I have been reading More Good Questions by Marian Small. One differentiation strategy she recommends is to give students 2 options. The questions are related and the follow-up discussion engages students who did either option. For the question above, we talked together after a few minutes.
- What is the area of each of the full circles in your picture?
- How can you test that the answer is reasonable?
I set these cheese questions for some year 11 students who are revising for their IGCSE Foundation exam. After a few minutes we talked about the two answers using these questions.
- Which measurements did you use?
- Did you look up any formula?
- What units did you use for your final answer?
These two questions are available here.