Questions to Ask Teachers About Differentiation
These questions are for anyone who needs to hear how a teacher really differentiates: a principal or instructional coach talking with their own staff, a hiring panel, or a trainee sitting down with an experienced teacher. They run in the order the work does, from finding out where each student is, through planning and grouping, to supporting students who are behind, have an IEP or are learning English and stretching the ones who are ahead. The last group deals with grading and with what all of it costs in time.
Want questions from the whole vault instead? Try the random question generator.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Starting points
What does differentiation mean to you, and what does it look like in your classroom on an ordinary day?
Why ask it
The definition comes first and tells you little, since most teachers can recite one. Hold them to the second half: what would a visitor see halfway through a normal lesson that shows it was planned for more than one kind of student? A reply that stays at 'meeting every child where they are' is your cue to go straight to the next question.
Walk me through a lesson from the last two weeks that you differentiated. Who did what, and why?
Why ask it
The two-week limit is deliberate: it rules out the showpiece lesson from an observation three years ago. Get down to which students had which task and what told the teacher to give it to them. Then keep this lesson on the table, because most of the later questions are easier to answer about one real class period than in general.
How do you find out what each student already knows before a unit starts?
Why ask it
A short pre-test, a writing sample, a sorting task or five minutes of discussion are all common answers. The part that matters is what happened next, so ask which lesson in the last unit changed because of what they found. A pre-assessment that changed nothing was paperwork.
How do you check understanding during a lesson, and what do you do about it before the lesson ends?
Why ask it
Mini whiteboards, an exit ticket, one well-chosen question, a lap of the room with a clipboard: the tool matters less than the response. Ask what they did the last time the check showed a good part of the class was lost. 'I pulled those six to the back table' is differentiation, and 'I noted it for the test review' is record keeping.
Besides test scores, what do you look at to decide what a student needs?
Why ask it
Readiness is only one way students differ. Listen for the others: what a student cares about, how long they can work alone, whether they would sooner talk an idea through or write it down. A teacher who names two or three and can attach a student to each is working from observation and not from a spreadsheet.
Tell me about a time you misjudged what a student could do. How did you find out?
Why ask it
Everyone who groups students has placed one wrongly, in either direction. The story shows whether the teacher has a way to catch it, such as a regular recheck or letting students attempt the harder task, or whether it took a parent or a test to point it out. For a hiring panel, a candidate with no such story has probably not been looking.
How do you learn what your students are interested in, and where has that changed a task?
Why ask it
Start-of-year surveys are common and often go in a drawer. The second half sorts that out: a reading choice built around a student's sport, a math problem rewritten with the class's own data. If the only example is years old, interest is not a lever this teacher pulls often, which is worth knowing without being a fault.
How do you keep track of who needs what from one week to the next?
Why ask it
Ask to see it. It may be a grid on a clipboard, sticky notes in a planner, a color-coded class list or the school's tracking system, and the simplest versions tend to be the ones still in use in March. A system that lives only in the teacher's head leaves a substitute or a co-teacher with nothing to work from, which is worth raising gently.
What do you get from a student's previous teacher, and how much weight do you give it?
Why ask it
Handover differs from school to school, from a full file to a hallway chat, so ask how it works in theirs. Good answers treat last year's information as a first guess to be checked in the opening weeks. Be alert to a label that arrives with the student in the fall and is never questioned again.
Planning
In a differentiated lesson, what stays the same for every student?
Why ask it
This separates differentiating from running three lessons at once. The usual strong answer is the learning goal, often with the key question or the text held in common too. Teachers who plan outward from that shared goal generally have a lighter week than those who write three worksheets and look for a goal afterward, and the second habit is one a coach can help change.
Which do you change most often: the content, the process or the product?
Why ask it
Those three words are common shorthand for what a teacher can vary: what students work with, how they work on it, and how they show what they learned. Few teachers adjust all three in one lesson, and nobody should expect them to. Once you have the favorite and the reason for it, get one example of each of the other two.
How do you tier a task so that every version aims at the same goal?
Why ask it
Have the versions laid side by side if you can. In a sound set they differ in how much support is given, how many steps are left open or how abstract the material is, while the thinking asked for stays recognizably the same. A bottom tier that copies while the top tier analyzes means the students are no longer being taught the same thing.
