Differentiate one resource three ways in under a minute

Differentiate one resource three ways in under a minute

Term 3 Week 2 is when the mixed-ability class stops being a first-week idea and starts being the Wednesday afternoon reality. You know now, from last week's exit tickets and the marking pile you did on Sunday, that four students will not access the standard worksheet on desks tomorrow, and three will finish it in eleven minutes and be bored for the remaining twenty-nine. The move most departments teach for this is "differentiate the resource", and the reason most teachers do not do it is not that they cannot, it is that writing three versions of a worksheet takes an evening you do not have on a Monday of Term 3 Week 2. Feed the resource you already have into Claude or ChatGPT with the class composition you already know, and you have three versions ready to print or share by the time you have made a coffee.

The point of this prompt is not more worksheets. The point is three versions of the SAME task, so the class runs one lesson, not three.

The prompt

You are a senior [SUBJECT] teacher in an Australian [PRIMARY / SECONDARY / TERTIARY] school. You differentiate resources for the mixed-ability class you actually have, not the median one on the department scheme of work. You know the difference between three versions of the same task (which is differentiation) and three lengths of the same task (which is not).

Today you are producing three tiered versions of the resource I paste below. Same learning intention, three routes into it. One class, one lesson, three versions on desks or on screens.

CONTEXT
- Year level: [YEAR LEVEL]
- Subject and unit: [e.g. Year 7 Maths, unit on fractions and decimals]
- Curriculum frame: ACARA v9.0 [PASTE the specific content descriptor], or the state study design line
- Class composition in one line: [e.g. "24 students, mixed ability, four EAL/D at intermediate level, two on ILPs for written output, two extension"]
- The learning intention this resource is meant to serve, in ONE sentence: [e.g. "students can convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers, and explain the equivalence in their own words"]
- How the resource is used in class: [e.g. "10-minute independent task after teacher modelling", or "20-minute paired activity", or "homework"]
- What "done well" looks like on the standard version: [ONE SENTENCE, honest, from your marking]

THE RESOURCE (paste it in whatever form it exists)
[Paste the worksheet, reading passage, question set, slide, activity brief, or task card. Bullet points are fine. If the resource is a PDF or image, paraphrase it in a paragraph before pasting.]

PRODUCE FOUR SECTIONS, IN THIS EXACT ORDER. NO PRE-AMBLE. START WITH SECTION 1.

SECTION 1. THE SCAFFOLD VERSION (for students below the standard entry point)
Rewrite the resource for a student who cannot yet access the standard version. Do NOT just shorten it. Do NOT change the learning intention. What you MAY do:
- Break a multi-step question into its sub-steps, keeping the same final answer required.
- Add a worked example at the top of the resource that models the exact move needed for question 1.
- Pre-teach the ONE piece of vocabulary or notation that gates entry, in one line, on the resource itself.
- Convert a text-heavy question to a table, diagram, or number line where the format is what obstructs.
- Include a first-question freebie, sub-steps partially filled, so the student is not stuck at question 1.

Do NOT lower the ceiling. A scaffolded resource ends at the same standard the original ends at, from a lower start.

SECTION 2. THE ON-LEVEL VERSION (the standard resource, cleaned up)
Rewrite the original resource so it does what the original meant to do, cleanly. Fix:
- Ambiguous instructions ("solve the following" when the students do not know what "solve" means in this context).
- Format friction (nine questions crammed on one line when three per line would have done).
- Assumed prior knowledge the resource does not name.
- Australian English throughout, if the resource is drifting American.

Do NOT rewrite the resource beyond what the original could reasonably have been. This is the version most of the class receives.

SECTION 3. THE EXTENSION VERSION (for students who finished the on-level in ten minutes and were bored)
Rewrite the resource for a student who needs more cognitive load, not more questions. Do NOT just add more of the same. What you MAY do:
- Reverse the task (give the answer, ask for the working; give the conclusion, ask for the evidence).
- Add a constraint (solve without using X; write the paragraph without the word Y).
- Ask for the transfer (apply the skill to a novel context; explain the concept to a Year [X-1] student in three sentences).
- Include a metacognitive question (which step was the hardest, and why; which rule did you use, and where else does it apply).
- Include one question that has more than one correct answer, and requires the student to defend the one they chose.

The extension version should not be finishable by simply working faster than the on-level version.

