Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching

The Challenge of Meeting Every Child’s Needs

You know that the children in your class(es) have needs which are many and varied. You want to meet those needs. But meeting all the different needs is difficult, time-consuming and draining. But it's got to be done.

Why ‘What Works for Pupils with SEND Works for All’ Isn’t the Whole Story

You've heard that "what works for pupils with SEND works for all pupils" but can't shake that nagging feeling that it's not that simple. Because the pupils are different, and they do have different needs, and ultimately you know you need to do something different for each of them.

You also know that 3/4/5-way differentiation (i.e. making lots of different tasks) isn't a workable solution because it takes over your entire life. You know that you can't just do whole class teaching and expect it to bring all pupils along with it - as this blog post points out so well, one size does not fit all.

What about planning for the core/middle and then adjusting upwards and downwards? Let me stop you there: the first children you need to be thinking about are the ones who are hardest to reach, hardest to teach - the ones who are going to struggle the most. Don't let them be an afterthought. Read this blog post if you need convincing on this: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/send-provision-across-the-curriculum-start-and-end-points

With all of the above, we are missing out on what actually can be differentiated (if we are still happy to use that loaded word).

Differentiation Isn’t About Multiple Tasks or Lower Expectations

To be clear, these things need to remain the same for all pupils, and not differentiated:

High expectations: the goal shouldn't not be compromised. We need to get every pupil to the finishing line. Every pupils should achieve all curriculum goals. See what the SEND Code of Practice has to see about that here. Differentiation by content taught and outcomes expected is not OK in most cases (the caveat is that the SEND COP uses the language "many cases".

Tasks: there shouldn't be to provide different tasks for different children if we have planned good tasks and are holding all pupils to the same expectations. Differentiation by task is out.

Shifting from Differentiation by Task to Differentiation by Support

There was another type of differentiation we used to talk about: differentiation by support. And I think that's the one we are closest to now when we talk about teaching which is inclusive by dint of it being adaptive and/or responsive.

How Everyone Learns: The Science Behind Inclusive Teaching

This concept of differentiating by support, or teaching in such a way that we are responsive to the needs of individuals (see my LinkedIn post about why I don't really like the term 'adaptive teaching'), is based on a Very Important Idea: that fundamentally, whoever we are, whatever our diagnosis, need, level of prior knowledge, nationality, sex etc&etc we all learn in the same way.

At the root of it, and at risk of over-simplifying it, we all pay attention to things in our environment, then think about it in our working memory, then transfer it to our long-term memory, making links between new and old pieces of information (there's plenty else out there that describes the science of learning better than this, but this serves my purpose here and now).

And because we all learn in the same way, we can all be taught using the same set of strategies. Things like Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, The Great Teaching Toolkit and Mayer's Principles of Multimedia Learning do a great job of outlining the elements of effective teaching. It's things like explanation, modelling, use of examples, questioning (for a variety of purposes: to check for understanding, to promote discussion, to deepen understanding, for pastoral checks), feedback, scaffolding - all of these things help all of us learn.

I've made it clear in a previous blog post that "The strategies that work for all pupils will also work for pupils with SEND... only if we aim the use of the strategies at the pupils with SEND to begin with. Once we have them as our focus, we can then expect many other pupils to benefit."

The Mixing Desk Model: Adjusting the Levels of Support

However, there is something else at play, too:

We can vary the support we provide to individuals in order to meet their needs by varying the levels of the elements of effective teaching that we used.

Imagine a PA mixing desk:

Photo by Alexey Ruban on Unsplash

If you are unfamiliar with how mixing desks work, its not too difficult to understand. Different instruments and microphones are plugged into different channels. The sound coming in and out of each of those channels can be controlled individually by a selection of faders (the slidey things), buttons and knobs. So, the volume of a guitar can be turned up so it is louder than the volume of a piano, and so on.

We can support pupils in a similar way:

For a child who comes to a lesson (or sequence of lessons) with a higher level of prior knowledge, and the propensity to work at a faster pace (its absolutely true that pupils understand things at different paces), we might 'fade down' the Explanation, Modelling and Examples channels, and instead 'turn up' the Independent Practice, Questioning (for depth) and Feedback channels.

For a child who has lower prior knowledge (I think this is currently my preferred way to talk about what might once have called a 'low ability child'), and may work at a slower pace (probably as a result of the lower prior knowledge giving them less of a foundation, and therefore less of a network of knowledge to connect the new learning to), we might really turn up the levels of Modelling, Examples, Questioning (to check for understanding), Scaffolding and Feedback.

Essentially what we do is provide different levels of support, not through differentiated tasks or lower expectations, but through the different combination of teaching approaches we employ.

Why Independence Doesn’t Mean Working Alone

It's important to remember that at times, all children will need high levels of support - even the ones currently working at Greater Depth in a particular subject in a particular unit. It's important to remember that as teachers of children, we never truly surrender them to completely independent work - there is always a job for us to do: explanations to be given, modelling to be shown, examples to be provided. Don't ever think that because a child worked independently once, that they don't ever need you again. Sometimes those levels will need to be turned back up - when a new topic is introduced, or when something really just isn't connecting.

Making It Work Logistically: Planning for Responsiveness

There are some really logistical, practical things that must be thought about if you are truly going to teach as above.

In the example I've given above, I've only talked about 2 children, but there are 15 times as many children in your class: 30 children all potentially needing their own personal mix of teaching strategies. That means you have to be super-responsive and super-flexible.

There are three things I come back to time and time again when talking to teachers about what supports this way of working:

Planning a whole sequence of learning and having all its resources and tasks ready right from the beginning; the idea of differentiation as a journey: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/ditch-the-lesson-plans-try-learning-sequences

Flexible lesson design that goes beyond three-part lessons and whole-class teaching: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/flexible-lesson-design-a-model-for-responsiveness-and-the-release-of-responsibility & https://www.aidansevers.com/post/ditch-the-lesson-plans-try-learning-sequences

The role of the adult during lesson time: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/what-should-adults-be-doing-when-children-are-working

If you're looking for the way to ensure all pupils' needs are met but that teachers aren't burned out, let's talk. Together we can make this work in your school. Here's you 3-step plan to taking the load off yourself and making that happen:

1. Drop me an email

2. Have a phone call with me to talk about your school

3. We'll work together to empower you and your staff to enhance teaching and to enrich your pupils' lives