Middle School // Differentiated Homework for Math

Like most classrooms these days, my 6th grade math class spends a big part of our day doing small group instruction, or ‘centers’. Centers are a great way to have students work on individualized learning and hone in on practicing skills that they may need extra help on, but someone else may not. I see the biggest growth from my students when centers are planned intentionally and students’ take pride in their work, but I always felt that I wasn’t doing enough to meet students where they were at. 

Queue inspiration! During fall student-led conferences I had a handful of families ask about homework. Well, if a student doesn’t finish that day's work in class, it’s homework, I explained. But what about actual homework, they pressed. Actual homework? You want me to send home middle school math work for you to do with your child at home? (This sparked numerous memories of sitting at the dinner table with my mom, going over factor trees and multiplication charts and her saying something like I don’t know it just is 5 ok!) But yes, that homework. Okay, I said. I’ll look into it.

Here’s the idea: differentiated homework!

I love centers and working with students in small groups, but like I mentioned, it just wasn’t enough. So when I started planning my next term’s small group instruction plans, I added standard-aligned homework. Here’s how I manage it:

My students were already organized into 4 small groups: Ada Lovelace, Blaise Pascal, Katherine Johnson, and Alan Turing. I use mathematicians names to not only inspire students (we talk about their individual lives and history in the beginning of the year) but so students can’t tell which groups are, what I consider, my high, medium, and low performing groups, whereas 1, 2, 3 or Green, Yellow, Red groups may give that away. I then planned normally - I looked through my data and found standards that needed to be revisited, or in the case of my high level groups, what standards to stretch to. After collecting 6-10 learning targets per group, I wrote small group lesson plans, including warm-ups and exit tickets. The final step was finding worksheets that aligned with those standards and creating homework packets for students. 

It was truly that easy. I continued my normal work process and just added intentional, self-paced work to supplement my small group instruction. By planning ahead I had 3 months worth of homework packets created. The difference has been incredible! I’ve heard directly from students’ mouths how much their homework has helped them with standardized tests, such as the NWEA. The packets have also brought a new level of responsibility to our class, as students are responsible for bringing their packet to our teacher table when their group has small group instruction, or they miss out on help and have to figure it out on their own. I can also see the sense of pride and ownership they have for their work - they know that this work is for them specifically, they’re working on their own goals at their own pace, and when they succeed at it, the smiles stretch for miles!