Reaching a Diversity of Learners

About a week and a half ago, students had midterms. Midterms and finals are big in my school: there is a teacher proctoring every classroom, but not their own. The students sit in silent rows, can't use their own writing utensil, and can't get up or look around for hours on end. On a fancy website called Illuminate, the scores that students get are averaged together and data is analyzed with a click of a button. Teachers can see what each one of their classes got wrong, what all of their classes averaged together scored, and what their scores look like compared to other teachers scored. The biology department had an average of about 50%.

When I looked through the questions the students got wrong, I could see that the questions that were straightforward had higher scores than questions that were worded confusingly. So, I decided to give students a lesson with really confusing questions to develop their skills in deciphering the meaning in questions (AKA critical thinking of question mastery). It sounded like a good idea, and it still does, but it didn't pan as well as it sounds. Students were frustrated to the point they shut down. 

I want to try to find a way to reach the different levels of learners in my class. The students in my classes truly range from high, medium, and low learners. When I explain things at an average rate, there are about five students that are frustrated that I'm teaching too fast and about five students that are frustrated that I'm teaching too slowly. The flaw in my confusing questions lesson is that while my top learners were thoroughly engaged and enjoying the challenge, my average learners and lower learners were confused to the point of giving up. 

Over the next couple of weeks, I have one mission: find a way to reach out to all levels of learners. One method that I found engaging for all of my students is having them present something to the class. I think I will have the students have some sort of teaching method where they have to become experts in one topic (glycolysis, photosynthesis, Krebs cycle, etc.) and then teach the class that topic in 1-2 minutes. I will also put a variety of question levels on the worksheets so that each student has some questions that are accessable to their learning level.