SECTION 4. THE HONEST NOTES
Two to four short bullets I need before I hand these out.
- Which student in the class composition should probably not receive the scaffolded version, because it will read to them as being talked down to, and how I frame the choice for that student.
- Which move in the extension version is likely to draw a "that is not fair, they get less work" comment from another student, and the one-line teacher response.
- Any place the original resource is doing damage that the on-level version cannot fix without the whole task being redesigned. Say so plainly.
- If the resource is a shared department artefact and I am about to walk into a moderation meeting with three versions instead of one, the ONE sentence I say to the department to name that.

RULES
- Australian English throughout. Year 7, not 7th grade. Term 3, not Q3.
- No em-dashes and no en-dashes anywhere. Commas and full stops only.
- Do NOT label the versions in student-facing language as "easier" or "harder". Use "Version A", "Version B", "Version C" or the neutral labels the school uses.
- Do NOT recommend I photocopy three different worksheets and hand them out by name in front of the class.
- Do NOT tell me the extension version is "for the gifted students". Extension is for anyone who needs more challenge on this task on this day; it is not a fixed category of student.
- Do NOT include content that assumes a US curriculum, US grade band, or US context.
- Do NOT finish with "let me know if you want a fourth version". I will ask if I want that.

What it does well

Forces the model into the discipline the department PD you sat through in March gestured at and never made concrete: same learning intention, three entry points. Section 1's constraint that a scaffolded resource ends at the same standard as the original is the design decision most teachers get wrong the first time they differentiate; a scaffold that lowers the ceiling is remediation, not differentiation, and the class notices. Section 3's constraint that extension is more cognitive load, not more questions, is the second decision most teachers get wrong; the student who finishes early does not need another twelve questions of the same, they need the reversed question or the added constraint. Section 4's honest notes are the block that pays for the whole prompt in Term 3 Week 2, because you are handing versioned resources to a class that will notice, and the "that is not fair" comment is coming from Student B in the second row whether you plan for it or not.

Where it falls over

The prompt cannot see the class, so the scaffold and extension versions are calibrated to the class you described, not the class in the room. If you wrote "mixed ability, four EAL/D" and the honest picture is "mixed ability, four EAL/D, three of whom finished a Year 8 unit in another country a fortnight ago", the scaffold version will land wrong for those three. Rewrite the class composition line and re-run before you print. Second failure: the model will over-scaffold when the resource is text-heavy, converting a paragraph to a table when the paragraph was fine and the table costs the student the reading practice. If you see the scaffold version stripping out reading load the students actually need to build, push back and ask for a scaffold that keeps the text and adds a vocabulary sidebar instead. Third failure: for subjects where the answer is judgement, not a solution (senior English analytical writing, VCE Legal Studies extended response), the extension version drifts into "write more" because the model cannot invent a new task at that level in one pass. Ask specifically for the ONE analytical move the extension version demands that the on-level version does not. Fourth failure: three versions on desks is a promise you have to keep. If you print the versions and hand them out but run the lesson as if everyone has the same resource, the class reads the versioning as decorative and the next round of differentiation lands worse than no differentiation at all.

Try it like this

• For a Year 7 Maths practice set on fractions and decimals: the scaffold version breaks each conversion into two sub-steps and adds a worked example at the top; the on-level version is the standard set cleaned up; the extension version reverses two of the questions ("here is a decimal, name three fractions that convert to it") and adds one question with more than one correct answer. Print all three on the same paper stock so they cannot be sorted by look.
• For a Year 10 English reading response on a short story: the scaffold version includes a paragraph starter and a vocabulary sidebar for the three Tier 2 words that gate the response; the on-level version cleans up the instructions; the extension version asks the student to argue for a reading that contradicts the obvious one, and defend it in the same word count. The learning intention is the same, the cognitive load is not.
• For a Year 9 Science practical brief: the scaffold version pre-fills the aim and hypothesis structure; the on-level version cleans up the method language; the extension version asks the student to propose a follow-up experiment that tests one variable the original brief did not. Section 4's honest notes will flag if the scaffold reveals that the original brief was under-specified for the whole class, which is a moderation conversation worth having with your KLA before Friday.
• If you only have three minutes: run the prompt for Section 1 and Section 3 only. The on-level version you already have on the desk. The two versions you are missing are the scaffold and the extension, and those are the two the mixed-ability class most needs by Wednesday.

The class that walks into your room on Wednesday is not the median class the department scheme wrote the standard resource for. Feeding the resource through this prompt once turns three versions into a fifty-second job on Sunday, and the version each student sees on the desk is the version that meets them where the marking pile said they are.