Adaptive teaching: at its core, it’s simply what great teachers do every day. It’s the natural adjustments we make, often without realising, to help every student in our classroom thrive. This ability to adapt is embedded in our teacher DNA—born from our shared goal of seeing each child reach their highest potential.

What Is Adaptive Teaching?

At its heart, adaptive teaching is about responding to the needs of all learners in the moment, without segregating or singling out students. Instead of creating entirely separate tasks or lessons for individual students, adaptive teaching involves small, meaningful adjustments that enable everyone to access the learning with teachers who respond flexibly to learning challenges.

It’s responsive teaching that adapts to the classroom environment, based on student needs and ongoing assessment. This could mean simplifying instructions, adding scaffolds, or extending challenges—all without disrupting the flow of the lesson.

Why Every Teacher Can Excel at Adaptive Teaching

Teachers instinctively want the best for every student. Whether it’s changing the pace of a lesson, rephrasing a question, or offering an extra example to a struggling learner, we make these adjustments regularly. The best part? We’re often doing these things without consciously labelling them as “adaptive teaching.”

This instinct is what makes us naturally adept at adaptive teaching. It’s embedded in us because of our commitment to seeing every child succeed.

Practical Strategies for Adaptive Teaching

Education South West offers a fantastic overview of the practical examples of adaptive teaching that we can all integrate within our practice:

1. Plan for Adaptability

Before your lesson even begins, consider how you can adapt different stages and approaches based on your students' evolving needs. Think about common barriers to learning, and plan how you can overcome them. For example:

• Prepare sentence starters or vocabulary banks for students who may struggle with extended or independent writing - need further scaffolding? Consider using Widgit or the Noun Project to quickly connect visuals to support meaning.
• Have extra challenges ready for those who finish tasks quickly - but make sure these are accessible for all learners.
• Prepare a range of questioning levels—from simple recall questions to higher-order thinking—which engage all learners. Again, consider the speaking and listening scaffolds that could provide the opportunity for all learners to access higher-order thinking questions.

2. Use Ongoing Assessment

Formative assessment is key to adaptive teaching. During the lesson, keep an eye on how students are engaging. Use quick checks for understanding, such as exit tickets, or mini whiteboards and quick quizzes.

• If you notice gaps in understanding, adjust your approach: re-explain concepts, offer visual aids, or give peer support opportunities.
• For students who show mastery, stretch their thinking with more complex tasks or deeper questions.

3. Make Scaffolding Available for All

Scaffolding is central to adaptive teaching and it’s about making the right tools available to all those who require it in order to achieve their full potential. Strategies like:

• Visual aids: Use diagrams, pictures, or infographics to make abstract ideas more concrete.
• Step-by-step instructions: Break tasks into manageable chunks, guiding students through the learning process and offering an opportunity to feel successful at each stage that is achieved.
• Sentence stems: Make language frameworks accessible for all who would like it, supporting the ability to express ideas more clearly and at the highest cognitive level for their potential, rather than the highest level that their proficiency in English allows. Every learner can benefit from this support.
• Collaborative learning: Pair up students to support each other in tasks and use flexible grouping to encourage peer learning.

4. Make In-the-Moment Adjustments

One of the greatest strengths of adaptive teaching is our ability to make adjustments during the lesson.

If a student is struggling, you might:

• Rephrase or clarify instructions.
• Offer extra time or simplify the wording or structure of the task without lowering expectations.
• Introduce physical resources like number lines or graphic organisers to support learning.

For more confident students, adaptive teaching allows us to:

• Introduce extension tasks.
• Ask more challenging questions to deepen their understanding.
• Encourage self-directed learning with independent projects or research tasks.

5. Utilise Teaching Assistants Effectively

If you have a teaching assistant in your classroom, they can play a vital role in adaptive teaching. Rather than having them support only specific students, consider:

• Stationing the TA at a key activity station to support all students who need it during group work.
• Using the TA to circulate the room, offering quick, in-the-moment help to any student who requires extra guidance.
• Planning collaboratively with your TA so they can anticipate when and where their support will be most effective.

For more insights on this, check out Sara Alston's 2022 article on how to plan lessons with your teaching assistant (SecEd, 2022).

6. Anticipate Barriers

It’s important to think ahead about potential barriers students may face. Planning for these in advance allows you to remove obstacles before they hinder learning. Some examples include:

• Providing bilingual resources or planning for activities which draw on learners' home languages.
• Using visual timetables for students who need additional help with structure.
• Ensuring tasks have clear, step-by-step guidance so all students know exactly what to do.
• Giving advance notice of when the lesson will change pace or activity so that learners have time to adjust.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) provides a fantastic framework in their "Five-a-day for SEND learners" approach, outlining strategies that are beneficial for all students but crucial for SEND and multilingual learners. By integrating these into your daily practice, you’ll create an inclusive environment that benefits everyone. Read more about EEF’s Five-a-day for SEND outcomes here.

Remember: Adaptive Teaching Is Already in Us

The key to embracing adaptive teaching is recognising that it’s something we’re already doing. It’s woven into the fabric of effective teaching because it’s rooted in the desire to meet each learner where they are.

The core principles of adaptive teaching are strategies many teachers use instinctively. By recognising these moments, we can share successful strategies with colleagues, contributing to a whole-school dialogue on what works best for specific students and contexts. These small adjustments don’t add to your workload but instead make lessons more effective, engaging, and inclusive for all learners.

Adaptive teaching is not just something we do—it’s in our DNA.

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-five-a-day-to-improve-send-outcomes