How much choice do students get in how they show what they learned?
Why ask it
Choice boards and menus are popular, and they go wrong when a poster and an essay earn the same grade for very different effort. Find out how the options are made comparable, which is often one rubric tied to the goal and applied to every format. Then ask what happens when the skill being taught is the writing itself, where a choice of format is not really on offer.
What do you do when a student picks the easiest option every time?
Why ask it
Choice only works if students choose well, and some will coast while others overreach. Teachers deal with it through a quiet nudge, a rule that everyone tries one stretch item, or by assigning the starting point and offering choice after it. Whether they describe the coasting student as lazy or as unsure tells you something too.
Which lessons do you teach the same way to everyone, and why?
Why ask it
An honest teacher has plenty: a lab safety briefing, the launch of a new topic, a shared read-aloud. Whole-class teaching is not a failure of differentiation, and a candidate who claims to differentiate every lesson is describing a workload few people sustain. What you want is the rule for where the extra planning goes, such as the skills later units depend on or the points where the spread in the class is widest.
When the whole class is together, how do you ask questions so that everyone has something to think about?
Why ask it
Not all differentiation needs separate tasks. Teachers describe planning an easy way in and a harder follow-up to the same question, giving thinking time before taking any hands, or choosing who answers so the same three voices do not carry every discussion. A new teacher can try each of these tomorrow without making a single extra sheet.
What do you do when part of the class needs another day on a topic and the rest are ready to move on?
Why ask it
Few units pass without this, and a school's pacing calendar often limits the choices, so find out how fixed the calendar is. Some teachers split the room for a day, some move on and reteach the smaller group in short sessions, and some build a spare day into each unit in advance. Whichever it is, check that the students who were ready got something new and not a holding task.
What is hardest to differentiate in your subject, and how do you handle it?
Why ask it
Reading levels, math prerequisites, lab groups and a mixed-ability choir each pose a different problem, and a method borrowed from another subject may not fit. The answer keeps a trainee from copying the wrong one. For a leader, it is a test of whether a school-wide expectation makes sense in this particular room.
Do you differentiate homework or independent practice, and how?
Why ask it
Some teachers set the same core practice with an optional stretch, some assign different sets, and some keep homework uniform because marking three versions is too much. Homework rules are often set by the school, so find out first what the policy allows. Then ask how a student ends up with the right set without it being announced to the room.
Where does technology help you differentiate, and where does it let you down?
Why ask it
Adaptive practice programs can hand each student a different next question, which no teacher can do by hand for a full class. Ask what the teacher does with the reports, since a dashboard nobody opens only keeps students busy. The 'let down' half tends to produce the sharper detail, such as screen time standing in for teaching with the students who most need an adult.
Grouping
How do you group students, and how often do the groups change?
Why ask it
You are listening for more than one basis: by need on a particular skill, by interest, by student choice, at random. Then get a number for how often membership moves. Groups rebuilt after each check on a skill are a teaching tool, and groups set in the fall and still standing in spring have hardened into something else.
What stops a group from becoming a permanent label?
Why ask it
Children usually work out which table is which within days, whatever the tables are called. Good answers include regrouping by skill so membership really does shift, mixing the groups for other subjects, and letting a student ask to try the harder task. Ask about a student who moved up this term and what triggered the move.
When do you put students of mixed readiness together, and when do you group by similar need?
Why ask it
Neither suits everything, and a teacher who uses only one has given up a tool. Similar-need groups fit a short burst of targeted teaching, while mixed groups fit discussion and tasks with several roles. For mixed groups, ask who ends up doing the thinking, since the quickest student often carries it.
How many small groups do you meet with in a lesson, and for how long each?
Why ask it
Press past 'I pull groups as needed' to how many groups, how many students and how many minutes, because that is the part a new teacher can copy. Spread the answer across a week and you can see how often any one student sits with the teacher. The figures will depend on the length of the period and the age of the class.
While you are teaching a small group, what is everyone else doing?
Why ask it
Small-group teaching stands or falls on this. Look for work the rest can do without the teacher, a routine for getting unstuck that does not involve interrupting, and a way of checking that work afterward. When the answer is silent reading every time, add up together how much of the week those students go without instruction.
