It is important to match differentiated classroom tasks to the natural learning style of individual and groups of children such as providing opportunities for the children to progress using written, auditory and kinesthetic activities. Without differentiating activities some children will be over or under challenged in the classroom so there they will not be able to progress any further with their learning.

Maths Mastery
It is important to ensure that any mastery lessons that the children are taught following the National Curriculum are fully differentiated so that everyone in the class is challenged and able to progress with their own learning. The whole class can attempt to master a learning objective but you need to differentiate down and up to ensure that all children are making progress. It is impractical to expect that all children in the class will be able to achieve exactly the same objective. If you hold the class back waiting for all of the children to achieve the same objective then this might create feelings of frustration as some of the class will be expected to work towards an objective that is beyond their current academic capacity and some others in the class will be held back from progressing further at an increased rate. For example, when teaching the class how to add numbers using columnar addition some children will only be able to complete activities with no exchange between place value whereas other children in the class can progress to adding decimal numbers with exchange between place value. It is vitally important that everyone in the class is working in activities that will help them progress to the next learning step.

English Differentiation
You need to adapt differentiation in English lessons to match the task and activity. Some activities can be closely differentiated by objective and task to match the children’s current learning abilities. For example, when teaching a spelling rule such as adding the suffix ed then some children can investigate changes to spelling when adding the suffix to words with no spelling changes whilst other children can explore how to add the suffix ed to words ending the letters e and y. Other activities can be differentiated by outcome. For example, when asking the class to write in a particular style and genre you assess the children’s writing to match their individual differentiated objectives. For example, you can evaluate some children’s abilities in writing in full sentences whereas you can assess other children’s abilities in adding phrases and clauses to sentences using commas.

Learning Styles
One of the effective ways of differentiating lessons is by matching classroom tasks to individual learning styles. Some children work best when writing things down. Other children work best when listening to instructions. Many children make good progress when working kinesthetically by doing rather than watching. The whole class can work towards the same objectives by using each of the learning styles. For example, when teaching the children about the lives of Romans in Britain then some of the class can read non-fiction texts and Internet websites to produce letters from the perspective of a Roman soldier. Some other children could discuss with other pupils what happened in Roman Britain before producing a oral recording in character as a Roman soldier. Many children could perform role-plays to explore the lives of Romans in Britain which could then be presented to the class.

Across the Curriculum
Lesson differentiation should take place across the curriculum and not only in Maths and English subjects. You can identify learning skills for each subject that the children must, should and could achieve when completing different activities. For example, when teaching the class about different climates in the world then all of the children must be able to name and describe different climates in the world. Some children should be able to compare the differences between climates. Other children could identify different categories of the main climate types such as humid subtropical and monsoon subtropical. It is important that all children are working at just beyond their current learning abilities so that they are not under or over challenged.