Differentiating The Content/Topic: What Will I Teach? Use Pre-Assessment Data To Decide The Needs of The Class To Group Students
Differentiating The Content/Topic: What Will I Teach? Use Pre-Assessment Data To Decide The Needs of The Class To Group Students
Differentiating The Content/Topic: What Will I Teach? Use Pre-Assessment Data To Decide The Needs of The Class To Group Students
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Information is collected on a daily basis through observations, review of daily work samples, checklists, progress along a rubric, and
progress completing long rang projects. This will provide the teacher of how well the students are progressing towards the learning outcome.
Scaffold – The teacher provides both the challenge and support to reach the next level. The teacher utilizes support techniques. All students
participate in learning the same content. The teacher scaffolds each student to the next level of understandings, skills, and applications.
Performance Based Objectives (PBO) is a description of the performance learners must demonstrate at the end of instruction, in order to be
considered competent.
The intent of the Instruction: Is there a problem worth solving? What is the desired outcome? Is the teacher directed instruction a relevant
part of the solution?
Is the instruction: a review for groups, for independent practice, to re-teach, to enrich, or is it new content.
Performance assessments can provide movement for improving instruction, and increase students understanding of what they need to know
and be able to do.
Teachers describe what the task will be.
Teacher describes the standards that will be used to evaluate performance.
Description of good performance
Allows students to judge their own work as the work.
Teacher observation
Observation allows for the recording and description of behavior as it occurs providing information regarding the process and procedures
teachers use in facilitating lessons and the processing and procedures students use in completing assignments.
Self-Evaluation
It encourages you to engage in critical thinking to analyze your teaching practices. This is a difficult practice to engage in. You could use
peer or colleague to assist in honest assessment of your skills and practices.
Understand the learning styles of each child
Offer activities that address a variety of learning styles and interest
Do the activities provide children the opportunity to work and play
The activities allow me to identify the learning styles
Offer concrete examples of ways I identify the learning styles
Do I make a point of identifying the learning styles and interest of each child
Do I use my knowledge of children’s learning styles and interest to make decisions about the way I set up activities, environment,
and materials
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Anchoring Activities
The activities should be self-directed for students to do independently when they finished assigned work. This work can be done in the
beginning of class or at the end of the class. The activities should be comprised of work that the students have already learned.
Examples of Activities:
Worksheet with open and closed ended questions
Learning centers
Journal writing
Creating games or books
Playing games to reinforce concepts/skills
Current events
Riddles and brain teasers to start conversations flowing
Scaffolding Activities
This activity involves changing the levels of support for learning. You must adjust the amount of guidance to help fit the student’s
performance level.
Scaffolding Activities:
The teacher takes what the student knows then helps the student incorporate this into new material being learned.
All students will participate in learning the same content objective
The teacher scaffolds each student to the next level of understandings, skills, and application
Examples of Activities:
Recast the students statements to ensure understanding of routines in the classroom
Plan structured activities
Allow plenty of wait time for students to respond
Post printed labels and word list around the classroom
Include yes/no answers and questions in which students can list the answers
Use books on tapes and stories with a close match between text and illustrations
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Use brainstorming and webbing activities to activate background knowledge
Tiered Activities
Tiering is a strategy by which teachers differentiate to meet students at their readiness level, interest level, or by their learning profile. These
activities are important when a teacher wants students with different learning needs work with the same ideas and skills.
Teachers use tiered activities so that all students focus on essential understanding and skills but at different levels of complexity, and
abstractness. By keeping the focus of the activity the same, but provide a varying degree of difficulty the teacher will ensure that all students
are challenged and come away with the pivotal skills and understanding.
Examples of Activities
Dictated answers Provide notes in cloze format or with
Larger font size completed definitions for highlighting
Decrease amount of text and visual stimuli
Frequent opportunity to review Preferential seating
Study guide
Content passage read aloud Word banks
Teach key words, vocabulary, and phrases
Writing organizer Decrease number of choices on multiple choice
Color coding terms and definitions test
Extended time for assignments and test Rearrange matching test to list definitions on
completion the left side and vocabulary on the right side
Cooperative Learning
Is a teaching strategy that stresses academic, cognitive, and social development? It also, ensures that all students have mutual goals, share
the work tasks. Share the materials, share the resources and information, have different roles within the group, and receive both group and
individual rewards. In the Cooperative Learning classroom, students act as role models for each other.
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Examples of Activities:
Students in group assist each other Reviewing content
Analyzing and diagnosing problems Keeping each other on task
Explaining material Sharing accomplishments
Each student shares the responsibility for the other members’ learning
Taking turns
Jigsaw
Jigsaw is a cooperative learning techniques that reduces racial conflict among students. Jigsaw promotes better learning, improves student
motivation, and increases enjoyment of the learning experience.
A large amount of content is divided among different groups with the purpose of learning a piece of the content and being responsible for
teaching their piece to the rest of the group.
Examples of Activities:
Divide the content into manageable parts. Assign the parts to groups, with specific directions on what is to be learned in each
group. Students share their learning with the group through various products.
Product types:
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Verbalize (oral reports) Perform (role play)
Write (journaling) Solve (demonstrate solution)
Create (physical model)
Rubrics
You begin by identifying 3-5 areas in which you want to assess a project. Areas you might include accuracy, appearance, completeness, and
labels.
Decide on what would be an ideal performance in each area and what would be the opposite of the ideal performance.
Under the area of accuracy, an ideal performance might be: “the width of each layer closely matches their actual proportion in the
earth’s core.” At the opposition end of the scale, the statement might read: “the width of each layer does not represent their actual
proportion in the earth’s core.”
