Moving to secondary - help!

[lilyboleyn]

I’m moving to secondary humanities after 10 years in primary. The school is Inadequate currently. The staff seem wonderful and very dedicated.
In all the primaries I’ve worked in, I’m used to having four different worksheets / set tasks etc per lesson for the different ability ranges. This school seems to set the same work for everyone but expect scaffolded support for lower ability, and there’s the odd extension exercise thrown into the printed workbooks they’ve made.
I’ve bought some resources on TES and these also seem to indicate the same work for every pupil.

Is this the norm in secondary? Everyone has the same workbook but there is more scaffolding for some, and some get an extension exercise? Or how is work differentiated?

Please help - I’m starting to feel really out of my depth...

Yep normal and best practice based on research.

Get in touch with your dept and ask if they have any resources. It's common in humanities to have shared lessons particularly ks3.

Thanks ever so much.

That's what we do...the idea is that students have different levels of support/challenge to get to an end goal...it really does work and as Hums subjects don't have foundation exam papers it makes sense. We also teach in mixed-ability classes...if you need help, feel free to ask - there are some fab groups on FB which also offer loads of help and ideas...

Oo @samlovesdilys that sounds good - can you recommend any fb groups please?

Yup the scaffold support is the differentiation. All students have access to the same knowledge and content. There are Facebook groups for all subject groups. I see you're doing humanities. There are some great teachers on Twitter for this. Mark Esner for Geography, Ben Newmark for History and the RS Twitter is amazing and full of excellent subject knowledge (I used to teach RS so have a giant list of who to follow there for you). Send me a DM if you would like. I'm a secondary English teacher as it happens but in discussion of context I've 'met' a lot of the History crew. I just happened upon the geographers but they seem a nice bunch on there.

We've moved to the same in my primary a couple of years ago and and I find it so, so much easier tbh. Much simpler to plan and as lower ability children often need support anyway I haven't found that side of it more difficult in terms of getting round the whole class.

That's the way I taught in secondary ages ago, and it's how I teach primary now.
I always had schemes of work in secondary. I'd contact your HOD and ask about department practice. I always shared material in secondary and chances are there is already stuff available for you.

I always give classes the same main activity, with an extension task on the board for the most able, and then I support the EAL or SEN students who really need it / give them something extra to support them.

I worked in a school that expected three different worksheets, one for each group, and it was a massive pain! I think doing the same main task with tweaks to make it suitable for all students is much better, allows for peer and self marking, keeps the workload vaguely sensible!

Echoing what others have said. One task with scaffolded support is best practice and the way I teach at my secondary. All pupils have access to the same knowledge.

I have recently got into live marking and to be honest, alot of my support/scaffolding/extension comes from that. When pupils are working, I circulate and scaffold/extend as appropriate. Any prompts/further questions for development are written straight on the pupil book so the vast majority of my marking and feedback is done in class. Obviously, knowing the pupils is key but that goes without saying.

I find it works well and is effective. It does mean that I am never still in a lesson and sometimes it can be quite intense for me (especially with A-level groups or groups where a number of pupils require support). I certainly feel it after teaching a full day

Good luck with your new job

I’m starting to feel a lot better. I’m teaching the same subject to different classes in the same year group - it looks a lot better than primary, where there’s 5 different lessons a day needing x 4 different versions of the activity.

I think it is the new way for primary too. Primary SCITT students are no longer taught to differentiate in this way.

It is a lot better. I understand it in maths where you have students doing completely different stuff depending on ability. (with that you can often teach the same thing and differentiate through support). But for most other subjects scaffolding to the same content is better. Means all students access the same content.