Join the dots for various, differentiated lessons

I had a little problem this week. I wanted to create lots of differentiated (but in some way similar) homework tasks. Some children in my class are counting in ones, others skip counting in 10s and some really need to be challenged. I decided to give a join the dots activity. Little did I know how many different types of dot-to-dot worksheets already exist online.

Source: Kidscrafty.com

Here are some of my favourite sites with FREE join the dots activities. Kidscrafty.com has some great dot-to-dot activities based on sequencing capital and lower case letters,counting in ones (some are incredibly simple!) and skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

I found some multiplication dot-to-dot activities on prasinipriza.com like this 6 and 7 times tables practice sheet.


For more challenging worksheets, look no further than this resource from Education.com! It has skip counting activities for 2s, 3s, 4s etc. and the sheets contain many dots (so the children have to skip count beyond 100!). There are 15 sheets of various difficulty levels in this pack.

Differentiating using the "jigsaw method"

This one's inspired by a recent lecture as part of the National Induction Programme for NQTs:


I'm going to try using the "jigsaw" method of differentiation this week where the children are split into groups. They are then sub-divided into colours. For example, you might have eight groups with a red, a yellow and a blue in each. Next, set a task for each colour. All the blues, reds and yellows group together and work on their task. Then the original eight groups (one yellow, one blue, one red) get back together and share what they have learned.

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I'm going to try this to teach stories about St. Bridget. 
There will be three different tasks:
1. The story of St. Bridget and the butter (on powerpoint - from a 2nd class history book - easy words, lots of illustrations)
2. The story of St. Bridget and the cloak (on powerpoint - middle-senior primary school reading level - harder words, some illustrations)
3. The life of St. Bridget and the origin of the cross (on paper - for those with higher reading abilities - difficult words, few illustrations)


They will then be put into threes to share the story they learned.