At the chalk face: Differentiation is dead

At the chalk face: Differentiation is dead

“Differentiation is dead”… or is it? 🧠🔥

In this week’s At the Chalkface, Craig and Dave dive headfirst into one of the most controversial (and misunderstood) ideas in modern teaching.

We’ve all been there — late-night lesson planning, colour-coded worksheets, three versions of every task, and trying to make sure every learner is “met where they are”. But what if that approach is actually holding students back more than helping them?

In this episode, Craig and Dave challenge the traditional idea of differentiation by task and explore how teaching has evolved into something far more powerful: adaptive teaching through scaffolding.

💡 Instead of dumbing down tasks… we scaffold up.
💡 Instead of lowering expectations… we raise them for everyone.
💡 Instead of labelling ability… we support progress in real time.

We talk about:
Why “all must, most should, some might” might be outdated
How the workload skyrocketed with traditional differentiation
Why struggle isn’t something to avoid in learning
The shift towards whole-class high-challenge teaching
What effective scaffolding actually looks like in practice

From Rosenshine-style modelling to worked examples, sentence starters, and real-time teacher support, this episode is packed with practical ideas you can actually use in the classroom tomorrow.
And yes — we also revisit the infamous “colour-coded worksheet era” 👀

Whether you’re an experienced teacher or just starting out, this conversation will challenge how you think about planning, delivery, and what real progress looks like in the classroom.

👉 Watch now and join the debate: Is differentiation really dead… or just evolving?

Great teaching isn’t just about degrees — it’s about connecting with students, building relationships, and staying one step ahead.

💬 Expect laughs, honest reflections, and some eyebrow-raising stories about life in the classroom — whether you’re a teacher, head of department, or just curious about how schools really work.

🔔 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and explore more support for teaching Computer Science with Craig’n’Dave.

#ComputerScience #GCSEComputing #ALevelComputing #TeachingTips #TeacherLife #EdTech #CraigAndDave

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

All must, most should, some might plan lessons late into the night.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello and welcome back to another At the Chalk face. And today the controversial heading we've titled this session up with is Differentiation is Dead. Ah, Dave, you come up with the titles for these ones, I tell you, you're getting into this marketing clickbait stuff, aren't you? But obviously, we're going to get into the nuances there. Are we saying differentiation as a broader concept has no place in the classroom? No, we're not, but it's certainly evolved, it's certainly changed. And what maybe we were taught as classic differentiation when we were learning, uh, we've moved on substantially from there. Um, so you're probably gonna uh you're probably gonna be annoyed at me here, Dave. I'm gonna go straight in with like our headline line for those people who are like too long didn't read. The line, and then we'll get into it, is no differentiation isn't dead. But what we would say, if you want one takeaway, you want to be off this video in 60 seconds, is we don't now differentiate down, we scaffold up.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Right, there's a lot more there. So you want to say done. You need some differentiation. You have too much to learn about this, uh about this YouTube space, my friend. Look, you don't want people off the video in the first 60 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

