This week, many of our readings and class lecture deals with tiered activities. While it seems like a pretty straight forward idea, implementing it seems daunting. As stated in many places, the best way to begin is to take it one step at a time. So, what do you already know about tiering activities and what questions do you still have? How does this idea compare to other instructional approaches you've worked with? Describe one potential obstacle to adhering to this instructional approach.
When sorting out differentiated instruction and building upon tiered activities, it is an overwhelming concept. So, I like it when I hear to begin small. We begin with the primary instruction and resources as the same for all students. Through continuous assessments, we begin to fit together the student and learning practice for understanding. Tier instruction enables the teacher to assist students who still need instruction and for other students to continue learning if they show mastery of the concept. Degrees of complexity are in the instructional activities for students who do and who do not understand. Teachers teach all groups. The advanced need teacher support as well as the average or students who show the most difficulty. How do I know from the beginning, that my differentiation is appropriate? I know Boom's Taxonomy is a good resource to consider in varying levels of understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs I try new approaches, they can be modified as needed, and they can be strengthened from year to year. Right now, I think my confidence in differentiation is a challenging factor. I just want to know that what I am doing is the most beneficial to students. When school begins and I serve my students, I will really see how much I have learned. I have already learned so much from this class and think using this knowledge will be a tremendous help.
Before this class, I knew about tiered activities, but I did not have the confidence to implement them regularly. Teaching this way, meeting the needs of all learners with a variety of activities, is the way I want to teach. All too often I found it difficult to create/find activities to meet the needs of all learners that were all fun, engaging, and the same time length. Instead of facing this challenge, I tended to compromise. After reading the text and investigating further, I see a variety of ways to make tiered instruction work in my classroom. I hope by starting small at the beginning of the year, my students and I will be able to work together to create a community that constantly learns and grows with one another. It seems, in theory (as I have not yet practiced it) to be one of the best approaches I have researched. I am looking forward to implementing this into my classroom.
ReplyDeleteI know this will take a lot of planning. I wonder if it will get easier or become more natural as I continue learning more about differentiation. Will I be able to create new tiered activities instinctively like I do now with whole group activities? I believe time will be my biggest obstacle. With all of the challenges teachers face, sometimes planning is overwhelming. Moving forward, I wonder if I will have the resources I need to plan effective activities for my class.
I have heard of tiered activities before this class but didn't really understand them. I think it is a great concept that can reach each student at their level of learning. I am not in a classroom so I'm sure I will understand it better when I start having to use tiered activities. There is such a wide variety of options, I'm sure I will enjoy finding all of the options. The one problem I do see is the increased time to plan a lesson. Having to develop activities for all learners at different levels could be time consuming. As a teacher of students of all learning levels, it is worth the time taken to make sure each student makes gains.
ReplyDeleteTiering activities involves providing students with multiple ways to learn, process, and demonstrate ways that students show understanding of concepts. I understand it takes both much planning as well as knowing our students in order to appropriately design tiered activities that will meet their learning needs. Questions that remain for me about tiered activities revolve around how to ensure that different activities carry equal weight. I also need to do some more best practice research about how to ensure appropriate challenge is not viewed in terms of “easy” or “hard” but rather as a best fit to meet the needs of the learner. Compared to other instructional approaches I have worked with, tiering activities takes more time and forethought, but the results of such instruction are worth it. Because of the multiple intelligences (Gardner) and cognitive domains (Bloom) often reflected in tiered activities, more of the learning needs of students within a single classroom can be met. A potential obstacle of tiered activities could be that they are not appropriately developed to reflect learning goals. Additionally, the activities may not be fully developed to require similar time commitments, engage students equally, or reflect a purpose not just a greater work load.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nellie in her comments above. I am completely in agreement with tiering the assignments, but with primary students, in my mind I am seeing them looking at the assignments as difficult and easy as well and questioning why this group is doing this and another group is doing something else. Stereotypes are placed on children at such a young age. It seems like the pendulum is swinging to a different direction right now in education. We used to worry and work to make sure that we never hurt their self esteem, so much to the point that we lost them in their academics. Now, it's like we have realized we have to work through some of that to reach their abilities and push each of them to their greatest potential. The tiered assignments allow the teacher to do just that - work to push each student within their abilities. Just an interesting place we are in education, in my opinion, from where we used to be.
ReplyDeleteIn part because of either convenience, NCLB, standardized testing, or other factors educators have come to believe that all students in a class/grade/state must end up at the “I get it” stage of learning at the same time. Tiers are a way to differentiate learning in a big way. I have used tiers with elementary students in reading/ELA the basic concept we used each day was that your high achievers got one small group experience with the teacher, the “almost got its” received two small group opportunities with the teacher, the strugglers or at risk students also received two small group opportunities with the teacher and a third pull-out opportunity with a specialist. Sadly, with this system unless the individual teacher developed opportunities for the high achievers to receive advanced instruction it was not provided. The goal each day was to keep each child busy while the teacher worked on small groups.
ReplyDeleteI agree that tiers are a useful tool to be used occasionally, routines are important but so are interesting events. Key elements that I noticed are that they should be equally interesting, equally fun, an equal amount of work, and not used for a grade. These aspects sound like tiers will be useful in gifted to differentiate students by interests or learning preferences. One of the hardest aspects for me will be to get the time it takes to complete equal for all groups, but with practice I think my students and I could have fun with tiered learning.