A Lesson Plan to Engage and Challenge Students in Math Class

When new teachers hear the phrase differentiated instruction, a look of confusion often comes across their faces. Although this educational term is used quite frequently, what it looks like in the classroom can be hard to understand.

Differentiated instruction is an educational approach that teachers use to meet students where they are academically while recognizing that the students will naturally all be at different learning levels. Trying to teach an entire class full of students who are at different levels, have diverse interests, and have distinctive motivational factors can be challenging. However, by using differentiated instruction, educators can create a more engaging and effective learning environment that can bring about tremendous success.

Benefits of Differentiated Instruction

To be completely honest, when I first heard about differentiated instruction, I thought it would be something that just caused even more work, stress, and frustration for me. My classroom was filled with students who had incredibly varied abilities. How was I going to teach a math lesson and reach and challenge every student every day? The task seemed impossible, but fortunately I worked with a group of educators who collaborated extremely well. Our team included the special education teacher, a teaching assistant, and myself as the lead classroom educator.

After my first lesson employing differentiated instruction, I was intrigued. By the second week of using differentiated instruction, I was sold on this teaching technique. My students were more engaged and more motivated, and some students were even asking for more math work. Changing how I thought about teaching math made all the difference; instead of leading the entire lesson while students worked exclusively from their desks, I leveraged different instructional approaches that better engaged my students.

Create a Plan

After my team and I shared how differentiated instruction could look in our classroom and fit into our existing lesson plans, we began creating a revised plan of how to implement this strategy in a successful way for our students during our planning time and professional learning community meetings.

Our team decided that our lesson plans would include opening with a brief lesson overview of standards, objectives, and student and teacher expectations. This part was especially important to us, as we wanted our students to have a clear understanding of what we were learning, why we were learning this skill, how it applied to the real world, and what students and teachers were expected to do. Next, the direct instruction section was presented, and this was where the major changes took place. After the special education teacher or I taught the direct instruction part of our lesson for 10 minutes, we gave our students three to five guided practice problems to do with us.

After the guided practice, we gave students five to seven preselected independent practice problems to work on at their desks. Once these problems were completed, students could come to one of the educators in the room to get their answers checked for accuracy. If all answers were correct, they would proceed to one of the enrichment areas. However, if they missed any answer, they had to go back to their seat, look over their notes and work, and try to solve the problem again.

Usually, students were able to answer all five to seven problems by the second try and could move on to the enrichment stations. If the answers were still incorrect, the second time they came to us for accuracy checks, we would reteach the skill to those who needed more time with the direct teaching style. Once they mastered the skill with us, they joined the enrichment areas.

At first, planning the enrichment areas seemed like an overwhelming task, but it was actually easier than we had expected. We pulled examples from our textbooks, put together real-world scenarios, and even had students help us create problems. Teachers could also look for problems online or use AI resources to generate enrichment activities.

To set up the enrichment stations, I used poster boards or large sticky notes to display the enrichment activity and emphasize the directions and our expectations. Each station had one problem that gave students additional practice opportunities to master the skill. The answer was posted beside the station to allow more independence during this part of the class. The answer was covered up, and students could check their answer only after they had tried to solve the problem. If they calculated the problem incorrectly, they had to stay at that station and try to solve it again.

Teach the Lesson

Before the first lesson where we implemented differentiated instruction, we told students that the lesson would be different from our usual lessons. We wanted to avoid confusion by letting students know that the changes were intentional. On the board, we hung an agenda we had created so that students would know what to expect, and that included each lesson section.

Agenda

• Standards and objectives (1 minute)
• Why are we learning this skill? (1 minute)
• How does this apply to the real world? (2 minutes)
• Student and teacher expectations (1 minute) 
• Hook (2–3 minutes)
• Direct instruction (10 minutes)
• Three to five guided practice problems (5–7 minutes)
• Complete five to seven preselected independent practice problems (7–10 minutes) (Check independent practice problems for accuracy, and if all problems are correct, proceed to one of the enrichment areas.)

Student Outcomes

After teaching this way for two weeks, our team was hooked on this method because of the results. Our students began to tune in more during the direct instruction part of the class because they truly wanted to get their five to seven independent practice problems correct on the first try.Students who missed a few of the five to seven independent practice problems began to double-check their work before coming up to me to check their answers.

Students who were performing above grade level were more engaged and even productively competitive in working at the enrichment stations. We were impressed to see some of them coaching and encouraging others who were stuck on a particular problem. Watching them teach and mentor their peers and then return to their work showed a transformation in the social and emotional connections in our class. Students who were performing below grade level were trying harder, and most were able to get to the enrichment stations, which boosted their confidence.