Adaptive Teaching

Adaptive teaching - assess, adjust, adapt?

Having a full understanding of every child and young person is extremely important when implementing an adaptive teaching approach – staff taking time to reflect on the reasons why children and young people are struggling with learning, or indeed finding it too easy, is vital to adapt teaching and learning accordingly.

Adaptive teaching is an approach that adjusts to the needs and abilities of individual children and young people. It can include:

• Personalisation: tailoring your instruction/teaching input to meet the unique needs of each learner

• Differentiation: using a variety of instructional strategies and materials (including digital) to meet the diverse needs of learners. Start from where the learner is, not where age related expectation outcomes say they should be

• Flexibility: be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of learners. You don’t need to stick to your lesson plan if it is not meeting their needs

• Ongoing assessment: ongoing assessment of learner progress to inform your input/support and make adjustments as needed. Digital tools can be used to harness this.

• Collaboration: adaptive teaching often involves collaboration between teachers, learners and parents to support learning. Keep checking in with your learners to ensure that their views on learning are taken into account

• Self-directed learning: encourage learners to take an active role in their own learning and to set targets for their own progress. This supports progress, autonomy and the desire to become a lifelong learner

• Extending Learning: providing learners with opportunities to further explore, expand, and apply their knowledge and skills in a more complex or challenging context  (Practical Adaptive Teaching Examples)