That's that's not that's not how I also know when you don't get to the point until 30 minutes in, people aren't watching. Right. Want to know more? Let's get into it, right? Dave, unpack that a little bit for me, or maybe give us a bit of the history. Well, why are we saying differential is dead? Because it certainly is dead in in what was the traditional form of how we were all told to do it for years.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yeah, well, it's definitely evolved. And one of the reasons that I wanted to discuss this today is because we are busy planning a new curriculum 2028 Key Stage 3 program of study or scheme of learning. Um and so, as part of that, we have to think about the activities that students are actually undertaking. And of course, you've got all the classic things in there like objective-led lessons, and you know, activities should be an opportunity to learn something and evidence in that learning and all the rest of it, and that's fine. But of course, part of the process is to think about um the nature of the activities that the students are doing. And we've decided that we are essentially going to have an activity that all students do, regardless of their data, regardless of their previous learning experiences, etc. There is going to be an activity the teacher introduces, all the students in the class do the same activity, and then there's a reflection and discussion phase where we tease out the learning afterwards. And this is quite um a bold move in a sense, because I know that there are going to be a lot of teachers out there that are going to look at that and say, well, where's your differentiation? And that's because we were sort of trained quite a long time ago to think about differentiation in terms of differentiation by task. And although we could kind of go on about all the different forms of differentiation that um exist, really we're just focusing on this idea of differentiation by task and differentiation by support today, although there are others that that we can could consider as I've said. But it's quite bold uh because I I reckon that will be some of the kickback that we'll get. Um, and and one of the things that I find quite challenging, Craig, is that teachers quite often say to me, um, you know, where's this? Where's that? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? That isn't suitable for my school, that's not suitable for my learners. And I have to keep saying, yeah, but the profession's moved on. Some of those ideas that you thought were sacrosanct and you thought, you know, we had to do things in a particular way, that's it's just not the case anymore. What you need to do is take a step back, reflect on what was it we were trying to achieve by doing it that way, and did it actually achieve its objectives? And if it if it didn't, let's be brave and say maybe there's an alternative way and not just keep perpetuating the same methods that we were taught years and years ago. So let's let's uh have a have a chat about those things from years and years and years ago, Craig. So um how were you taught to differentiate your lessons?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Right, I was gonna say, yeah. So let's get into what was possibly the classic way of differentiating. And I remember doing this. It it was the idea of well, of course, all students don't learn at the same ability, and some tasks will simply be too hard and too challenging for some students, and then the low ability will simply disengage, so you dumb everything down. Well, no, because then the higher ability uh will be bored. Well, there's only one answer, then, isn't there? We we we create different versions of the same task for different students. We put students in there effectively these these loose boxes or or groupings, and we produce tasks which are fit for purpose. They'll they'll stretch the higher ability, and then maybe most are in the middle, and they'll do something, and then sort of the the students with special educational needs or low ability, you know, we'll we'll give them a much easier task, they get a sense of achievement. And you know what, even as I'm saying it now, I could I can see myself back in the lectures going, oh, this is gold. Of course, it makes perfect sense. And we lapped it up as a nation, didn't we? Yes, we did, to the point where we had different coloured worksheets producing three times the amount of work on teachers' workload. And let's not go into that. I mean, much of this is about helping teachers, because if the teachers don't have time, the students get the learning. But at the end of the day, it wasn't the right approach for the students either. Because of course, what we ended up doing is we effectively were capping students' ability. We were saying, you are never able to do this, you won't be able to access this. This is the limit of what I expect from you. And it's really, I'd say, in the last well, this isn't super recent. I mean, the last decade, really, that the the shift has has changed. And I know you if you follow this channel, you know anything about Dave, you know he loves his reading and his research, and since he's out of teaching, he has more time than ever to get into it. So I'm sure you're going to mention a certain uh book and professor and research. But it's important for me to say here, this isn't just Craig and Dave's, oh, they're out of touch of the classroom now. Look at them preaching. This is backed by evidence and research. There is a fundamental shift. This is not simply coming from Dave and I. This is not a case of this is another resource provider out of touch. And before I hand back to Dave, I should say the new key stage three scheme of learning that we are writing for Creekland 2028. We are very aware that every year goes by as another year we're not in front of students every day. And we commit that we don't want to become that resource provider where you look at them and go, well, when was the last time they were in front of students? We have been trialling for months our units in comprehensive secondary schools. Uh, we've now developed five, six units and we're about to spread that out to two more schools. One's a grammar school, one's a private school. So we are looking at the full range of student abilities and school types and getting genuine feedback from real students and classes. And we're going into those schools and watching those lessons with those students. So, you know, we are very conscious to make sure that we apply differentiation in a modern, sensible way that helps the teachers with their workload, but ultimately is best for the students. And that is no longer differentiation by task. So I'll leave it there, otherwise, I could waffle on for ages and start taking your points. We could both talk about this for an hour about letting the other one talk. Um, so if that's not the way anymore, because it's limiting students, Dave, it's telling them the maximum they should achieve, it's increasing teachers' workloads. But we've already acknowledged differentiation is dead, is not actually true. What's what's what's the evolution? What's the new way of thinking?

