How to Differentiate and Scaffold Math Centers Part 1 (EP10)

How to Differentiate and Scaffold Math Centers (Part 1)

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat. When you hear the terms differentiating and scaffolding instruction, how does that make you feel? Do you feel overwhelmed, maybe confused, or stressed, or maybe you feel all of the above?

I know, I certainly felt every single one of those emotions at some point in my career. But over the years with a lot of practice, a lot of professional development around this, I’ve learned quite a bit when it comes to differentiating and scaffolding instruction. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about over the course of the next three episodes.

We’ll be diving into what it means to differentiate and scaffold instruction. We’ll also uncover a few common misconceptions. I think those are important because a lot of times those misconceptions prevent teachers from even wanting to explore differentiating and scaffolding. We’ll then go into specific ways that you can do this with your small group activities.

Now, I want you to keep in mind that even though I am talking about small groups, you can also apply these tips to your whole group lesson. So, even if you don’t do small groups, maybe you don’t have the time or you just don’t have the resources for them, that’s totally fine. You can just apply these tips to your whole group lesson.

So, let’s start with common misconceptions. I want to address these from the beginning because like I said earlier, I think these can be major roadblocks for teachers, and I will admit some of these I even had myself.

Here’s the first misconception. Differentiating means giving students more or less work to do. So, in other words, your higher kids need more work, and your lower kids need less work.

I think on the student and that can almost feel like a punishment, like they’re being punished for understanding something. So, we definitely want to steer away from that idea and focus more on the quality of the work that we’re giving them. So, it’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality.

The second misconception, and maybe the most popular, is that differentiating means giving students below or above grade level work on the same skill. So, let’s say that you teach fourth grade, and you might think well, okay, I’ll just give my high students a fifth-grade level question and my low students a third-grade level question.

You know, I don’t think there’s too much of an issue with this on the high end, like, I think it’s okay if you want to challenge your fourth graders to try maybe a fifth-grade level problem.

But I do see a problem with it on the low end. You really want to be careful not to water it down too much to where they’re not even working at grade level because that’s where they’re going to be assessed. And so, what I’m going to teach you is how to take that grade-level content and make really simple adjustments so that everyone who comes to your small group table has exactly what they need to feel supported, to feel challenged, and to feel successful.

The third misconception is that in order to differentiate, you have to teach different lessons to different groups of students, whether that means splitting your class in half and teaching the lesson twice, or I’ve even heard of teachers who teach their lessons in small groups. So, they’re teaching them three to four different times and trying to differentiate that way.

I’m not saying it can’t be done this way. It certainly can, but it doesn’t have to be. There are much simpler ways to differentiate and scaffold that I’ll be sharing with you.

And then the fourth and final misconception is that differentiating is very time-consuming. I think if you’re doing it the wrong way it can be. But just like in my previous example, if you are planning multiple lessons and assigning different activities every single day for different groups of students, that is going to take you a lot of time, and that is going to be very time-consuming. But I promise you there are ways to do this that are quick, simple, and effective.

Next, I want to dig a little deeper into what exactly it means to differentiate and scaffold activities. I actually presented on this topic at a virtual conference this summer, and I had several teachers reach out to me afterward and tell me that it was the very first time that they’ve ever had someone explain the difference between differentiating and scaffolding. And I can relate to that because for years, I did not know the difference either.

So, let’s talk about scaffolding first. Scaffolding in a nutshell is really just how you support your students. You’re not changing any of the content, you’re just giving them a little more guidance and a little more support in the beginning, but eventually removing those supports as they move toward proficiency.

You know, it’s funny, I always think about gymnastics when I think about scaffolding because when I was growing up, some skills were really easy for me to learn, but then others were a little more challenging.

Like the first time I did a standing back tuck. I couldn’t just do that on my own. I needed some extra support in the beginning, literally extra support. Sometimes I would put an extra mat underneath me. I would also practice by landing in a soft pit just to build my confidence up a little bit. And most importantly, I would have my coach spot me and be there if I needed help.

But then all of a sudden, my confidence started to grow, my technique started to improve, and eventually, I was able to do a standing back tuck all on my own.

So, this is just like when we scaffold instruction. We give them a little support for the same skill that everyone else is working on, and eventually, they’ll be able to do it without those supports.

Now, the big difference with differentiating is this means you are actually modifying the instruction. So, you are changing the content. Remember, with scaffolding, you weren’t changing anything. You were just providing support for them. But with differentiating, you are changing the content. So, that’s the main difference between the two concepts.

Now, they do have a few things in common. They’re both focused on student needs. They both have the same end goal, which again, is to help our kids understand and learn grade-level concepts. And they both can be really effective.

