How can you differentiate your lessons with LessonUp?
Thomas Courtley
Education Specialist
As a teacher, you can easily create several versions of a lesson to share with your students. The lesson reports that you receive in LessonUp give you a clear idea on students’ responses to specific lessons. Based on this information, you can customise them with targeted content matching your students’ level, pace and needs.
There are many ways to differentiate your lessons:
- Differentiate instructions by using different teaching strategies and methods
- Differentiate the learning content of the subject matter/s you teach
- Differentiate by granting more or less time to complete an assignment
- Differentiate learning objectives based on your students’ level/pace
- Differentiate assessment methods and activities
- Differentiate your review strategies
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3 examples of differentiating your lessons in LessonUp
1. Differentiating the pace of your lessons
Students have different learning paces. Some are really quick in scanning a lesson and answering questions, while others need more time to think about it.
To match the pace of your students, you can vary the amount of work per lesson. Some students can be given more assignments than others. Through their app they can visualise differently coloured parts of your lesson. As a teacher, you can decide which slide/s each student has to work on in order to complete a lesson.
Thanks to this overview students have a clear idea of what they are expected to do.
2. Differentiated instructions
When you are introducing a new lesson, you might want to differentiate (the length of) your explanation. As you know, some students are satisfied with a brief set of instructions, while others need a more thorough explanation of what is expected.
To match your students’ different needs you could divide the class in two or three groups. While group 1 starts working on your assignment independently, group 2 is given a brief set of instructions and group 3 a thorough explanation. As proposed above, each group could work by following a (number of) different colour code(s).
3. Differentiate learning objectives
Let’s tackle a very important topic for every single teacher: learning objectives.
It is always very important that your students know what learning objectives they are expected to achieve with each lesson. It can be helpful to formulate them in easy-to-read student jargon. In other words, you can differentiate the way you formulate learning objectives, e.g. based on a student’s level, or on other important factors.
Colour codes help you simplify the differentiation:
- Purple: You understand that…
- Yellow: You can explain…
- Blue: You can give another example of…
Your students will always be aware of the learning objectives that they are expected to achieve. Colour codes give clarity, are easy to understand and fun to work with!
How it works in LessonUp
Click on the orange Differentiate button in your "My Lesson" editor space. You can select more parts of your lesson for students who have to practice more or need an extra challenge: see example 1, hereunder. If you want to assign a colour to a specific slide, click on the differentiation icon next to that slide: see example 2, hereunder.
Now all that remains is to brief your students clearly on which colours/ slides they are expected to work with. Once everything is clear, you can all enjoy the lesson!
Is it a test or an assignment? Check out 👉 how to assess your students digitally for tips and tricks.
