Adaptive Teaching
What is adaptive teaching? Is it just the new word for differentiation? Or is it what differentiation should have been all along?
I’ve just read a 6,000 word blog if you want the definitive answer. It’s here.
As I started reading it, I found myself nodding and yessing away like an interview candidate. But gradually, I started to get that uneasy feeling: I don’t even want this job - why am I trying so hard to impress?
What caused this?
It’s the sheer effort of adaptive teaching. The overwhelming expert-y-ness and nuance that you apparently have to master. That is not my thing.
My thing is ‘The Simplest Path’ or - I’m an English Teacher - “catch the nearest way”.
I want that to be your thing. I want to make your life simple, so your students can excel.
The Simplest Path
Let’s talk about scaffolding.
All the complexity of adaptive teaching comes from the different ways you can scaffold up to the thing you want students to be able to do. My example here is writing an essay on Scrooge.
The Simplest Path begins with the whole, not the scaffold. The whole is the novel - A Christmas Carol. The whole is the essay - let’s read some essays about Scrooge at different grades, with different perspectives.
We scaffold from those wholes, not to those wholes.
All the adaptive teaching you will ever read about is about scaffolding to. This means it is always slow, and always unambitious.
Before we get into this, take a moment to remind yourself about your unit on the 19th century novel. How many weeks does it take? How many essays do students read at top grades? How many do they write at top grades?
I hope the simplest path will take less time, and students will read more essays, and write more essays at top grades.
Summary of What This Post Will Show You
Adaptive teaching is this sequence:
Start with the whole
Scaffold with super fast, focused note taking
Scaffold with low stakes retrieval
Scaffold with cloze from model answers
Scaffold with reconstruction of model answers
Debate ideas and perspectives through talk about model answers
Individual essay writing reconstructing the model answer with support
Individual essay writing - students write their own answer to the essay question without support
Whole class feedback
Repeat with more essays
For any task which is not an essay - creative writing for example - the sequence is exactly the same - just alter the word ‘essay’.
A novice teacher can be an expert adaptive teacher from day one using this sequence.
The Simplest Steps
1. Read the Novel as Fast as You Can
Read the novel as fast as you can. This means you read it to the students. You might occasionally get volunteers.
Don’t get in the way of the story. Story is privileged in memory - our brains crave stories like our stomachs crave ice cream and cookies. But stories are shareable and addictive in a good way, like coffee. So, we remember stories.
You might need to scaffold with some helpful context. Do this after the chapter in which it is relevant, not before.
And the end of each chapter, or after 15 to 20 minutes of reading, get students to jot down ideas. Any or all of:
Plus / Minus / Interesting
What I Predict and Why
Most important quote
This needs to be quick - give yourself a 5 minute time limit. Do it yourself under the visualiser so students see what quick looks like, and what exploring an idea looks like when it is scrappy. This is a tool for thinking, not for assessment or display.
I have recorded the novel as an audiobook for you if you prefer - you can see it or hear it here.
Time taken, 3 hours to read, 1 hour for low stakes quizzing and note taking. 4 hours in total.
2. Read the Essay
Once through, with you reading out loud.
Second time through. At the end of each paragraphs students annotate for:
Plus / Minus / Interesting
Most important quote
Share these with a partner and/or with the class.
Time taken for 2 readings, low stakes quizzing and note taking, 1 hour. 5 hours in total.
3. Low Stakes Quizzing
At the beginning (and/or) the end of the lesson, low stakes quiz on what you want students to remember.
Isolate the top 10 - 15 quotes you want students to remember. Quiz them on these.
Do the same for the vocabulary and context students will need to understand and write about Dickens’ ideas.
Do a range of these in all lessons for 5 to 10 minutes. Insist all students make a guess, even if they are wrong.
4. Success Criteria
Third reading
Pick 3 success criteria. You decide, based on the skill in your class.
What I Predict and Why - for each of the 3 criteria.
Share these with a partner and/or with the class.
5. Read the Essay at the Higher Grade.
Repeat the steps for the first essay.
Time taken: 1 hour for the two readings of this essay and low stakes quizzing. 1 hour for the third reading of both essays and low stakes quizzing. 7 hours in total.
6. Learn the High Grade Essay Through Cloze
How?