How do you give directions for two or three different tasks without losing the first ten minutes?
Why ask it
This is logistics, and logistics are where many differentiated lessons come apart. Written task cards, color-coded folders, directions already waiting at each table, or launching the class together and splitting afterward are the usual solutions. Ask them to show you one, and notice whether a student could follow it with the teacher busy elsewhere.
How do you explain to students why they are not all doing the same task?
Why ask it
Teachers who handle this well tend to say it out loud early in the year, in words a child can repeat: fair means everyone gets what they need to learn, not everyone gets the same sheet. Ask for the actual sentence they use. A trainee should write it down, because the first 'why does she get the easy one' comes quickly.
Support
How do you support a student who is well behind without lowering what you expect of them?
Why ask it
The tension in the question is real, and a thoughtful teacher will acknowledge it before answering. Listen for support that sits around the task, such as a worked example, a word bank, a partner read or a smaller first step, with the destination unchanged. A simpler worksheet every time leaves open how that student is ever meant to catch up, and that is the follow-up to put.
Where is the line, for you, between scaffolding a task and making it easier?
Why ask it
Have them take one task and describe both versions. A scaffold is usually meant to come off, while an easier task changes what is being learned. Teachers draw the line in different places, so what you are checking is whether they have thought about where theirs is.
How do a student's IEP accommodations show up in your daily lessons?
Why ask it
The plan may go by another name where you are, and what it requires of a classroom teacher is set by law and by the school, so ask how that works locally. From the teacher you want the practical layer: how they keep each student's accommodations in view while planning, and what extended time or a quieter setting looks like on a normal Wednesday. Keep the talk general and leave named students out of it.
How do you plan with the special education teacher, aide or co-teacher who works in your room?
Why ask it
Shared planning time is frequently the missing piece, and the answer shows how the teacher copes without it: a shared document, five minutes before school, a standing note about tomorrow's lesson. Ask who decides what the other adult does during the lesson. An extra adult who learns the plan at the door often ends up beside one student for the whole period.
What do you change for a student who is still learning English?
Why ask it
Strong answers keep the thinking at grade level and lower the language barrier: visuals, key vocabulary taught ahead, sentence starters, a chance to talk before writing, the home language where it helps. Ask how they tell a language gap from a gap in the subject. Which specialist support exists depends on the school, so ask what is available in this one.
How do you decide when to take a support away?
Why ask it
Students rarely volunteer to give one up. A teacher might fade the sentence frames after two successful tries, or offer the task with and without the organizer and see who reaches for it. All of this concerns the teacher's own scaffolds: an accommodation written into a formal plan is a separate matter, changed through whatever review applies where you are.
What do you do when a student's difficulty comes from gaps in earlier grades and not from this unit?
Why ask it
A student who cannot multiply will not be rescued by a tiered fractions task. Hear whether the teacher finds the missing piece and teaches it, in a few minutes of small-group time or in an intervention block, or whether the plan is only to keep simplifying today's work. Ask where in the week that catch-up teaching fits.
At what point do you decide a student needs more than you can provide in class, and who do you go to?
Why ask it
Every teacher reaches this point with some students, and saying so is a strength. The route from there, whether a support team, a specialist or a formal referral, differs by school and system, so ask how it runs in this one. What the teacher can tell you is what they try and write down first, which is what whoever picks the case up will ask for.
Stretch
What do you do for a student who already knows what you are about to teach?
Why ask it
A pre-test that a student aces creates an obligation, and this asks what the teacher does with it. Answers range from skipping the practice that student does not need and moving to a deeper task, to an independent project, to joining another class for that subject. 'They read quietly when they finish' describes a student who is waiting, not learning.
How is the work you give advanced students different from simply more of the same?
Why ask it
Twenty extra problems reward speed with a longer sheet, and students soon learn to slow down. Look for a change in kind: an open question, a less familiar context, a task that asks them to generalize or to judge between methods. Ask for the extension from a recent lesson and whether the student took it as a reward or a penalty.
How do you spot a student who could do much more than their work shows?
