I pride myself on being able to teach a lesson in such a way that my struggling students can understand and benefit from it, my on-level students can learn from it, and my above level students get something from it, other than a review.
However, there are times when the gap is too great and teaching the same lesson to all my students just won't hack it. I've come across one of those instances with division this year.
I'm a little bothered to admit Ii walked right into iit. It never occured to me 6th graders wouldn't know the basics of division, so I was floored the first day of the chapter when I executed a beautiful lesson on division of multi-digit whole numbers and 75% of my class looked at me like I'd been speaking Klingon. To their credit they did a great job of trying to play along, which I wanted them to never do again because if it had worked they would have been stuck trying to do an assignment they didn't understand.
Once I realized, I paused the lesson and we talked it out as a class. Then, I headed for my resource cabinet, where I keep 3 grade levels worth of math and reading resources organized by topic and sub-organized by degree of difficulty, and pulled out my division folder. After a quick check with the kids I asked my neighbor to keep an eye on the kids while I copied a worksheet to get a feel for where the 75% was at.
As I told them, it wasn't perfect, but moments like this are exactly why I have a file cabinet of backup work. When the planned lesson just isn't working and can't work it gives me the flexibility to support my students until I can take a moment and figure out what they really need.
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