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Yeah, the new way of thinking is really that um all students can rise to the challenge. And it's this idea that you provide differentiation by support. So the teacher is the differentiator, not the activity. All students can do the same activity, and it should be a challenging um activity that leads towards um learning the objectives of the lesson. But as a teacher, the amount of scaffolding that you give to students by going around assisting them or um challenging them with um higher order questions, or however you uh make the task easier or you make the task harder through support so that students are able to make progress, learn, and engage. That's really what it's about. You've got to be careful, of course, that you don't immediately think that because it's a challenging task and students look like they're not really engaging and getting on with it, that somehow that is a problem with the task, and you need to immediately jump in as a teacher, provide the scaffolding, and essentially make the task significantly easier. That's a mistake. And I think one of the things that we're beginning to really appreciate in the profession at the moment is it's okay to be stuck. Being stuck is a good place to be because that's when we learn. And it's important for students to appreciate that not always are there instant answers, not always are is there instant help, you know, not always uh is the task going to be easy. And it's really important that students are taught to embrace that kind of feeling, that feeling of it's a bit unsettling, you know, being a bit stuck, not quite knowing the answer, not quite knowing what to do next. And of course, it's very difficult for you as a teacher because you see it as your job to impart knowledge, to teach them, to enable them to make progress. So you naturally want to step in. You naturally want to immediately put the scaffold in place so that students can uh make progress very quickly. And the reason for that, of course, is over the years we've been told by our senior leaders and Ofsted and you know, the great and good, that it's all about pace, pace, pace. And it's all about uh making sure that by the end of the lesson a student can do something they couldn't do before the lesson, and we've got to be able to measure that and articulate it. And so there was this drive for lessons, individual lessons, to be the opportunity to learn. And this idea that you might learn a little bit more slowly over a greater period of time, that it might take many lessons to establish a concept rather than a single lesson. This is all new and revolutionary thinking, which is a bit odd because, of course, years and years and years ago, before the differentiation drive, that's where we were with this idea that learning is a slow process and that we need to take our time, that we need to um let students struggle. Let students struggle. And we've really got to kind of, as teachers, not dive in immediately with this with this scaffolding. But um, it's difficult because when you're being observed and the students are, you know, if they feel a little bit uneasy, you feel a little bit uneasy, and you feel like you have to impress the observer. Well, now I find it much more impressive if I'm in observing lessons, if the teacher has put the challenge in that makes the students have to think, that makes them have to pause, that they don't immediately get to that answer, you know. And and I'm now looking for those situations in lessons where the teacher is so confident in what they're doing that it results in students having a bit of a struggle.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I I yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And we we alluded to once that this isn't obviously just Dave and I spouting this from some kind of unrealistic uh soapbox. This is quite a shift, but it's it's worth mentioning that I mean at a at a policy level, you know, at a department for education level, I believe the word differentiation has all but been stripped. They now refer to it as something learning, uh adaptive learning. Adaptive teaching, sorry, yes, adaptive teaching. So, you know, that there is that shift there. And of course, I've alluded to it already, but I mean, if you haven't come across it already, Dave's mentioned it on a number of books. There's a great uh book out there which is a culmination of research called High Performance Learning, and you'll find an awful lot of SLT are now waving this about, and you may well have had uh uh inset days where an initiative has come out with this this this book, but it it's a real nice uh synthesis and it really summarizes the the shift in in what we're saying in this this video. Um I can't remember who the book's by. Dave, you're gonna tell me instantly.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah, it's Professor Deborah Eyre. And actually, before I forget, because you did say, oh, I'm sure Dave's going to mention books and literature and research and all the rest of it, and I kind of forgot. Um yeah, Professor Deborah Eyre high performance learning, you you can pick that up in a second. The other thing I wanted to mention though, before it left my mind, was way back in the 1960s, this book uh Pygmaliaum in the Classroom, which was all about a self-fulfilling prophecy. This idea that if you think learners um aren't up to a task, then they won't be up to the task. And it just fulfills these low expectations of students. And so I'm really surprised we went down this road with differentiation, given that research in the 1960s.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that that um self-fulfilling prophecy is something that really is, you know, true. It and and it can be reinforced by the teacher when you differentiate in task. And then, of course, the student reinforces it themselves. Well, I can't do it, well, I could never do that. So obviously the students reinforcing this self-fulfilling prophecy is I can't do it, it's too hard. You're then reinforcing it as a teacher and perpetuating, you know, that, oh, it's too hard, I can't do it by differentiating my time. Well, well, you you have the red task, you know. I mean obviously no teacher would say this, but basically you're saying, well, you you go to the dumb table. No, oh geez, none of us would would, you know, but that's essentially where we're you know, what we're saying. And of course, what high performance learning is effectively saying is we're changing the whole shift from it it's not a case of I can't do that, it's a case of, well, I can't do that yet. No, that's okay, no problem, and I'm gonna help you get there. You know, it's the same task for everyone because at the end of the day, let's face it, when we get to GCSE or A level, beyond to be careful here, because I think not as well as the other subjects, beyond I think maths, which I still maybe has two tiers of papers, I think every other subject, it's the same paper. You know, you cannot sit a lower grade paper that caps out at a five or whatever it is. I think maths still do to have the two tiers of papers. But beyond that, you know, everyone's gonna sit the same exam, so everyone's gonna get the same style of questions, and everyone has the potential to achieve the highest grade. So start now with a well, no, you can't do that yet, but that's okay. Um, we're going to get you there. And as Dave said, not jumping in too early with scaffolding, but being ready to then provide that level of support. And of course, scaffolding can come in so many ways and shapes. Because one criticism I'm literally thinking about now, well, hang on, you said you're saving my workload because I'm no longer differentiating by task. I don't have to use three different verses of each task, but you've just said I have to prepare for all sorts of levels of scaffolding. So my workload is still the same, isn't it? Because I'm preparing all sorts of different forms of scaffolding for different students. What would you say to combat that, Dave? Oh, shaking your head already. So, Gail, what would you say about that?