Cloze tests, in pairs.
Cloze test the most important words in each paragraph.
Give students the list of words to fill the gaps.
Go again with a mixture of the same cloze and some new words. Give students a list of words to fill the gaps.
Go again with a different set of cloze words. Give all the previous words and the new missing ones, and make students work out which will fit.
Do a final cloze, sampling all the words from the previous clozes. Give no list of words to fill the gap.
Do a cloze of all the quotes. Give the quotes as a list.
Do a cloze of all the quotes. Give the quotes as a list, but mix up all the words in each quote so that they don’t make sense. (If a 1 or 2 word quote, present each word as jumbled letters).
Do a cloze of all the topic sentences. Ask students to write their own, without any words provided.
Time taken, including low stakes quizzing: 1 hour. 8 hours in total.
7. Learn the Essay by Rewriting the Paragraphs
In pairs, students pick a number of most important key words. Students are allowed to keep these words to help reconstruct the paragraphs.
Write those in order, on the board. Pick the best ones from your class sampling and discussion. Let’s call it 3 words per line.
Put the model essays away. From the words on the board, students write their own version of the paragraph, on their own. They can can change the order of the words, or the word endings, but they should focus on not leaving any out.
Students underline each of the key words in the student paragraph. They may at this stage compare with a partner.
You pick two at random to put under the visualiser and critique for effort, accuracy of idea, and the 3 criteria you identified when looking at the essays.
Repeat with each paragraph.
Time Taken 2 hours, including low stakes quizzing. 10 hours in total.
8. Write the Essay Independently
Students write their version of the essay from memory.
1 hour, including low stakes quizzing. 11 hours in total.
9. Study a Top Grade Essay Arguing the Opposite Viewpoint
Repeat steps 5, 6 and 7.
Time taken: 4 hours. 16 hours in total.
10. Debate the Merits
Organise this any way you like, but I prefer pairs in competition against other pairs.
However you structure the lesson, the key is to make every student justify their opinions as many times as possible - which means this is an oral lesson, not a written one.
Time Taken: 1 hour. 17 hours in total.
The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
Take a break here.
We are going to use the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.
The students have had 17 lessons so far, and know the novel incredibly well.
So, we’ll do the work for essay number 2 in 2 weeks’ time.
Then the work for essay number 3 one month after we finish essay 2.
Then we’ll do the work for essay number 4 two months after we finish essay 3.
These gaps will mean that the students develop a really strong long term memory of everything about the novel.
11. Study 3 More Essays on Different Titles to Cover Most Perspectives
3 hours per essay - you and the students will be better at this now. They will also get much quicker at the low stakes quizzes.
9 hours. 25 hours in total.
12. Debate Each of the 3 Essays
3 hours.
28 hours in total.
13. Write each Essay.
3 hours including low stakes quizzes.
31 hours in total.
14. Feedback
You will need to build in a feedback and improvement lesson after each of the 4 essay attempts - whole class, using the visualiser.
You may want to increase your criteria to 5 or 6 now, as the first 3 will be in long term memory now.
4 hours. 35 hours in total.
35 lessons, at 7 per fortnight, means that this will take you 10 weeks. Your students will have written 4 essays, most commonly at grade 7, 8 and 9.
You won’t have to do any revision for A Christmas Carol (or whatever text you choose) - using the Ebbinghaus spacings means that this is your revision.
How is this Adaptive Teaching?
Everyone understands the novel because you are reading it.
The context they need comes just in time. And they see it used repeatedly in essays.
Their thoughts keep developing with each 5 minute burst of writing.
They will remember the story, as story is privileged in memory.
They will have deconstructed each paragraph of 4 different essays.
They will have debated 8 different points of view about the 4 essay topics, so that their spoken language reinforces their writing.
They will have reconstructed their own version of each essay, once with support, and once on their own.
They will have improved part of each essay as a result of whole class feedback and clear criteria.
Everything will have been made explicit in the model essays and in the teacher critique under the visualiser.
The low stakes knowledge quizzing will mean that students remember all the quotes, context and vocabulary they need.
The Ebbinghaus spacing means that all their revision will be done in class.
If you want scores of ways to be a brilliant English teacher, I’ve written that book.
