An Attempt at Differentiation

Last week in 4th hour Algebra 2 I had the students practicing problems on whiteboards. I would call out and write down a problem and they would solve it on their individual board and then hold it up for me to check. It works pretty well as a means of practice. However, I noticed some students weren't really trying and were mostly talking so I got on their case about it. One of them said, "Well, you're always helping people over there." She meant I'm always helping people on the other side of the room. She's mostly right. I think it takes too long to help her and her friend and sometimes I think they don't put in any effort, so I tend to help those on the other side of the room more, and there are more students on the other side. What she said kind of rung in my ear for the rest of the day.

Then I read this blog post by John Scammell about how he does homework. He teaches a lesson, then gives an exit slip with a couple of problems like they learned that day. He collects them and sorts them by how many problems students got right. The next day he splits students up into three groups - students who got it, students who partially got it, and students who didn't get it at all. He assigns extension problems to students who got it, has students who partially got it correct their exit slips and then work on more problems, and he works with students who didn't get it at all.

On Friday last week many students were mentally checked out of class because prom was that night. We had taken notes the previous day on simplifying and expanding logarithmic expressions, and on Friday we practiced them on whiteboards. I knew that some students knew it pretty well, while others had no clue what was going on. I thought I'd try John's method in class today. It felt risky to me because I didn't know how the students would react to being split up like that. They also don't like to have to move seats. So I gave out a slip of paper and had them do three problems without any introduction. They scored them themselves and then passed them forward. I quickly grouped them and had all students who got 2-3 right work on one side of the room on their homework, which I knew few students had finished. Then I worked with the students who had gotten 0-1 problems right. I had to ask one student a couple of times to join us. Finally everyone was together and we were working on the homework. I answered some questions, and then they started asking each other or just volunteering to help each other. We worked for about 15 minutes before the bell rang, and I felt like it was more productive than a class I've taught in a while. I knew exactly where these students were at and they were getting the remediation they needed. They were mostly focused and working. One student even mentioned that it was helpful. I don't know how the rest of the class was doing, though, which is a slight problem. But overall, I was surprised at how well it worked. This is not a strategy I am going to use every day and I'm not sure that it would work every day in my class, but I am happy with the results from today and glad I risked it.