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StrategiesThatDifferentiateInstructionK_4-080808.pdfstrategiesthatdifferentiateinstruction4.12.pdfA Great Resource for Online Learning to meet the needs of advanced learners:
A Great Resource for Online Learning to meet the needs of advanced learners:
Tiered Assignments
Tiered Assignments
When teachers tier assignments, they make slight adjustments within the same lesson to meet the needs of students. All students learn the same fundamental skills and concepts but through varying modes and activities. The tiers appropriately challenge students at their ability levels. The teacher’s challenge is to make sure all tasks, regardless of the tier level, are interesting, engaging, and challenging. Activities and assignments can be adjusted in any of the following ways:
• Level of complexity
• Pacing of the assignment
• Amount of structure
• Number of steps required for completion
• Materials provided
• Form of expression (letter, essay, report, research paper, short story, speech)
• Time allowed
• Level of independence required
Steps:
Steps:
1. Identify key concepts, skills, and essential understandings that you want all students to achieve. These elements become the basis for your on-level tasks.
2. Identify how you will cluster groups/activities. Although you can create multiple levels of tiers, keep the number of levels consistent with your group of students. Don’t make three tiers if only two groups of students exist in your classroom—those students who are working at grade level and those students who are struggling, for example.
3. Select elements to tier.
4. Create your on-level tier.
5. Next, design a similar task for struggling learners. The task should make adjustments based on student readiness.
6. If needed, develop a third, more advanced activity for learners who have already mastered the basic standard or competency being addressed. Make sure the task actually requires higher-level thinking than the on-level tasks. The advanced tier shouldn’t just be more of the same thing.
(Adapted from the work of Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tiered Instruction)
Learning Menus
Learning Menus
A menu offers students a way to make decisions about what they will do in order to meet class requirements. A menu could be for a single lesson, a week-long lesson, or even a month-long period of study. Once the teacher has decided on what the essential understandings and/or skills are, she/he can begin to create a menu.
Steps:
1. Identify the most important elements of a lesson or unit.
2. Create an imperative or required assignment or project that reflects the minimum
understanding you expect all students to achieve.
3. Create negotiables which expand upon the main dish or imperative assignment or project. These negotiables often require students to go beyond the basic levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, they often include activities that require synthesis, analysis, or evaluation.
4. Create a final optional section that offers students the opportunity for enrichment.
The optional section often reflects activities that students can use for extra credit.
Author Rick Wormeli suggests placing the menu options in a restaurant menu style (see below) that could include appetizers, a main dish, side dishes, and even desserts. He suggests the following format.
Appetizers (Negotiables)
Appetizers (Negotiables)
• A list of assignments or projects
• Students select one item to complete
The Main Dish (Imperatives)
The Main Dish (Imperatives)
• An assignment or project that everyone must complete
Side Dishes (Negotiables)
Side Dishes (Negotiables)
• A list of assignments or projects
• Students select two items to complete
Desserts (Options)
Desserts (Options)
• Optional but irresistible assignments or projects
• Options should be high interest and challenging
• Students choose one of these enrichment options
Tic-Tac-Toe Choice Boards
Tic-Tac-Toe Choice Boards
Tic-Tac-Toe choice boards give students the opportunity to participate in multiple tasks that allow them to practice skills they’ve learned in class or to demonstrate and extend their understanding of concepts. From the board, students either choose or are assigned three adjacent or diagonal tasks to complete.
Choice boards address student readiness, interest, or learning preferences. They are easily adapted to a subject area.
Steps:
1. Identify the outcomes and instructional focus of a unit of study.
2. Use assessment data and student profiles to determine student readiness, learning styles, or interests.
3. Design nine different tasks.
4. Arrange the tasks on a choice board.
5. Select one required task for all students. Place it in the center of the board.
6. Students complete three tasks, one of which must be the task in the middle square.
The three tasks should complete a Tic-Tac-Toe row.
Adaptations:
• Allow students to complete any three tasks—even if the completed tasks don’t make a Tic-Tac-Toe.
• Assign students tasks based on readiness.
• Create different choice boards based on readiness. (Struggling students work with the options on one choice board while more advanced students have different options.)
• Create choice board options based on learning styles or learning preferences. For example, a choice board could include three kinesthetic tasks, three auditory tasks, three visual tasks.
Resource:
• Author Rick Wormeli : Tic-Tac-Toe board based on Gardner’s (1991) multiple intelligences.
Below are some example Tic Tac Toe Boards from a Perry County Schools Resource that include some for 6th grade math, using them with a novel and templates to use at any age.
Choice Boards Packet.pdfEnrichment Strategy: Socratic Seminar
Enrichment Strategy: Socratic Seminar
Socrates believed that helping students think for themselves was more important than filling
their heads with “right” answers. In a Socratic Seminar, participants seek a deeper
understanding of complex ideas through thoughtful dialogue, rather than by memorizing bits of
information. A Socratic Seminar helps students build their critical thinking skills and improve their reading skills. The seminar fosters active learning as participants explore and evaluate the ideas, issues, and values in a particular text. In a seminar, the instructor provides students with a text. After reading the text, students respond to thoughtful questions provided by the instructor or their peers. Seated in a circle, students explain their thinking and respond to the open-ended questions. Socratic Seminars consist of four basic elements.
