Choose Your Adventure: Differentiation Helps Every Student

USM is providing teachers with assistance and strategies to tailor learning for every student, ensuring all are engaged, known, and valued.

The first day of archery in physical education is an exciting one for 5th grade students. Whether they’re experienced with the sport or not, students are given an entry point that’s appropriate for their skill level. They can choose the draw weight—low, medium, or hard—that fits them best, and adjust the target distance as needed. Physical education teachers Kristi Hall and Tim Bartz incorporate games and different-sized targets to engage a wide range of abilities. “Whatever their skill, the kids are all working towards the same goals, which are to hit the target successfully and demonstrate growth,” said Hall.

Differentiation, or the ability to recognize students’ unique strengths and challenges and respond thoughtfully, is becoming increasingly important. “Our mission charges us to cultivate excellence in learning,” said Amy Hand, assistant head of school. “To do that, every student needs to reach their potential, even when they are coming to us with different sets of skills and prior knowledge.” 

USM administrators have focused this year’s professional development efforts around differentiation strategies and how best to incorporate them in classrooms. In August, the school invited Dr. Eric Carbaugh, an educational consultant and professor, to provide training on differentiation. During the October faculty in-service day, teachers participated in group learning about differentiation that was tailored to their division and department, followed by afternoon collaboration to develop ways to apply new strategies to a class, unit, or lesson plan.

“Our mission charges us to cultivate excellence in learning. To do that, every student needs to reach their potential, even when they are coming to us with different sets of skills and prior knowledge.” 

-Amy Hand, assistant head of school

“By providing some students with more challenge while giving others more scaffolding to thrive, we maintain high standards for all students,” said Hand. “Students are different in so many ways—their interests, their preferences about how they learn, their fluency with a particular content area, and more. We can honor those differences in the way we teach and in the way we plan our curriculum.”

In Upper School English, an important component of differentiation is acknowledging students’ individual passions and their social-emotional differences. Many English classes include a choice book unit in which students select a pre-approved text based on their interests and discuss it in small groups. For some, articulating opinions respectfully and being vulnerable is easier in front of a small group than an entire class. “Being able to practice those skills in a low-stakes way is, to me, a significant form of differentiation,” said Upper School English Teacher Dr. Danielle Goldstein.

Gretchen Mathews ’06 was inspired to enhance her differentiation techniques in her 6th grade math classroom after reading “Building Thinking Classrooms” by Peter Liljedahl. Her students can choose their level of difficulty—mild, medium, or spicy—on practice problems and homework, an approach she borrowed from her 4th grade colleagues and Liljedahl. “Often, kids will start with a mild problem and realize, ‘Hey, I can do this,’ and then jump to the medium,” said Mathews. More often than not they are choosing the appropriate challenge for their ability, or self-adjusting as needed. 

Mathews also encourages students to use dry-erase boards, which are mounted to the walls in her room or individually sized. The non-permanent surface is easy to erase, which can lessen anxiety around getting started on a math problem.

For Mathews, who sees more neurodiversity in her classroom today than she did at the beginning of her career, having different options for kids in the same classroom is important. “I think so many kids, and parents, too, will describe themselves as being a math person or not a math person. But anyone can be a math person with the right on-ramp.”