Low Floor, High Ceiling Tasks
“I’m finished” and “I don’t understand”, two dreaded statements that often happen simultaneously after handing out an activity to your class. Fast finishers whip through the activity, often without challenge, and quickly shoot up their hand (or just yell out “I’M DONE.”) Emergent learners struggle to get started, often staring blankly at the page, raising their hand or simply sitting quietly at their desk, unable to start. These two statements became the bane of my teaching existence. I began creating tasks for my early finishers, and ran myself ragged trying to meet the needs of my emergent learners. No matter what I did I continued to feel like I was failing these groups of students (Shelley Moore calls these students the Outside Pins).
During one summer I was doing some reading on math instruction and I came across the statement “Low floor, High Ceiling tasks (LFHC)”. Peter Liljedahl spoke of creating rich math tasks that were open ended, meeting the needs of your most emergent (low floor) students and being open ended (high ceiling) to allow for your extending learners. I reflected on many of the tasks I had created for my students and realized there were some simple and creative ways I could remove the barriers to these activities to better meet the needs of all of my learners.
Tips to Creating LFHC Tasks
Know your point - I’ll likely write an entire post about the importance of this. But for now, know the target you want your students to hit. What skill or concept do you want them practicing? This simple question often helps you narrow the focus of your activities and weed out the activities that are really not teaching anything (my friend Faye calls this the “fluff”). Additionally, think about how you would like them to “Show that they Know” the point.
Know your Students - What can your most emergent learner do, and what skills do you need them to practice? What does your most extending learner need to feel challenged? If the point of your lesson is to work on identifying the phonemes in words; can you create an activity that as a low floor has students identifying specific initial sounds, and as a high ceiling, asks students to sort items based on either the initial, medial or final sounds. Create learning activities that considers these students ahead of time (proactively not reactively).
Explicitly teach and practice the skill - One of my critical mistakes was introducing an activity or worksheet at a station without teaching it, or practicing it first. As a whole class, explicitly teach the skill or concept and practice it together. In my early career we called this the “Gradual Release Model”. We taught it (I do), we practiced it together as a whole class (We do), and then students practiced it on their own (You do).
Remove the barriers - When designing your learning activity, think about what barriers will get in the way of the students learning. Is there a worksheet that has the students identify the initial sound of the picture shown? How could you create an activity that practices the same skill, but isn’t limited to the number (or sounds) of the pictures on the page. (Shameless plug - my Little Trinkets for Big Thinking kit and activities are a great LFHC way of practicing phonemic awareness)
There are some really simple ways to remove barriers from traditional activities. Once I know the learning goal, I begin searching for activities that will help students practice that skill. If I find a great activity, say in Canva, I ask myself how I might adapt it to become more of a Low-Floor, High-Ceiling (LFHC) task.
For example, if I want students to build their vocabulary knowledge, I won’t just give everyone the same list of words to find, define, and identify in a passage. Instead, I’ll teach students what to do when they come across an unfamiliar word while reading. As a practice activity, we’ll record words we don’t know (and want or need to learn), then work on defining and understanding their meanings.
In our literacy stations, students will use their “just right” texts to find words they’re curious about or don’t yet understand. The text becomes the differentiating factor, allowing students to learn vocabulary that is meaningful and instructionally relevant to them. They can then share their learning with others or add the new words to a shared word wall.
What are some great Low Floor, High Ceiling Tasks that you use in your Literacy stations or instruction. Share below.
See Below for some examples of ways to adapt activities to be more LFHC.
