Adaptive learning: one topic, every learner

Every teacher knows the bind. Pitch the lesson high and some learners cannot get in. Pitch it low and the rest coast. The old answer was differentiation: write three versions of the task and hope. Adaptive teaching asks for something better, and harder. Keep one ambitious goal for the whole class, and change the route, not the destination.

This is what we are building right now, almost as you read this. You set the topic and the goal once. Then, in the moment, you adapt how learners get there. Same topic. Same summit. Different paths up the mountain.

Same topic, a different way in

Start with a conceptual lens. A concrete lens such as Change gives learners a clear, single question to hold on to. A pair of abstract lenses, Power and Perspective, turns the same topic into a harder problem. The Romans stays the Romans. The lens decides how demanding the thinking is.

More to lean on, or less

Next, the graphic organiser. For learners who need a way in, the organiser arrives part built: a compare grid started for them, a word bank, a sentence starter. For learners ready to be stretched, the same organiser is blank. They decide what to compare and justify why it matters. The thinking is identical, the support is not.

Dial the detail on the map

Then the map. Everyone maps the topic, but you choose how much there is to map. A core map holds four nodes and keeps the load manageable. An extended map adds more nodes and a prompt to weigh them: which mattered most, and why? Same process, more or less to think about.

Built on the Thinking Framework

None of this works without a shared language for thinking. Our Thinking Framework gives every topic five kinds of thinking: getting started, connecting ideas, reinforcing what you know, putting it into words, and using knowledge to judge and create. They are not a ladder. A learner can judge before they categorise. The teacher chooses which thinking the lesson needs, and where each learner goes deep.

Here is what makes it genuinely adaptive. The same thinking move can be made easier or harder without changing the task. Take rank. Ranking three Roman jobs by difficulty is concrete and quick. Ranking the reasons Rome fell, and justifying the order, is abstract and demanding. Same verb, different difficulty. The difficulty lives in the content, the measure, and the load, so the whole class can stay on the same kind of thinking while each learner works at the right level.

Different routes, the same destination

Underneath every control sits one idea. The goal does not move. A learner on the accessible route and a learner on the challenge route are heading for the same understanding, and both can explain how and why the Roman Empire grew and then fell. That is high challenge for every learner, with a route that fits each one, and without planning three separate lessons.

The platform is in beta and the adaptive controls shown here are in active development. Try what is there today, and tell us what to build next.