Planning & Tiered Assignments

Tiered Assignments

Tiered assignments, as described by Tomlinson (1995) and Williams (2002), are teaching strategies used in diverse classrooms to address students' varying needs. They involve assigning different levels of activities that align with students' prior knowledge and promote ongoing learning. These assignments offer tasks of varying complexity, depth, and abstractness, along with different levels of support. Students engage in activities that share a common understanding or objective but are tailored to their readiness and performance levels, fostering growth and development.

Utilizing tiered assignments offers the following benefits:

• Seamlessly integrates assessment and instruction.

• Permits students to commence their learning journey from their current level.

• Provides students with appropriately challenging tasks to engage with.

• Facilitates the reinforcement or extension of concepts and principles based on individual student readiness.

• Allows for adjustments in learning conditions to accommodate various learning styles.

• Helps avoid tasks that induce anxiety (when too difficult) or boredom (when too easy).

• Fosters success, thereby motivating students.

(Source: Tomlinson, 1995)

Tiered Assignment: Same learning outcomes but differing levels of difficulty. NOT more work. The resources for the assignment are differentiated so some groups can use grade level resources while others can use more complex resources.

Example:

• Tier 1 - Describe an ecosystem with either pictures or words

• Tier 2 - Describe an ecosystem in a few paragraphs and represent it visually

Start your lesson plan with the gifted learner in mind, then add scaffolds and supports for on grade level and below grade level learners.

Genially Direct Link

Tiered lesson plan example from start to finish

Examples of Tiered Activities

Tiered Instruction Packet with examples

“Curriculum compacting is a technique for differentiating instruction that allows teachers to make adjustments to curriculum for students who have already mastered the material to be learned, replacing content students know with new content, enrichment options, or other activities. Researchers recommend that teachers first determine the expected goals of the unit or lesson in terms of the content, skills, or standards students must learn before assessing students to determine which ones have already mastered most or all of the specified learning outcomes.” NAGC

Compaction can have two end goals:

• Move students to the next level more quickly (with subject or grade level acceleration being the destination)

• Take students deeper into the curriculum in place of “standard” instruction

You will NEED classroom teachers on board with this - collaboration and support are key

PRE-ASSESSMENT IS ESSENTIAL!

UConn/Renzulli recommend these 8 steps to compact curriculum:

1. Select relevant learning objectives in a subject area or grade level

2. Find an appropriate way to pretest the learning objectives

3. Identify students who should take the pretests

4. Pretest students to determine mastery levels

5. Streamline practice or instructional time for students who show mastery of the objectives

6. Provide small group or individualized instruction for students who have not yet mastered all the objectives, but are capable of doing so more quickly than their classmates

7. Offer academic alternatives for students whose curriculum has been compacted

8. Keep records of the compacting process and instructional options for compacted students