The Four Elements of the Socratic Seminar
1. Text: Content related poems; stories; essays; primary or secondary source documents;
problems; articles; pieces of art and music; and anything rich in ideas, issues, and values
2. Questions: High level questions created by participants and/or the instructor,
open-ended questions that usually have no right answers
3. Leader: Plays dual role of leader and participant, frequently presents the opening
question before moving into a participant’s role
4. Participants: Study text in advance, actively listen, share ideas, refer to the text for support and clarification
Sources: Dodge and Swanson
Guidelines for Participants
• Refer to the text when needed to support ideas, issues, and values.
• Remember it’s OK to “pass” when asked to contribute.
• When confused, ask for clarification.
• Stick to the point under discussion, make notes about ideas you want to return to at a later point.
• Don’t raise hands; remember, you are participating in a conversation.
• Listen carefully.
• Speak clearly.
• Talk with each other, not just to the leader or teacher.
• Discuss ideas rather than opinions.
Adapted from “Socratic Seminars” found at
http://www.studyguide.org/socratic_seminar.htm
Socratic Seminar Socratic Seminar Socratic Seminar
Is It Dialogue or Is It Debate?
Because Socratic Seminars focus on dialogue not debate, it’s important to establish guidelines and to make sure students understand the differences between dialogue and debate.
• Dialogue is collaborative: multiple sides work toward shared understanding.
• Debate is oppositional: two opposing sides try to prove each other wrong.
• In dialogue, one listens to understand, to make meaning, and to find common ground.
• In debate, one listens to find flaws, to spot differences, and to counter arguments.
• Dialogue enlarges and possibly changes a participant’s point of view.
• Debate affirms a participant’s point of view.
• Dialogue reveals assumptions for examination and re-evaluation.
• Debate defends assumptions as truth.
• Dialogue creates an open-minded attitude: openness to being wrong and an openness to
change.
• Debate creates a close-minded attitude, a determination to be right.
• In dialogue, one submits one’s best thinking, expecting that other people’s reflections will
help improve it rather than threaten it.
• In debate, one submits one’s best thinking and defends it against challenge to show that it is right.
• Dialogue calls for temporarily suspending one’s beliefs.
• Debate calls for investing wholeheartedly in one’s beliefs.
• In dialogue, one searches for strengths in all positions.
• In debate, one searches for weaknesses in the other position.
• Dialogue respects all the other participants and seeks not to alienate or offend.
• Debate rebuts contrary positions and may belittle or deprecate other participants.
• Dialogue assumes that many people have pieces of answers and that cooperation can lead to a greater understanding.
• Debate assumes a single, right answer that somebody already has.
• Dialogue remains open-ended.
• Debate demands a conclusion.
(Adapted from Focus on Study Circles, Winter, 1993, page 9)
Socratic Seminar Example for The Pledge of Allegiance
John Swanson, Socratic Seminar leader, offers the following suggestions for teachers planning a seminar. These steps provide a framework for the seminar process. He has used The Pledge of Allegiance as the example text.
1. Arrange the classroom as a circle.
2. Introduce Socratic Seminars to students as a way to talk and work together to understand different kinds of texts.
3. Distribute and discuss Is It Dialogue or Is It Debate? (See page 18.) Emphasize that Socratic Seminars are based on dialogue.
4. Assign students the following prep work for The Pledge of Allegiance, or a content-based text of your choosing.
• Read the text carefully, as you would a love letter or a recipe.
• Working in pairs and using a dictionary, define the following terms: pledge, allegiance, republic, nation, indivisible, liberty, justice.
5. Set the following ground rules for the seminar or develop ground rules of your own.
• Only one person talking at a time.
• No hand raising, this is a conversation.
• Be respectful of others and their thoughts.
• Base your thoughts on something in the text.
6. Begin the seminar with the following opening question or develop a question of your own.
• How is The Pledge of Allegiance a duty, a dream, and a goal?
7. Facilitate the dialogue by asking probing and clarifying questions based on student responses and the text itself.
8. After bringing the seminar to a close, engage students in writing their responses to the following questions for reflection, or ones of your own.
• How was today’s Socratic Seminar the same as and different from other discussions we have had in this class?
• How did your understanding of The Pledge of Allegiance change?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how well did the group do in following the ground rules?
9. Have students verbally share their reflections around the circle.
(Adapted from materials provided by John Swanson, Education Specialist, TIE.)
Sources:
Benjamin, Amy. Differentiated Instruction: A Guide for Middle and High School Teachers. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education, 2002, page 6.
Dodge, Judy. Differentiation in Action: Grades 4 & Up. New York: Scholastic, 2005, pages 121-124.
“Socratic Seminars.” Studyguide.org: A Web Site for Mrs. Adams’ English Classes. Vestavia Hills High School, Birmingham, AL. 26 June 06
Links
Links
JCS Gifted and Talented Handbook:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R_6qm4Jzg_hkbQt3zqpW-hBI8P5wU4I33epC5RKNXIk/edit?usp=sharing
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