InsightMath includes built-in differentiation that ensures access to rigorous grade-level content for all students. Differentiation can benefit any student who needs additional support to access the day's lesson, regardless of the reason, or any student who requires extra challenge. We provide four types of differentiation that can be used with any student based on their needs, including students receiving special education services, multilingual learners, and gifted and talented students with an identified need. Understanding the barrier a student is facing helps us to identify and provide just the right amount of support.
Supporting Access
Access supports help students participate in lesson activities by removing or minimizing barriers to equitable participation. These supports ensure all students can engage meaningfully with the mathematical content, regardless of individual challenges. By providing appropriate tools, using platform functionality, adjusting presentation formats, or modifying response methods, access supports maintain the cognitive demand of the mathematics while making participation possible for every student. Teachers can implement these supports based on observation of specific difficulties students encounter during participation.
Supporting Language
Language supports can assist any student, but may be particularly useful for students who are learning English and those with communication disorders affecting expressive language, receptive language, or social language skills. Through these supports, students can better understand mathematical language, develop their ability to express mathematical ideas, expand their vocabulary, and navigate the structure of the English language. Sentence frames, receptive language support, peer collaboration opportunities, and multimodal presentation methods all serve to reduce language-based barriers while maintaining high expectations for mathematical thinking.
Supporting Content
Content supports ensure students' cognitive load is available for new mathematical learning, regardless of gaps in foundational skills. Some of these supports help students access new content despite unfinished learning, while others develop both the lesson content and foundational skills simultaneously. During the lesson, some students may need support to clearly illuminate their thinking or attend to the important points within the thinking of others. This is especially important in discussion-based classrooms as students learn with and from each other. By strategically providing scaffolds such as computation aids, visual representations, or structured pathways to problem-solving, teachers can focus students' attention on the new mathematical concept being taught while building bridges to fill foundational gaps.
Extensions
Extensions provide additional challenge by adjusting questions or activities to deepen mathematical thinking within the lesson context. These extensions are designed to be easily implemented without requiring extensive teacher explanation or additional materials. Rather than introducing new content, extensions invite students to explore the lesson's mathematics more deeply through increased complexity, abstraction, or application. All students benefit from opportunities for extension at various times, based on their individual strengths and interests.
Differentiation in InsightMath is never about creating separate tracks for different "types" of students. Instead, it's about providing a flexible toolkit that enables teachers to respond to the specific, contextual needs of each student at a given moment. This approach recognizes that students' needs are fluid and that all students benefit from differentiation at various times throughout their mathematical learning journey.