SPEAKER_02 16:58

You don't you don't need to plan for this. And maybe, you know, inexperienced teachers that are new into the profession are going to find this more challenging. I don't, I don't dispute that. But you don't need to plan anything. The differentiation by support, yes, you could have, you know, little knowledge organizers, or you could have um, you know, activity starters, or you know, little bits of help on the side that might be on a sheet of paper, possibly. But I personally don't think any of that is is necessary. I tend not to bother with all that myself. And I just um make sure, firstly, that the task is accessible, that there is um no barrier to entry, right? Everyone should be able to do something and feel some success without any real support. Okay. Um but then as the task develops, and maybe it does get a little bit more challenging or um it evolves in in different ways, then you as a teacher can go around and it's really easy to spot those students that aren't on task, right? And they're not on task because they're stuck most of the time. They don't quite know what to do, or they can't get themselves over the next hurdle, or whatever it happens to be. So I'm just really alert in my classroom to who's engaging and who's not engaging and why. And sometimes, of course, it can be those at the upper end that are not engaging because the task is a little bit too easy and they need challenging in different ways. They don't need a different task, they just need to have some higher order thinking injected. So I might go over to them and say, right, okay, I can see what you've done here. Um, but I want you to think about this and what about that? And tell me about this. And it's a way in which that they can then improve what they're doing. Equally, the student that is really struggling because they think the task isn't uh suitable for them, even though it really is, um, then it's a question of going over to them and you know, giving them the confidence to take the next step. And I would might say to them, well, if if I was doing this task, I might think about this or I might start here, or something you might want to consider is this, and not giving them the answer, but giving them enough to kind of get going. And it's about establishing high expectations. We've had a whole episode on high expectations. It's this idea of knowing the students are going to do what you tell them to do. And if you exert that confidence onto them, if you have that aura about you as a teacher in the classroom that you expect the students will be doing uh what you've asked them to do, then they will. And it's very easy then to kind of go around and then just provide in real time, no real planning, just the scaffolding that is required to enable students to access the task and take the next step.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So just say and challenging constantly, I was going to say, Dave, um, negative language with supportive language and being consistent so that you challenge every I can't do it with I can't do it yet. Yeah. But we're gonna we're going to give it a go. We're going to get there. I'm going to help you get there. You don't accept, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it yet, which you know was a real shift, wasn't it, with the high performance learning. This this whole idea of it's a not yet attitude, not a oh, I can't, therefore, I'm going to create a dumbed-down task that caps your learning.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

So confessions box, because I do like to reminisce a bit as as you know, Craig. You do. Um, I'm just thinking back to, you know, this all came about, this idea of differentiation and, you know, all must, most should, some might. It kind of came out of the era of the national strategies.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

