Adaptive Teaching Made Easier

Description

In this resource, we unpick what “adaptive teaching” actually looks like when it is done well — not as a one-off intervention, but as a year-long habit of noticing, checking, and responding. Adaptive teaching is not a synonym for differentiation-by-worksheet. It is the professional judgement teachers use to keep pupils learning the same curriculum, with sensible adjustments to instruction, scaffolding, practice, and support.

This month’s slide deck focuses on making adaptive teaching easier to plan and lead at scale. You’ll find practical tools to help teachers anticipate common stumbling blocks, use checks for understanding (CFU) to decide what happens next, and make adaptations without lowering challenge. For school leaders, the emphasis is on consistency: agreeing on “non-negotiable” routines, reducing reinvention (so staff aren’t creating the same scaffolds repeatedly), and using simple quality assurance prompts that show whether adaptation improved learning, not just compliance or calm.

Developed by Ross Morrison McGill (@TeacherToolkit), this resource helps build a shared language for adaptation, a set of ready-to-use templates, and a whole-school CPD implementation plan so this becomes a culture and not a fad