So, now that we’ve cleared up what exactly it means to differentiate and scaffold activities, I want to share a few reasons why we should try to do this and how they can benefit our students.

I think the biggest benefit to scaffolding instruction is that it’s really going to help boost their confidence. Sometimes I think about, you know, if a student ever came to my small group table and they were lacking confidence, and then they looked around and they saw everyone else solving the problems quickly and easily. I mean, that would be a terrible feeling.

But when you scaffold your instruction, and you provide these supports for them, you’re going to prevent that feeling from ever happening. And you’re going to help them realize that they can do it. They just need a little more support in the beginning. Again, just like I did when I needed an extra mat or a spot from my coach.

The second reason we should be scaffolding instruction is that it helps students work at grade level. Remember, we want everyone working at grade level, because that’s where they’re going to be assessed, and they will be able to work on grade-level concepts if you provide these additional supports from the beginning.

So, those are two reasons why I believe we should attempt to scaffold our instruction. So, let’s talk about why we should differentiate our instruction.

I think when you can find that balance of just the right amount of challenge and just the right amount of difficulty, you get their buy-in. They’re going to be engaged. They’re going to be motivated. They’re going to be excited to work through that challenge.

I think when things are either too hard or too easy, they’re either going to give up completely, or they’re just going to avoid the task altogether. Often what happens is their behavior goes a little sideways during those times, and we definitely do not want that happening.

And the other reason why I believe we should differentiate our instruction is because it’s going to provide opportunities for students to experience productive struggle. I think this is especially true for our higher students because we don’t want them going through elementary school with everything being super easy, because then if they get to middle school and high school and they come to a challenge, they’re gonna have no idea what to do.

So, we need to provide them with challenges and teach them how to struggle and how to persevere through them, and we can do that with differentiated activities.

All right, so now that we know exactly what it means to differentiate and scaffold and what it doesn’t mean, we can start to think about how to implement these ideas in our math centers. Today, I’m gonna give you a very basic overview of how I did this, and next week I’ll go into much more detail. I originally had planned on doing that part in this episode, but it’s just way too much to cover in one episode. So again, I’ll just give you a brief overview this week.

Whenever my students came to my small group table, they had three sets of questions to choose from. If they were struggling with a concept, they could choose the questions that had a little more support. If they were right on track, they would choose that second level that was right at grade level. And if things were really easy for them and they needed a challenge, then they would work on the questions that were more challenging in my third set.

So, just by me looking at what questions they chose, I could tell exactly how they were feeling about a skill. And again, next week, I’m going to share a lot of great tips to help you differentiate and help you come up with those different levels of questions. So, don’t worry about that this week. We’ll talk about that next week.

Once they finished their questions at my table, I then had them go back to their seat and they assessed their understanding after meeting with me. This was a quick Google Form question that I had them answer, so it wasn’t anything fancy. But it was really good feedback because I was able to see if the support that I gave them helped them feel more confident about the skill.

Now, if you’re thinking, oh my goodness, this is a lot to plan for every single day. I would agree with you, which is why I did not do this for every single lesson. I don’t think anyone has time to do this for every single lesson, and it’s really not necessary.

So, my main focus was on the really important skills like multiplication and division, and I didn’t worry so much about the easier skills that I knew not many students would struggle with. So, hopefully, that helps this feel a little more manageable.

All right, well, I’m going to go ahead and wrap up part one here, and next week I’ll go into much more detail in regards to planning my math centers and exactly how I differentiated and scaffolded them. So, that is going to take us to today’s Teaching Tip of the Week.

Today I’m sharing a time-saving tip, and this is for those tasks that you either only do a few times a year, or maybe even once a year, and you always forget how to do them, which means you probably waste a lot of time trying to remember how to do them. And listen, I’m sure you have a step-by-step document that you can refer to. But my tip will help you complete these tasks much faster.

Either screen record yourself going through the process, and I recommend using PowerPoint for that, or take a picture of a completed example.

I did this whenever I had to request a field trip because the online forms for this were super detailed, and they were not user-friendly at all. So, one year, I finally got smart and I took a picture of the completed form and then I saved it in my field trip folder on my computer. So, the next time I had to request a new field trip, I could refer to that picture, and it just made it so much easier to complete.

You can also do this when you are setting up your gradebook or entering report card comments. Somehow, always forgot how to do those because, you know, you only do them a few times a year.

Or maybe you’re trying to learn a new online program and how to assign something to your students. Whatever it is, either take a picture of a completed example (I think that’s probably quicker), or just screen record yourself completing an example from start to finish. And I promise you, this will save you so much time in the future.

All right, well, that is all for this week, and hopefully, I will see you back here next Tuesday for part two of our series on how to differentiate and scaffold your math centers. Have a great week everyone!