Why ask it
The students who finish first and want more are easy to find. Harder to see are the quiet one doing exactly what was asked, the one whose reading or English hides strong reasoning, and the one who has learned that finishing early earns extra work. Find out what the teacher does to look, such as setting an open task with no ceiling or putting one hard question to the whole class.
How often do your strongest students get direct teaching from you?
Why ask it
When time is short, the small-group table tends to fill with students who are behind, and the strongest are left to manage alone. A candid teacher will admit this happens. The follow-up is what they do about it, even if it is one short session a week pushing that group on something hard.
Where do you stand on asking early finishers to help their classmates?
Why ask it
Teachers disagree, so put this to more than one. Explaining an idea can deepen it, and some students enjoy doing it. Used daily, it turns a capable student into an assistant and delays their own next step, so ask how often it happens and whether the student has a say.
How do you handle a student who is far ahead in one area and average or behind in another?
Why ask it
Uneven profiles are common: the strong reader who avoids writing, the quick mental mathematician who will not show working. This checks whether grouping is done subject by subject and skill by skill, or once for everything. A student who sits in the same group all day, high or low, points to the second.
What can you do for an advanced student inside your classroom, and what needs someone else's decision?
Why ask it
Moving a student up a grade for one subject, a place in a gifted program and early entry to a course are usually decided above the teacher, and the rules vary widely, so ask how it works where you are. The teacher's side is what they have asked for on a student's behalf and how it went. That also shows a leader where the school's own process is slow.
Grading and time
How do you grade students who completed different versions of a task?
Why ask it
There is no single accepted answer, and many schools have a grading policy that settles part of it, so ask what applies there. Common approaches grade everyone against the same goal with one rubric, or separate the mark for achievement from a comment on progress. The teacher should be able to say in one sentence what an A means in their class.
Does every student take the same test at the end of a unit?
Why ask it
Many teachers vary the route and keep the final assessment common, so that a result means the same thing for everyone. Others change the format, the reading load or the time allowed while testing the same skill. Formal accommodations and school or district assessments follow their own rules, so check which tests the teacher is free to adjust at all.
Can a student who worked on the most supported version still earn the top grade?
Why ask it
A yes and a no both have defenders. What you are checking is that the teacher has decided, can explain it to a parent, and applies it the same way to every student. If they have never had to consider it, either the tiers sit close together or the grading is less consistent than they think.
How do you report on a student who is working below grade level but making real progress?
Why ask it
A parent needs both facts, and a single letter grade can hide either one. Ask what the teacher writes or says: where the student stands against the grade's expectations, how far they have come, and what comes next. Report formats are set by the school, so the real answer may be 'in the comment box and at the conference'.
What do you say to a parent who asks why their child got different work from a classmate?
Why ask it
It comes from both directions: the parent who fears their child is being held back, and the one who thinks their child is being overloaded. The replies that settle either parent show what the decision rested on and say when it will be looked at again. A hiring panel can run this as a short role play, with one member playing the parent.
How much time does differentiating take you in a typical week, and where does that time come from?
Why ask it
Ask for hours, not adjectives. The second half matters as much: planning periods, evenings, materials built up over years, or work shared across a grade team. For a leader this is information about what the schedule supports, and for a trainee it is a warning not to compare a first-year week with a fifteenth-year one.
What have you stopped doing because it was not worth the effort?
Why ask it
Experienced teachers have a discard pile: five-level worksheets, elaborate stations, a separate plan for every child. What they kept in its place is usually smaller and repeatable. Trainees should take the discard list seriously, since some of it may be on their own to-do list.
With the class size and planning time you have, what is realistic and what is not?
Why ask it
This invites a straight answer, so do not punish one. A teacher with a large class and one planning period might say two tiers and one small group a day is the ceiling, and that is a plan a person can keep to. Compare it with what the school asks for in observations: a wide gap between the two is the leader's to close, not the teacher's.
What would help you differentiate better: time, materials, training or another adult in the room?
Why ask it
Make them choose one, because 'all of them' cannot be acted on. A principal or coach should ask this only if prepared to do something about the answer, even something small like shared planning for one unit. In a hiring interview it works turned around: what did your last school provide that made the difference?
How do you know whether your differentiation is working?
