Building the Foundations of Differentiation: Helping Students to Set Clear Goals

Most teachers at some point have struggled to cope with the range of abilities and backgrounds of students in a class. Tailoring instructional methods and materials to meet language levels, whilst making sure all students have the opportunity to benefit from the class can feel like a huge and impossible task.

This is because differentiated instruction goes beyond simply providing translated materials or language support, but also involves understanding students’ individual strengths, challenges, cultural backgrounds, and prior knowledge.

To effectively differentiate, a key step is therefore to accurately assess students’ language levels and identify any specific language needs they may have. It is also important to go beyond linguistic abilities and consider students’ cultural backgrounds. How you can do this with a group and not become swamped by information is easier said than done though.

Get to know students’ needs – and make sure students know them as well

One possible method is with individual learning plans (ILPs). Many teachers use these to help students focus their efforts on where it’s most needed. An ILP is a personalised roadmap for a student's learning journey, outlining their specific goals, strengths, and areas for improvement. Since they are produced by students themselves, ILPs should take student's unique needs and interests into account, and help to guide their learning by making them think about what really motivates them. There are plenty of ILP templates online, such as this one, which breaks down goals into steps so that they can be achieved. Once everyone has their ILPs, make sure they get reviewed regularly, to tick off the things that have been achieved and to keep adding new and more challenging ambitions.

However, a downside of ILPs is that they often look like official documents, meaning that students might find them dull or boring to fill out. Some won’t mind this, and they’ll appreciate their goals being set out clearly, but others might want to use their creativity a bit more. A method that can engage students is a vision board. This is a visual representation of students’ goals and ambitions. Students can draw their vision boards, create collages, or even make digital versions that they can access on their devices wherever they are. Although the scientific basis of vision boards is sometimes disputed, if they help students to set goals more effectively than an ILP document, that’s better than setting no goals at all.

These are just two methods that students can use to set goals, but there are thousands more if you look online. Whichever method you choose, a class of students with goals that are clear to everyone can only help you to differentiate in your class, as it identifies things like which students are less confident, or which ones have high ambitions. It also tells you which themes and topics might be of interest in the class.

Finally, goal setting and reflection isn’t just for students. It’s also key for your development as a teacher. Check out this post from Erin on how you can keep learning and developing as a teacher by asking the right questions about your work.