And um this was a time of life, life with levels. Okay. We often I haven't heard this phrase for a long time now, life after levels, because originally students were assessed at key stage three in levels, and that all uh disappeared around sort of 20 uh 2015. And we talked about you know life after levels, and that's the era that we're living in now, where there is no um assessment, national assessment framework, and schools can assess students however they like. But back in the day, um there were levels, and students were supposed to be assessed uh against these national standards. So if you were a level five in one school, then it was the same as being a level five in another school, because each of these levels uh essentially had certain traits and standards. I've forgotten what I would really call them now, but success criteria for want of a better term. Anyway, so these levels went all the way from sort of level one to level eight. Um Descriptor for level eight, descriptor, that's probably the word. The descriptor for level eight was, you know, uh something very, very nebulous. But what we used to do at Key Stage 3 is you'd used to say, well, students at the lower end would be typically level four, they could be level three, but you would associate that really with primary school. Level five, level six, and at the very top end, it would be level seven. And level eight was just kind of you descended from the heavens, it was it was unachievable, really. It was it was so nebulous, it didn't really mean very much. So what I used to do is I used to pitch my activities at kind of you know level five, because that was sort of seen as about about the average. And then, yeah, so I'd have level four activities, level five activities, level six activities, and then a kind of stretch activity for for level seven, that might have only been for one or two students in the class. Um, and it it was you know this idea of they get into they get into whatever we're learning, and I have three versions of this activity, and they they pitch in depending on how well they got on with previous units and tasks. So if they were, you know, by the data, a level five student, then they would do a level five task. But I I always kind of felt really uncomfortable with that for the reasons that we've said, you know, it's glass ceilings, it's putting learners in a box, it's judging them by ability. I was never a big fan, but I knew I had to do it because it was the expectation from the senior leaders. Yeah. So I kind of used to set it up so that it was very easy to drift from a level four into a level five, into a level six activity. So I would try and kind of get the students, if they were pitching in at level five, to then be like, okay, but you were level five last time. Let's kind of get through those level five aspects. And I want you to push on to the level six. And the level six activity kind of built on the level five activity. It was quite a lot of careful crafting with these activities to make sure that level six activity could stand alone for those students that are pitching in at level six immediately, but it was sufficiently available for those at level five to get into the level six. And it it just took hours and hours and hours of planning to kind of to kind of get there. And then in the end, the conclusion is like, nah, let's let's just let's just all do the level six, level seven activity and try and you know get there through my support. Um come on then, Craig. What how what how did it what did it look like in your classroom?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Oh, don't you're all over the place at our school. We had initiative left, right, and centre. I mean, I had so many different coloured bits of paper at one point. Not to mention then obviously the different colours of paper for obviously, you know, students who needed different coloured papers for various learning requirements and need, and then three different coloured tasks for your lower, middle, and upper, and then your almost sum and all do this. And and then you say you have all these level descriptors as well, which were then for us back then stuck on every single book as well. And of course, what would happen? I saw Key Stage three once a week. You know, we saw them once a week. So what happened when it got to the next report? Let's just be honest. And any teacher who is being honest, what do we do? Oh, and sorry, we didn't have levels, did we? No, each level had three sub-levels because what you want in a bunch of nebulous descriptors that you can't match to students that you don't see very regularly, anyway, is three various sub-levels were in it. So we had a 5A and a 5C, and no SLT wanted the levels to go down, and you knew you'd be asked they went down. So on the next report, you looked at the level you gave them and you put them up a sub-level. That's what happened, Dave. And the students went up like that. Good. SLT were happy, you were happy. Yeah, yeah, you were happy, SLT were happy. I tell you what, what it isn't happy is the actual genuine learning that's going on with students and the workload that you've created yourself. I mean, I would just be repeating a lot of what you said if I went into that in detail. So I mean, I I couldn't be more glad that that that that idea was gone. And there is one other thing I want to touch on uh that you said earlier, um, because there are some very simple things you can do. Like when I turn around and said, Oh, well, a teacher might come back with, well, hang on, you've said you'll reduce my workload by um I don't have to differentiate by making multiple tasks, but you're saying I just need to scaffold up, so I need to provide lots of different types of scaffolding and the extra maybe worksheets and things there. And of course, you were very keen and shaking your head. Uh uh, and you know, Dave's idea was well, we can scaffold up for every student just by being there and being engaged. And yes, there's a lot of that. And teachers, yes, you should be active where we're keen believers in students learning through doing and not being at the front. What that means is while they're doing, you're not just sat at your computer twiddling your fingers and looking at the next holiday you can book. You're in there and amongst the class, you know, you're you're answering. But I do acknowledge the fact, and this is where I'm going, Dave. I do acknowledge the fact that there is only one of you and 30 students. And there are simple things you can do, though, to provide that scaffolding. So I don't think it is quite as simple, Dave, as when you say, Well, you don't actually have to do anything with scaffolding. You can do, but but they can be really simple things, they can be low effort things, as simple as sentence starters. You know, sentence starters. Well, you know, the higher students, higher students, I'm getting into it now. So you know, that some students don't need the sentence starters, but what can be scaffolding? Well, uh just here's a few sentence starters to get in the right direction, and you can then remove the scaffolding. So there are things you can do, you know. One thing I'm quite keen of, and that the evidence has actually shown this research, is worked examples. So if you've got a problem you want students to do in your head's like, why haven't they produced that work? Well, you never showed them what a good work looked like. I don't mind putting effort into doing a worked example, a model answer, and even sharing it, not say leaving it on the board, because yeah, they'll just copy it. But so we're gonna do this. This is ideally something like this is what I'm what you're aiming at. That little thing there is enough to concrete. Well, I see where I'm going. I might not be able to get there, but I can get five steps there. So I'm I'm not saying there's nothing you do, scaffolding, you know, that there is some simple things, but I think they're low effort for high reward, I think is where I'm going.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

