Teaching is brilliantly complex, endlessly challenging, and potentially the most rewarding of the professions. No two lessons are the same. No two classes are the same. This diversity and complexity demands an expertise from teachers that is too often underestimated. Teachers need to constantly anticipate, act and adapt.

There is a recognition the classes are increasingly diverse. For example, around 1 in 5 pupils in English schools have identified special educational needs. It is no surprise then that ‘adaptive teaching’ has proven popular, as it offers practical ways to address the reality that all pupils are learning in different ways, at different rates, while many are struggling to learn. 

Adaptive teaching describes the deft expertise of being responsive to the in-the-moment realities of all teaching. It comes into play when the lesson plan goes off-piste because pupils know less than expected about atomic structure in GCSE science, or when young children hold a crucial misconception about place value in maths. 

While we rightly conceive of adaptive teaching as commonly occurring during tricky tasks and in the middle of busy lessons, expert teachers can make vital planning steps to anticipate for adaptive responses before they teach too.

Planning that unlocks the power of anticipation

A teacher who is an ‘adaptive expert’ routinely anticipates skilfully before they adapt responsively. 

What practical examples of powerful anticipation align well with adaptive teaching? 

Teachers typically seek out issues that prove barriers to learning, such as:

Key gaps in prior knowledge, such as possessing a weak chronology when learning about the Tudors in history.
Common misconceptions, such as a skewed sense of scale and space when learning about the atom.
Simplistic stereotypes, such as attitude to gender when learning about Lady Macbeth in English literature.
Limited working memory, such as when primary teachers are teaching how to draft, edit and revise their recount writing.
Literacy challenges, such as fluency issues when reading aloud, or handwriting issues.
Self-regulation challenges, such as the typical struggle to execute independent reading successfully. 

It’s clear that anticipating where learning will be likely to break down for the pupils is one of the key prerequisites for successful adaptative teaching (and there just so happens to be an excellent book about ‘Why Learning Fails’ too!).

Experts who anticipate

One of the key academic experts on teacher expertise, Prof David Berliner, described expert teachers as having, “more accurate pattern recognition capabilities”. They better anticipate. Not only that, but they also “are more flexible, are more opportunistic planners”, compared to novices that are “more rigid in their conceptions”. He could be describing adaptive teaching.

Anticipation comes from teacher expertise, but expertise requires ample experience. There is no shortcut to acquiring the depth of knowledge and experience required for effective anticipation, but deploying teaching strategies that quickly offer diagnostic assessments of pupils’ learning can accelerate the process. 

The following strategies can help teachers quickly anticipate learning barriers, so that teachers can adapt:

  • Pre-testing. Perhaps paradoxically, testing pupils on a topic before they have studied it can help reveal gaps in their knowledge, but also prime them for future learning. This approach needs to be treated sensitively, but done well it can develop curiosity and increase motivation to learn. 
  • Anticipation guides. A set of statements or questions about the key concepts of the new content that students answer before learning the material e.g. in science, posing true or false statements, such as ‘Plants get their food from the soil’, can initiate discussion and quickly tease out misconceptions.
  • Mini-whiteboard checks for understanding. Many teachers swear by the good ol’ mini-whiteboard. In subjects like science, where recall of facts or quick visuals of models can be quickly represented on the whiteboard, it proves a longstanding strategy to foster anticipation and fuel adaptive teaching (see a handy blog by Adam Boxer HERE). 
  • Diagnostic questions. Multiple choice questions can pose targeted questions, where carefully selected ‘distractors’ can help identify common misconceptions (Dylan Wiliam promotes them as ‘hinge-point questions’). For example, pupils learning about cyclones in geography could be posed this

‘Which of the following statements about cyclones is correct?

A) Cyclones are formed when cold air masses move rapidly towards the Earth's surface.

B) Cyclones rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Coriolis effect.

C) Cyclones are caused by high-pressure systems and are characterized by clear skies and calm weather.

D) Cyclones form over warm ocean waters where the air is humid and rising, creating low-pressure systems and strong winds.’

Adaptive teaching has been coined – and proven popular – because it reflects an increasing range of needs being evident in the classroom in schools in England. But I think it also proves popular because it is sensitive to the type of anticipation, and expert decision-making, that teachers enjoy and respect. You cannot script it. You cannot buy posters which neatly capture it. But you can learn it.

The best teachers understand the power of adaptive teaching - and anticipation - and they put it to work to make a difference for their pupils.

Related reading: 

For the last time of the year, I am teaming up with Teachology to do a live and online masterclass on 'Adaptive Teaching Unleashed'. I unpack the 3As of adaptive teaching, and much more (with an exclusive teacher guide and resources). It is sunny Manchester on Friday 15th November. READ MORE HERE.