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Do you need ideas for how to differentiate your teaching to be sure your math students are progressing? Below are seven differentiation strategies for math instruction, along with ways that you can use them in your math classroom. They serve as examples of differentiated instruction in math and may work better for some classrooms and math topics than others. Customize these ideas however you need to serve you and your students.

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Do you need ideas for how to differentiate your teaching to be sure your math students are progressing? Below are seven differentiation strategies for math instruction, along with ways that you can use them in your math classroom. They serve as examples of differentiated instruction in math and may work better for some classrooms and math topics than others. Customize these ideas however you need to serve you and your students.

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Strategy 1: Math Centers

For this, you’ll need to come up with a few activities your students can rotate through, such as watching a video, reading an article, or solving a word problem. Math teachers should spend about 10 minutes on a mini-lesson for the whole class and then students spend about 15 minutes at various math centers. They might meet with the teacher in a small group for extra help, use math software, do a game or project at the hands-on station, or do seat work based on the day’s mini-lesson.

Math centers are a powerful way to facilitate independent and small group learning within your classroom. If a select group of your students are all struggling to, say, add fractions, they may benefit from an activity that has them practice finding least common denominators. Think about ways to customize the groupings and centers so they’re perfect for your students’ strengths, misconceptions, and interests, and make use of tools that strategically group students and recommend activities for you.

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Choice is an important part of differentiation, and letting students decide how they want to spend their time is a great way to appeal to various learning preferences. You’ll need to come up with math problems, tasks, or questions. As much as possible, use or create cards that span several lessons and offer options to work independently, with a partner, or in a small group. Ask for feedback so you can adjust future learning accordingly. Go Math includes inquiry-based task and project cards that help teachers differentiate.

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Math choice boards are a carefully selected collection of math experiences which are differentiated and designed to support student engagement and agency.   They are effective in the physical classroom as well as in distance learning as asynchronous assignments.

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Characteristics of Choice Boards:

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Support student choice

The teacher chooses the tasks, categories, the amount assigned, and the timeframe

The student chooses which tasks to do and why, who to work with, and how to express the learning

Engage students in rich math tasks

Are differentiated to meet every student’s needs

Are designed to support students in setting goals and making purposeful choices in service of their goals

With a choice board, not all students will be doing the same tasks but instead will make choices based on learning goals which are guided by the teacher.

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Having students write about math is a great way for them to reflect on what they’ve learned and incorporate ELA instruction into the math classroom. Encourage your kids to summarize key points, answer open-ended questions, tie math into everyday experiences, or write about the most interesting or challenging math lesson. It’s also a way to provide an entry point for all students, including multilingual learners, as they can write a little or a lot in English or in their native language. Those who need extra support might be given sentence starters. Students might also be given the choice to illustrate their ideas instead of writing them.

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Math journals, or problem solving notebooks as they are sometimes referred to, are books in which students are often asked to record their strategy and thought processes, as well as solutions. While students learn how to "do" math, they must also learn how to articulate what they are learning. It is important to provide many opportunities for students to organize and record their work without the structure of a worksheet. Math journals support students' learning because, in order to get their ideas on paper, children must organize, clarify, and reflect on their thinking. Initially many students will need support and encouragement in order to communicate their ideas and thinking clearly on paper but, as with any skill, the more they practice the easier it will become.  Math journals also serve as invaluable assessment resources that can inform classroom instruction. Requiring students to communicate their reasoning processes provides a useful insight into what a child understands, how s/he approaches ideas and what misconceptions s/he has.  By dating entries the journal provides a chronological record of the development of a student’s mathematical thinking throughout the year.

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If metacognition is the ability to think about thinking—including about how you learn—we owe it to students to help them develop and expand their metacognitive skills. One way to do this is to work on learning contracts. Throughout the year, ask students to reflect on important lessons and set learning goals, including skills to learn or improve as well as new areas to explore. Use these learning contracts to help students learn to organize their thoughts.

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Games are fun, motivational, and can help students deepen their mathematical reasoning. Some games encourage students to develop strategic and problem-solving skills or improve computational fluency. Seek out games where the math learning objective matches the game objective as a way for students to find joy in learning. Go Math! was designed to include both ready-made games for math centers and recommended games for differentiation within the teacher’s edition.

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There are also lots of math apps and online tools that are designed to reinforce foundational understanding by allowing students to practice arithmetic and other math standards. In particular, seek out apps that are not simply timed drills with fun graphics, which are likely to make math anxiety worse for students who are not yet fluent in math facts. For digital math practice that extends far beyond just practicing arithmetic, our newest Go Math! for Grades K–6 has adaptive and personalized practice that aligns to our supplemental practice program, Waggle.

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Refer to the I Can Statement beginning, middle, and end of each lesson. Students need to gauge their learning throughout the lesson.

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Start each lesson with Problem of the Day

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This is a great tool to use while teaching each lesson because, when projected, the students will see what's in their textbooks projected on the teacher's device.