Differentiate the support, not the whole lesson
Thirty individual lesson plans is how first-year teachers burn out. You don't need them.
Written with AI — this one isn’t Tammy. The Field Guide covers ground her videos don’t, and keeps to what’s well established. It doesn’t know your students, and nothing here overrides your school’s policy or your state’s law. · 1 min read
What to do
- Plan one lesson with routes through it: a scaffold for students who need it, an extension for those who finish early.
- Use exit tickets to form flexible groups, and pull a small group for a short re-teach while others work.
- Offer choice where it doesn't change the goal — how to show understanding, which text to read on the same topic.
- Design supports in from the start — visuals, captions, instructions broken into steps — so fewer students need something separate.
- Skip “learning styles.” The idea that matching lessons to a student's visual or auditory style improves learning has been tested repeatedly and doesn't hold up.
Why it works
Students do differ, but differentiation works best as small, targeted adjustments based on what you've actually seen them do — not elaborate parallel lessons. That's sustainable, and it responds to real needs rather than labels.
Try this tomorrow
From tomorrow's exit ticket, take the students who didn't get it for a ten-minute re-teach the next day while everyone else starts the practice.
Watch out
Fixed “high, middle, low” groups for the whole year tend to lock students in. Keep groups flexible and based on this week's evidence.
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They aren't suggestions. They're legal commitments, and you're part of keeping them.
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