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How differentiation works in BitMaths

BitMaths 15/11/21

We know how important differentiation is in the classroom. Let’s take a look at how BitMaths differentiated activities can help you cater for everyone in your class, from struggling students to maths masterminds.

Concept Activities

Each concept activity includes four sets of differentiated questions. Students complete the understanding set before continuing to one of the three differentiated sets: support, consolidation or extension.

The understanding set is designed to solidify students’ knowledge of the concept taught in the teaching slideshow. Questions in this set graduate in difficulty from C-standard to A-standard questions. The first few questions generally require a basic knowledge of the mathematical concept, whereas later questions require higher-order application and link to real-world contexts.

The results from the understanding set prompt students to complete a follow-up set of differentiated activities, targeted to their understanding level. The automatic prompting is based on this set of guidelines:

Result	Recommended Activity
<50%	Support
50%–80%	Consolidation
>80%	Extension

Not only is this built-in differentiation a valuable time-saver when it comes to classroom management, you can also feel confident that students are given timely and scaffolded activities suited to their abilities. Of course, at times you may wish to use your teacher discretion and have students work on the set of your choosing rather than follow the automatic prompts.

Problem-Solving Activities

After you’ve taken students through the guided problem to model critical thinking skills and strategic problem-solving, students apply their problem-solving skills in independent activities.

Problem-solving activities in BitMaths are provided at three levels of difficulty: support, consolidation and extension. You can direct students to the differentiated problem best suited to their level of competency or allow students to self-select which problems to solve.

Reasoning Tasks

BitMaths employs an innovative and comprehensive approach to mathematical reasoning with a dedicated reasoning task in every module.

While every student tackles the same reasoning activity, each student is able to choose whether they’d like to complete it alone or with the help of the Reasoning Wizard.

The Reasoning Wizard guides students through a scaffolded critical-thinking sequence and helps teach students effective problem-solving attack skills by providing question prompts.

Watch our Reasoning tutorial to see the Reasoning Wizard in action.

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