The next step is to determine intermediate steps, which might read: “the width of each layer accurately illustrates the fact that some
layers are thicker than others and the width of some of the layers are accurately represented according to the map scale.”
These statements describe the criteria for each level of an area. Rubrics are often represented in table format, with a row for each
area and a column for each level.
Learning Contracts
Are a negotiated agreement between teacher and student that gives students some freedom in acquiring skills and understandings that a
teacher deems important at a given time.
Examples of Activities:
Assumes it is teacher’s responsibility to specify important skills and understandings and make sure students acquire them
Assumes students can take on some of the responsibility for learning themselves
Delineates skills that need to be practiced and mastered
Ensures students will apply or use those skills in context
Specifies working conditions to which students must adhere during the contract time
Sets positive and negative consequences for adhering or not to working conditions
Establishes criteria for successful completion and quality of work.
Includes signatures of agreement to terms of the contract by both teacher and student
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Learning Centers
A learning center is a classroom area that contains a collection of activities or materials designed to teach, reinforce, or extend a particular
skill or concept.
Examples of Activities:
Exploratory in nature
Teacher constructed tasks
Focus on learning goals
Contain materials that promote individual growth toward those goals
Use diverse materials and activities, intentionally created to meet the needs of that group
Provide clear directions for students
Offer instructions about what a student should do if he needs help
Use a record-keeping system to monitor what students do at the center
Portfolios
Graphic Organizers
It is a way for visual learners to arrange their ideas. They are called visual maps, mind mapping, and visual organizers. Graphic organizers
can be used for brainstorming ideas to findings. They can be used as a group or as individuals.
Examples of Activities:
Inspiration software Mind mapping
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Paint and Draw Spread sheet
Word processor Digital camera
Exit Cards
They are an assessment tool to help teachers become more aware of the students understanding of the concepts taught. The exit cards are
written student responses to questions posed at the end of a learning activity.
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How to use the Exit Cards
The teacher will distribute paper or index cards to each student. The students will write their names on the cards and wait for the teacher to
give them a question. The students will turn the cards in before they leave the classroom.
Cooperative Discipline
Learn the 3 major behavioral management styles and the possible outcomes of each
Learn the purpose of student misbehavior
Be able to distinguish accurately among the four goals of misbehavior: attention, power, revenge, and avoidance-of-failure
Become familiar with a variety of interventions for the moment of misbehavior
Identify and practice techniques to avoid and defuse student-teacher confrontations
Identify appropriate logical consequences for student misbehavior
Teach the children the routines/behaviors they need to have in the classroom.
Classroom Rules
Treat people and property with respect
Sit still, look at and listen to the teacher when he/she is speaking
Put materials back where they belong after using them
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Walk, don’t run
Raise your hand and get permission before you leave your seat
Have a plan, bring techniques to a conscious level, rehearse, affirmation before reformation
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Another great tutorial from TeAch-nology.com! The Web Portal For Educators! (http://www.teach-nology.com)
Effective teachers have been differentiating instruction for as long as teaching has been a profession. It has to do with being sensitive to the
needs of your students and finding ways to help students make the necessary connections for learning to occur in the best possible way. In
this day and age, we have extensive research available to us to assist us in creating instructional environments that will maximize the
learning opportunities that will assist students in developing the knowledge and skills necessary for achieving positive learning outcomes.
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Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has received an overwhelming response from educators in the past several years.
Gardner offers seven different ways to demonstrate intellectual ability and has recently added an eight intelligence. Understanding how
students demonstrate their intellectual capacity is an important factor in designing instruction that will meet the specific learning needs of
students who may be dominant in one or several intelligence as opposed to other forms of intelligence. More information on these topics can
be found on:
http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/methods/multi_intelligences/
3. Authentic Assessment
Not enough can be said about authentic assessment. Basically, what it means is that students are tested on what they have been taught and
hopefully, what they have learned. The greatest implications are that: curriculum is aligned with what is expected to be learned; strategies
used to teach are according to students' needs; and assessment instruments used are flexible and adequately and appropriately used to
measure on-going performance. The bottom line is that authentic assessment offers students the opportunity to "measure up" to the standards
that are aligned to the curriculum. For more information on this very important topic, go to:
http://www.teach-nology.com/currenttrends/alternative_assessment/
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Because "one size does not fit all," it is imperative that a variety of teaching strategies be used in a differentiated classroom. Among many
teaching strategies that can be considered, there are four worth mentioning: direct instruction, inquiry-based learning, cooperative
learning, and information processing models.
Direct Instruction
This is the most widely used and most traditional teaching strategy. It is teacher centered and can be used to cover a great amount of material
in the amount of time teachers have to cover what students need to learn. It is structured and is based on mastery learning. More information
can be found on: http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/methods/models/
Inquiry-based Learning
Inquiry-based learning has become very popular in teaching today. It is based on the scientific method and works very well in developing
critical thinking and problem solving skills. It is student centered and requires students to conduct investigations independent of the teacher,
unless otherwise directed or guided through the process of discovery. For more information, go to: http://www.teach-
ology.com/currenttrends/inquiry/
Cooperative Learning
Probably one of the most misunderstood strategies for teaching is "cooperative learning." Yet, if employed properly, cooperative learning
can produce extraordinary results in learning outcomes. It is based on grouping small teams of students heterogeneously according to ability,
interest, background, etc. However, one of the most important features of cooperative learning is to pick the best strategy that will be used to
assign the task for students to accomplish. The more popular strategies include JigsawII, STAD-Student Teams, or Group Investigation. For
more information, go to: http://www.teach-nology.com/currenttrends/cooperative_learning/
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activities require students to develop and apply knowledge in ways that make sense to them and that they find meaningful and relevant.
Ideas for activities can be found at:
http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/
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