to have Emily contribute to the Puzzle!

I teach the GMAT and LSAT for Manhattan Prep, a national test prep company. One of the main challenges I’ve encountered in my teaching is balancing the interests of each of my classroom students. The truth is not all students need the same instruction. One may already know what you’re trying to teach, while another may not have the fundamentals required to even understand the concept. Even if students are at the same ability, they may not learn in the same way.

Working with a student one-on-one enables you to adapt your curriculum to exactly what that student needs. Most teachers, however, rarely have that luxury. I’ve found that Differentiation is a great tool that allows me to translate that adaptability to a class full of students. Manhattan Prep recently held a conference in which methods to differentiate were hotly discussed. Realistic challenges were brought up and addressed, and we’re happy to share some of the ideas we devised with all the other teaching professionals out there.

Group Work

When teaching different levels or different strategies, group work can be an asset. Group members help each other out and the teacher can rotate between groups as needed. Planning how the groups will be made can make the entire lesson easier to create. Depending on the age range, you might even consider allowing students to place themselves into groups after you define what each group will be doing or how it is selected.

If you’re dividing groups into levels based on ability or previous knowledge, you can separate students based on a single mid-level problem, a previously completed test, or even homework completion. Dividing the class based on strategies can be trickier. Again, you could provide a problem, but ask the students how they arrived at a solution, not whether they arrived at the right one. Group them based on their solving preference. You can have each group learn a particular strategy and/or rotate between strategies so they learn them all.

Instructions

Once the students are in groups, you have to give them something to do.  You can choose to give them all the same goal, give them different goals, or let them choose their own goals.

If they all have the same goal, such as a set of problems or a project, you can differentiate in a number of ways. Some groups may have to solve the problems in a different way than others. You may choose to spend more time with some groups than others depending on their need.  Consider pre-creating specific hints or helps that provide increasing amounts of instruction. Groups can then get as little or as much help as they need to achieve the goal.

When the goals are different, you can have stronger students working on harder tasks or have complementary tasks that are not necessarily harder or easier, just different. This is perfect for students with different learning styles and also helps you divide your time between groups because each group is likely to need help at different points in the process.

Wrap Up

Two important yet often overlooked components are continuity and the end of group work. Some groups will always finish before others, so you need to plan out ways to make the lesson continue for those fast groups. Planning extra work that can be completed but doesn’t have to is an effective way to achieve that.

The end of group work should generally be marked by something that brings the class back together as a whole. Students or groups can share takeaways, present their end result, or work on a similar problem to the one they just completed in group.

Differentiation occurs whenever two students learn different things or the same thing in different ways. It happens all the time. Planning it out can make the transitions much easier on the teacher and result in a much more effective overall lesson.

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