While working as a school officer at a Catholic primary school, my primary responsibility was to provide essential math support to both individual students and groups within a year 5 class of 17 students. The classroom was often loud, which presented a challenge for some students.

During the division unit in mathematics students were re-visiting and expanding on their prior knowledge of division. During the lesson students were to complete 3 group rotations. The activity for my group was the completion of a division sheet.

Understanding the learning needs of the students was central in directing my approach to the group learning (1.2) (AITSL, 2011).

A quieter setting benefited all students, therefore one of my strategies was relocating my group to the library.

While most group were confident and very capable of completing the task, there was one group in the rotation that would require greater support. This particularly group only had three student, all of which had a cognitive developmental delay. This required me to differentiate the teaching in order to meet the specific learning needs of these students (1.5) (AITSL, 2011). In implementing differentiation strategies I recognised that the students greatly benefited from repetition and tangible aids to make the math concept a more hands on learning experience (Wong & Bukalov, 2020).

I recognised that consistency and repetition in my instructions as well as ensuring that the guidance remained consistent was likely to be beneficial for student recall (Cuffe, et al., 2021). Additionally, I supplied student with counter to create a visual and tactile connection to the learning, as they were physically about to count the groups (Wong & Bukalov, 2020).

I also employed the Gradual Release of Responsibility Framework (GRR), I initially demonstrated the process using the counters (I do), which was followed by collaborative process whereby as a group student and I worked at solving the problems (we do). The students then continued to work through questions independently (you do) (Fisher & Frey, 2021). Through the collaborative learning environment students could support each other’s learning and understanding before working independently (Wong & Bukalov, 2020).

Additionally, I also provided them with modified and simpler questions and only introduced more challenging questions from the worksheet after confirming that they have an understanding of the foundational concepts. When introducing more challenging questions from the worksheet that required a new step in the working out process I followed the same GRR framework (Fisher & Frey, 2008).

As a result, of the differentiation in the delivery of the learning I felt as though the students were not only able to gain a solid understanding of the math concept, but were able to recall this strategy later on in the school year.