Adaptive practice

SDP Link: Improve the quality of adaptive/responsive teaching

The aims of this CPD session are to:

•Understand what adaptive teaching is

•Explore strategies for adapting teaching in primary classrooms

•Share practical examples and tools Reflect on how to apply adaptive teaching in your own practice

Adaptive teaching is part of the teaching standards…

What does adaptive teaching mean to you?

Please use this Microsoft form for your response

Here are some thoughts on adaptive teaching:

Adaptive teaching is being responsive to information about learning, then adjusting teaching to better match pupil need

Adaptive teaching involves continuously assessing the strengths and needs of learners and adapting the pedagogy accordingly, through, for example, providing different levels of support, using different resources or adjusting the pace of instruction

The focus of adaptive teaching is very much on accurately diagnosing pupils’ needs, and varying the support on offer in response – being prepared to dial this up for any child struggling with learning and dial it back for those who are excelling

Adaptive teaching involves continuous monitoring of student progress during teaching, allowing teachers to make informed decisions while teaching, adapting their methods, resources and activities to meet individual student needs as they arise

There are 4 key principles of adaptive teaching

Adaptive teaching should be…

•Inclusive and equitable

•Based on ongoing assessment

•Flexible in methods and materials

•Focused on progress for all

Please watch this short video on adaptive teaching

Decoding Adaptive Teaching, by @TeacherToolkit

Adaptive teaching involves a process where, because, as class teachers you know your children best. You must take into account any potential bariers when planning your lesson journeys. This is about controlling the controllables and taking into account their starting levels when planning any of your lessons! Once you have done this, other adaptations will involve in lesson monitoring/assessing and potentially a change in direction.

What is your understanding of what a proactive strategy is versus a reactive strategy in teaching?

Please submit your answers here Question 2 – Fill in form

Adaptive teaching is not differentiation!

Here’s why there’s been a move away from using this term!

As you can see, differentiation can be too rigid. We all know that our children do not fit neatly into pre-conceived categories. Our teaching now needs to be more flexible and alligned to the acknowledgement that as teachers we are adapting our practice following constant in-lesson monitoring, asssessment and live-feedback. This is to ensure that all children are able to make progress and without the need to compromise the high expectations we must all have.

Scaffolding – best practice

One of the common pitfalls of adaptive practice is to either scaffold too much or not enough. If we do not use scaffolds, then there is a risk that some children will not be able to access the new knowledge or the independent practice. Some examples of where scaffolding is lacking for all children would be to set the following as activities in a lesson:

Produce a leaflet about healthy eating
Draw a picture about the story we have just read
Write half a page about the Romans
What are the differences between animals and plants?

Pick one of the above activities. How could you effectively scaffold this activity to ensure that all children were supported with securing the potential success criteria that may be behind these activities? Question 3 – Fill in form

Scaffolding includes supporting pupils through deploying additional cues, such as sentence starters, to help pupils engage. It may also include flexibly grouping pupils within a class to provide more tailored support. However, the important thing to remember about scaffolds is that they are temporary supports. At some point the aim should be to remove scaffolds fpr most children. Scaffolding approaches can also include graduated prompting that offers support only when needed. Sometimes, metacognitive pauses enable brief reflection moments for pupils to think about how they have done something, as well as what they have learned and to make sense of new knoweldge and explore potential connections between ideas/concepts.

Using in-lesson assessment to elicit evidence of learning

Good adaptive teaching is rooted in, and reliant upon, good formative assessment, so that better decisions are made about what teachers do next to support learning

Once we have thought about how we are going to scaffold and plan the learning of new knowledge (including highlighting any commmon misconceptions) and the associated activities, we will need to think about that constant monitoring of learning throughout the lesson (formative assessment). There are many fantastic assessment for learning activties out there. Many teachers will have their ‘go-to’ strategies which they will frequently use. I am always in favour of using low-effort, high-impact strategies like the ones listed below:

Purposeful circulation is an example of a low-effort, high-impact strategy that teachers should be using frequently. What are the features of purposeful circulation? Question 4 – Fill in form

Thinking on your feet – being responsive in the moment

This gets easier with experience and practice. The best advice I can give here is to get out of your comfort zone and have a go with some strategies that you may have not used before or have not recently used. Here are some ‘in the moment adaptations’ that you could use: