Because I offer a full year curriculum, I’m often asked about strategies for differentiation in my chemistry class. I’ve chosen a simple six strategies I use in order to make sure that my students are served what they need in my chemistry classes.
1) Grade Differently
This is what I use most often because it’s the simplest. Whether it’s a written rubric, or answer key or something in my head as I grade I’ll grade my students differently. Most of the time, my honors students have to have more thorough and specific answers. Meanwhile the grade level students can give more general answers. Check out this example.
Fluorine has more protons and a greater mass than oxygen, but has a smaller radius. Explain why.
Honors Answer: The protons and electrons in any atom are attracted to each other. Fluorine has a greater nuclear charge The greater number of protons pull in the electrons in the second energy level closer than the 8 protons can in an oxygen atom.
Grade Level Answer: Fluorine has more power to pull electrons in closer because it has an extra proton compared to oxygen.
Notice the difference in the quality of the answers? They’re both correct, but my honors students are held to that higher standard. Grade level kids can get away with a bit more of a stretch in their answers.
Lab Conclusion form vs. paragraph
In my lab activities, students often write full conclusion paragraphs. For differentiation in my chemistry classes, honors students are required to write the conclusion in the form of a paragraph. I typically like my grade level students to do the conclusion paragraph as well. But it is something that you can integrate into the middle of the school year after they get some training. The alternative is breaking down the conclusion paragraph prompts into question prompts. Students have to fill in the back half of a sentence outlining their lab results.
You can get this form for free HERE.
Task cards – number and type of question
In my chemistry classes, we do a lot of task cards. They’re really just questions from a worksheet written onto cards so that they are a bit gamified. I have an entire blog post about how I use task cards in my classroom, but I’ll go over it a bit here. If you need more details, feel free to check out that post as well.
When I create (or print out task cards from TPT) I color code them. The task cards I create have a colorful border, but I have also mounted my task cards to construction paper. Often I code based on question type, but also question difficulty. This, of course adds some work up front, but I find that it’s well worth it. This is why I like to laminate my task cards.
Once you have your students grouped in some way (homogenous groups usually) assign certain colored cards to certain groups. If purple are the hardest questions, maybe these go to your most successful students that you’re doing extension work with. Your green questions, may be the easier ones that really focus on foundational content or skills. You’d assign green cards to your lowest performing students.
Oftentimes, I will assign 1 green card and 5 purple to the strongest students, and the reverse for the weakest students. Doing this, every students gets a taste of each type of question.
If there’s not a lot of variation in your questions, assign a different number of cards to those groups of students instead.
Grouping (roles, tasks)
When you group your students, you can differentiate as well. Obviously, you can assign different groups different assignments or tasks. But what I think could also help ESPECIALLY WITH LABS is different roles. The roles in a lab group can be anything you need. Collect materials, be responsible for the clean up (all students work to clean – but one is “in charge” and makes sure it is done right). One student might be responsible for sharing data with the class. Another might have to give an oral report of the findings to the class. This is a great way to differentiate in your groups.
This can also work for classwork activities! It’s a great time to get creative.
Question numbers on worksheets
This is a great way to differentiate in chemistry! Especially if you have students with IEPs or ELL students. All you’ll need is a highlighter (and to take some time to pass out papers). Use a highlighter to mark the specific questions you want students to do. You can use different color highlighters to indicate which paper to give to which group of students. Maybe Johnny gets yellow highlighters because he has an IEP that says he does 60% of the classwork assigned. Use yellow to assign the specific 60% you’d like him to complete. Sally may be in a similar boat as an ELL student, but you want her to focus on a different 60% of questions. Use an orange highlighter for her.
Amount of in class practice time
For honors vs. grade level classes, I often will adjust the amount of practice time students get in class. My honors students will not have as much time in class to practice. I mean, I give them practice time, of course! But my grade level classes usually have two or three days of balancing equations practice, while my honors students are expected to have a solid grasp.
The converse is also true. Because my grade level students don’t learn “true” stoichiometry, they get one day per skill. They learn gram and mole conversions, and mole ratios as separate skills. They never string them together into stoichiometry. Honors kids learn mass to mass stoichiometry, and therefore will need more time in my schedule to learn it. Mole ratios on their own are certainly easier than mass to mass stoichiometry, so my honors students will get more time in class to practice.
Differentiation in chemistry class doesn’t have to be super dramatic or crazy. It also doesn’t have to take up all your planning time. Once you assess your students’ level of understanding, it’s really not so bad to get your classwork assignments differentiated for your chemistry students. Integrate these differentiation strategies into your teacher toolbelt, and feel free to email me and let me know how it’s going!
