Math Girls
A great way to differentiate math when you are stuck with an old-fashioned math computation worksheet is to not require its completion. Instead ask the students to simply choose the three easiest problems and the three most difficult problems from the worksheet to solve. Be sure to ask them to explain why they found the first three to be the easiest and why the second three are the hardest for them. It is also important to ask students to make up three additional problems that would fit with what is on the worksheet, but that are not included – and of course ask them to explain why they think they would fit. This approach gives you a lot of information about each student’s mathematical thinking, their ability to solve the type of computations being focused on, and their understanding of the concepts surrounding the problems.
I found that having these questions and available workspace on a separate piece of paper was beneficial in keeping the students focused on what I was asking of them (some students still wanted to complete all of the computation problems and that was okay with me, as long as they completed the assignment first). To do this I created the 3-Three-3 worksheet and found that I could use it in a great number of situations across the math strands that I was teaching. If you would like to give it a try, I have included a link to a full-size copy of the worksheet in a pdf format. Use the comment section to let me know how it works for you.
Multiage-Education 