Why ask it
Activity is easy to point to: the groups, the tiers, the choice board. Evidence is harder, and it sounds like students moving between groups, a gap narrowing on a named skill, or an advanced student producing work beyond the unit. Ask what they looked at the last time they concluded something was not working and changed it.
Which of your lessons should I watch to see this in action, and what should I look for?
Why ask it
End here, because it turns the conversation into a visit. Letting the teacher choose the lesson keeps it fair, and what they tell you to look for shows what they are proudest of. When you watch, follow two or three students through the lesson and not the teacher.
How to talk with a teacher about differentiation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Fit the questions to your reason for asking
A principal or coach with their own staff
Say at the start that this is not an evaluation, and mean it. Teachers describe what they really do when the answer cannot cost them, and what they think you want when it can. Pick six or eight questions, lean on Planning and on Grading and time, and finish with the one about what would help. If you cannot offer any of what they name, say so plainly.
A hiring panel
A candidate has rehearsed the definition, so move quickly to questions that need a real lesson behind them: the walk-through of a recent lesson, the misjudged student, what the rest of the class does during small-group time. Put the same core questions to every candidate so the answers can be compared. A candidate is describing a previous school's class sizes and schedule, and yours may allow more or less.
A trainee or new teacher
You are collecting methods, not judging them. Ask to see things: the tracking sheet, a tiered task, the wording used with students. Ten questions in half an hour is plenty, and the Grouping and the Grading and time groups hold the practical detail that coursework can pass over, down to how many minutes a small group gets.
Send a few questions ahead
For a staff conversation or a trainee's interview, giving the teacher three or four questions the day before lets them bring a lesson plan and some student work with the names removed. The talk goes better with paper on the table. A hiring panel may prefer to keep its questions back, and that is a reasonable choice.
Getting from principles to practice
Keep one lesson on the table
The second question on the list asks the teacher for a lesson from the past two weeks. Do not let it go once it is answered. 'In that lesson, who got what?' and 'How did you decide?' are much harder to answer in generalities than any question about beliefs, and they work under almost every group on the page.
Ask about one student at each end
Without names, have the teacher describe a student who was far behind and one who was far ahead in the same unit, and what each of them did on the same day. Two students in one lesson show the reach of the planning better than an account of the whole class.
Count before you judge
How many tiers, how many groups, how often they change, how many minutes at the small-group table. Numbers turn 'I differentiate constantly' into something you can picture, and they are what a new teacher needs in order to try it.
Leave room for 'I don't'
Some of the most useful answers are admissions: the lessons taught whole-class, the strongest students seen least, the supports that never came off. If the first admission is met with a frown, there will not be a second. Thank them and ask what gets in the way.
Patterns to listen for
One goal, several routes
Across the Planning questions, check that the versions of a task lead to the same learning. Several routes to one goal is what the word means. Separate goals for separate children, fixed at the start of the year, is a different practice and deserves a careful follow-up conversation.
Evidence comes before grouping
Wherever a teacher describes who got which task, ask what told them. A recent check on that skill is a sound basis. A general impression of the child, or last year's level, is a weaker one, and it is among the easier things for a coach to help change.
Both ends of the class appear
Notice whether the answers under Support are much richer than those under Stretch, or the reverse. Most teachers have a stronger side. Naming it without blame gives the next step: one extension routine, or one scaffold they can fade.
The cost is stated
A teacher who can say what the work takes in time, and what they dropped to make room for it, is describing something they do every week. An account with no cost in it is often a description of the best lesson of the term.
What to do afterward
Go and watch
A conversation gives you intentions, and a lesson gives you the rest. Use the closing question to arrange a visit, then see what students at different starting points are doing ten minutes in, and look at the work they hand in.
Check what is set locally
Grading rules, homework policy, how support plans are written and who decides on acceleration or a referral all depend on the school, the district and the country. Where an answer touched one of these, read the policy or ask the person responsible before you repeat it as how things are done.
Leaders: choose one thing to change
If several teachers name the same obstacle, such as no shared planning with the support teacher, that is a scheduling matter within a leader's reach. Removing one named obstacle earns more trust than announcing a new framework.
Trainees: try one move, then report back
Pick a single technique you heard, such as an exit ticket that sorts tomorrow's groups, and use it for two weeks. Tell the teacher how it went. People share more with someone who used what they were given.