Teaching at BPPS
Supporting Every Learner: Enabling and Extending Students in the Classroom
At Boroondara Park Primary School, we know that every student learns differently. Our teachers work hard to ensure that all students are appropriately supported and challenged, so that every child can make progress from their individual starting point.
When planning lessons, we begin by considering the learning needs of the majority of students in our class – approximately 80%. We then plan for students who may need additional support to access the learning, as well as students who are ready to take their learning further. We call these enablers and extenders.
What are enablers?
Enablers are supports that help students access the same learning intention as their classmates. They might include a simpler starting point, additional modelling, a visual prompt, working with a partner, concrete materials or targeted teacher support.
For example, in a recent mathematics unit on fractionsIn Grade 3/4, some students were supported to identify and represent simpler fractions such as halves and quarters using familiar examples from their environment. Other students used concrete materials such as LEGO or Unifix to build and represent fractions.
Enablers are not about giving students less learning. They are about providing the right support so that students can successfully engage with the learning.
What are extenders?
Extenders provide additional challenge for students who demonstrate that they are ready to move beyond the core learning. Rather than simply giving these students more work, teachers provide opportunities to think more deeply, make connections, explain their reasoning and apply their knowledge in new ways.
For example, while learning about fractions, students who were ready for extension were challenged to identify more complex fractions in their environment, represent them and investigate equivalent fractions.
In a lesson about time in Grade 3/4, students who had mastered reading times on a clock could be challenged with real world problems involving duration, such as working out the finishing time of a movie.
How do teachers know who needs an enabler or extender?
This is where checking for understanding is an important part of our teaching.
Rather than waiting until the end of a lesson or unit to find out what students have understood, we continually check student understanding throughout the lesson. Our classrooms incorporate explicit teaching, opportunities for students to practise and frequent opportunities for every student to respond and show what they know.
These opportunities might include:
- Think-Pair-Share – students think independently, discuss their ideas with a partner and then share their thinking.
- Whiteboards – students quickly show their answer or thinking so the teacher can see everyone's understanding.
- Stop and Jot – students pause to record an idea, answer or reflection.
Cold Calling – teachers invite individual students to share their thinking after a Think-Pair-Share, sharing their thinking on Whiteboards or Stopping and Jotting, ensuring that all students are actively involved in the learning.
These strategies give teachers valuable information about what students understand in the moment. We can then adjust our teaching, provide further support or introduce an extension when a student is ready.
Learning that is responsive to students
Differentiation is not about putting students into fixed groups or giving different work to different children all of the time. A student's learning needs can change from lesson to lesson, or even during a single lesson.
Our goal is to create classrooms where students are appropriately challenged, supported and encouraged to think deeply. We want students to experience success while also being stretched beyond what they can already do.
By carefully planning for the majority of students, providing enablers and extenders, explicitly teaching key concepts and continually checking for understanding, our teachers are working to ensure that every student is learning, every student is challenged and every student is supported to make progress.
Julie Tainsh
Learning Specialist - Curriculum
Grade 5/6 Teacher