Every teacher agrees students need different things. The trouble is the folk version of differentiation that quietly became the standard: prepare a separate activity for the “low”, “middle” and “high” groups, every lesson, in every subject. Nobody can sustain triple planning — so it becomes something teachers feel guilty about instead of something students receive.
The sustainable version starts from a different premise: one well-designed task, with planned ways in and planned ways up.
Low-floor, high-ceiling tasks
An open task lets every student start and nobody finish early. “The answer is 24 — what could the question be?” is accessible to a student writing 20 + 4 and stretches the one writing 100 − 76 or 4 × 3 × 2. One prompt, the whole spread, zero extra worksheets. Most closed questions can be reopened: instead of “find the perimeter of this rectangle”, try “draw three different shapes with a perimeter of 24 cm”.
Enabling and extending prompts
Plan the task once, then plan two sentences: the enabling prompt you'll offer a stuck student (a simpler entry, a resource, a worked start — not a different task), and the extending promptfor the student who's done (“what if it had to work for any number?”, “convince me it's always true”). Two sentences on a sticky note is real differentiation; three worksheets is mostly photocopying.
Must / should / could
Frame one task in three layers: everyone must reach the core, most shouldget further, some couldtake the challenge. Students self-select upward more often than you'd predict, and nobody gets handed the “bottom group” sheet in front of their friends.
Differentiate the support, not always the task
- Same task, with a word bank, sentence starters or a partially worked example.
- Same task, expressed differently: draw it, build it, record it, act it out.
- Same task, with visual supports carrying the instructions, so working memory goes to the thinking.
- Same task, different scaffold for the recording: table provided vs. blank page.
Where the time actually goes
Notice what all of these share: the cost is at the thinkingstage — choosing the open task, writing the two prompts, deciding the layers — not at the production stage. That's the part worth protecting your energy for, and it's also the part a planning tool can accelerate without replacing your judgement. A lesson ideas generator that returns activities with above- and below-level strategies attached gives you the raw material for must/should/could in one pass; you spend your minutes selecting and sharpening, not inventing from a blank page at 9pm.
Differentiation was never meant to mean more documents. It means more ways in. Plan one rich task, two prompts, and the supports that lower the barrier — and let the paperwork version go without guilt.