And you're you're absolutely right. And this is obviously Rosenschein's principles as well, you know, providing models. Absolutely. And I would say to teachers, do the work you expect the students to do. And then you have a model. And you can, as Craig says, you can talk about it at the beginning so they know what they're aiming for. Um, so they're not just kind of starting blind and they don't know what the expectation is. But as Craig says, you can take that then off the board, replace back with the success criteria, and then um you can bring that model back out when you're supporting individuals, you know, at their workstations and say, right, let's compare your work to my work. What do you notice about this? Um, and get them to articulate, oh, yeah, okay, well, you've done this and I've done that. And right, right. So that's one area that you might want to look at to improve your work. So yeah, you're absolutely right, Craig. I mean, yeah, um, I kind of took for granted that I've already got some of those model answers because we actually create as part of the planning process. So I didn't really consider that. I was trying to avoid teachers creating endless worksheets because that that's not what we want.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

No, absolutely. And essentially what we're talking about there is modeling success. You know, if you model what success looks like, you share that with the students, they have a clear vision of where it's going, and then you can use that as part of your conversations and and support as you're going around. It doesn't need to stay on the board because you're right. A lot of students, you know, let's face it, if you can take the easy option in life, you'll do it. I mean, we do those as adults. If you leave, if you leave the model answer on the board, a lot will just copy it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't model success. So, you know, yes, there are some things that you can do as part of scaffolding, but they can be quite simple. You know, sentence starters, Dave mentioned knowledge organizers, maybe towards the you know, the end of a unit, you know, um modelling what a finished ideal exemplar answer would look like. Think things, things like this. And and you know, we exemplify that in some of the units we're producing, just to come back to key stage three, you know, with some of the slightly trickier tasks. We've ever thought, is this task too hard to access? Have we just pitched this too high? And we've gone into a class classroom, a real classroom, we've tested it, we've seen it. We haven't then thrown away the activity. We've stuck with the high performance mindset, and we go, right, but what we'll do is we'll adapt the task and what add maybe. There's all sorts of things we've done, but we'll add hint boxes and we'll challenge the students. Have a go at this task. Your challenge, try it without looking at any of the hint tasks. Okay, right, now I'm gonna go back. I don't see anyone touching a hint task. I'm really, I've really just not got to tell you what, remove hint number one. Ooh, that's enough to set me off in the right direction. So that's sort of thing. We've designed the one task, but maybe with some hidden hint boxes and suggestions. You know, in English, as I said, that might become sort of sentence starters or or ways of extending a paragraph to further your line of reasoning. Take that full stop off, put a comma, and put because. You know, think things like that. There are lots of simple things you you can do. Um, we could, wow, Dave, we've already been talking about this for half an hour. We could really talk about this for ages. Um, is there anything really key? Uh some key message you feel we haven't touched on yet? Because there's a lot in here.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

No, I think that's probably enough uh for now on the topic of differentiation. I'm sure it's going to be something that we return to because it's a kernel of education. Uh so we'll we'll probably revisit it. I think my my final concluding uh message is if you're looking for differentiation by task in Craig and Dave resources, you're going to be really disappointed. It's not something we believe in, and it's not something we believe in because the evidence and research in modern contemporary pedagogy has said that it's not the most effective approach. And so we don't do it. So sorry, you're not going to get different worksheets and different activities for different groups of learners. They all do the same activity. You provide the scaffolding.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Perfect. Well, there you are. Differenation is only differentiation isn't dead, it's just evolved. We don't dumb down, we scaffold up. There you go. Uh well, more for this for me and Dave next week on another at the chalk face. Thanks for now, everyone. Bye bye.