Differentiated Instruction: Open Questions and Parallel Tasks

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All students matter.  All students can succeed.  As teachers, it is important for us to facilitate our classrooms in a way that allow all students to succeed at their own level.  Differentiated instruction is vital for ensuring an inclusive classroom.  It also allows students to be engaged and successful in their learning by differentiating content, process, or product, according to the students’ readiness, interests, or learning profile (A. Lin, Personal Communication, Sept 28, 2016).  In my Teaching Mathematics I/S course, we learned three ways to differentiate the content in a mathematics classroom: open-routed questions, open-ended questions, and parallel tasks.  There are many other ways to incorporate differentiated learning in a mathematics classroom; these are simply some examples that I will use in my future classroom.

Open-Routed Questions

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            Open-routed questions have a single solution but multiple different ways to get to the final answer.  These questions are good for differentiating instruction because students are able to choose their own way of solving the problem.  Students can use the technique that resonates with them, as well as explore new and different ways of solving the problem.  This allows students to work at their own level and their own pace.  When using open-routed questions, the final result is not nearly as important as the process of getting to the answer.  I will be able to assess students’ understanding based on how they approached solving the problem.

Open-Ended Questions

            Open-ended questions are similar to open-routed questions; however, open-ended questions can have multiple final answers, as well as multiple ways of getting to the answer.  Similar to open-routed questions, open-ended questions allow students to succeed at their own level and be engaged by making choices based on their interests and skill level.  Open-ended questions recognize and support individuality by giving all students a chance to succeed.  This allows students to boost self-confidence in their own learning and also fosters independence.  This is true for all types of differentiated instruction.  Open-ended questions, in my opinion, are harder to mark than open-routed questions due to the infinite amount of possibilities; however, I believe that it is worth the extra effort to incorporate open-ended questions in a math classroom because it allows all students to succeed, as well as allows for better assessment of students’ abilities.

Parallel Tasks

            When using parallel tasks, teachers create multiple different tasks that focus on the same content but are at different levels of difficulty.  Usually two or three different tasks are produced, in which students can choose the task they wish to complete.  When thinking of this technique of incorporating differentiated instruction, the first thing I thought was that many students will always pick the easier task.  However, according to my facilitator Amy Lin, this does not actually happen as often as one would think.  More often than not, students choose the task that is more or less aligned with their level of knowledge or skill.  I am very interested in experimenting with this in my future classroom to see how students choose from parallel tasks. 

Question received from: Small & Lin, 2010, pg. 84,

Conclusion

            Differentiated instruction is very important to incorporate in a math classroom.  I believe that it is especially important in a mathematics classroom because many students have math anxiety or do not believe that they are capable of succeeding.  Some students believe that certain people have math brains and other people do not.  Differentiated instruction shifts their perspective into a growth mindset and lets all students feel capable of succeeding in a mathematics classroom.  I am looking forward to changing my future students’ perspectives of math, resulting in a more positive attitude in my classroom.

Reference 

Small, M., & Lin, A. (2010). More good questions: Great ways to differentiate secondary mathematics instruction. New York: Teachers College Press; Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics; [Scarborough, Ont.]: Nelson Education, c2010.