1. Tiered Instruction  Provides teachers with a means of assigning different tasks within the same lesson or unit. The tasks will vary according to the students’ Readiness Interest Learning Profile

2. What can be Tiered? Assignments Activities Homework Centers Experiments Materials Assessments Writing Prompts Content Process Product

3. Planning Tiered Activities Step 1.Identify key concepts or skills What should students know, understand, or be able to do? Step 2.Think about students an/or use assessments to determine: Readiness Level Interests Learning Profiles A Four Step Method

4. Step 3. Create an activity for “on-level” learners that is: 1. Interesting 2. Challenging 3. Causes students to use key skill(s) to understand the major idea or concept. Step 4. Adjust the activity accordingly. Remember, you may not need to adjust the activity if you are differentiating by interest or by learning profile. However, if you are differentiating by readiness, you will need to adjust for “struggling learners” and “highly-able” learners. On-Level Learners High-Able Learners Struggling Learners

5. Anchor Activities Anchor activities are ongoing assignments that students can work on independently throughout a unit, a grading period, or longer.

6. 1)Provide meaningful work for students when they finish an assignment or project, when they first enter the class, or when they are “stumped.” 2)Provide ongoing tasks that tie to the content and instruction 3)Free up the classroom teacher to work with other groups of students or individuals The Purpose of an Anchor Activity

7. “Brain Busters” Learning Packets Activity Box Learning/Interest Centers Vocabulary Work Magazine Articles with Generic Questions or Activities Listening Stations Research Questions or Projects Journals or Learning Logs Silent Reading Some Anchor Activities

8. Cubing Designed to help Ss think about a topic from different angles Game-like: motivational Recognizes large reservoir of knowledge and skills of some learners Satisfies hunger to do something different Eliminates boredom and lethargy resulting from unnecessary drill/practice Often used to reinforce, extend or demonstrate learning

9. Compose Create Cubing – Generic Cubes Who When Where Why How What

10. Questions

11. My Family in the Past and Present Cube Make a video or tape recording, interviewing members of your families telling about their responsibilities. Create a timeline with pictures and/or words showing changes in your family over time. Create a song or rap that tells about how your family has changed over time. Present an argument that convinces others how your family is different today than it was in the past. Create a collage with digital pictures showing changes in your family over time. Create a play that demonstrates changes in your family over time. Make a video or tape recording of a family member, describing how your family has changed over time.

12. to Differentiate Product Choices based on readiness, interest, and learning profile Clear expectations Timelines Agreements Product Guides Rubrics Evaluation

15. Some Traits of Quality Curriculum & Instruction Some Traits of Quality Differentiation Promotes understanding Engaging (mentally and affectively) Focuses on Knowledge, concepts, understandings, & skills valued by experts in a discipline Rich, deals with profound ideas Tightly focused goals & components Joyful / satisfying Coherent (sensible to the learner, organized to promote retention & use) Seems real (is real) to the student Helps learner feel more powerful & purposeful in his/her world Requires high level thinking Fresh, surprising, curiosity-provoking, interesting Provides choices Clear in expectations Allows meaningful collaboration Focused on products meaningful to students & others Connects with students’ lives & world Calls on students to use what they learn in interesting & important ways. Involves students in setting goals for their learning & assessing progress toward those goals Stretches the student Rooted in student need an extension of high quality curriculum Derived from on-going assessment Respectful of each learner Builds community Involves students as decision –makers Demonstrates teacher-students partnerships in teaching & learning Growth focused Scaffolds growth for each learner Supports successful collaboration Stretches each learner Promotes & rewards individual excellence Addresses readiness, interest, & learning profile Attends effectively to gender & culture Spans content, process, & product Effective & varied use of instructional approaches Teaches students to take responsibility for own learning Flexible use of time, space, materials, groupings Maximizes opportunity to “show what you know” Balances student & teacher choice Planned (proactive) plus tailoring Occurs when either teacher or student is on center stage Includes whole class, small group, & individual instruction Supports success for each learner & the class as a whole Builds collaborations with parents Tomlinson/UVa/2000

16. Begin Slowly – Just Begin! Low-Prep Differentiation Choices of books Homework options Use of reading buddies Varied journal Prompts Orbitals Varied pacing with anchor options Student-teaching goal setting Work alone / together Whole-to-part and part-to-whole explorations Flexible seating Varied computer programs Design-A-Day Varied Supplementary materials Options for varied modes of expression Varying scaffolding on same organizer Let’s Make a Deal projects Computer mentors Think-Pair-Share by readiness, interest, learning profile Use of collaboration, independence, and cooperation Open-ended activities Mini-workshops to reteach or extend skills Jigsaw Negotiated Criteria Explorations by interests Games to practice mastery of information Multiple levels of questions High-Prep Differentiation Tiered activities and labs Tiered products Independent studies Multiple texts Alternative assessments Learning contracts 4-MAT Multiple-intelligence options Compacting Spelling by readiness Entry Points Varying organizers Lectures coupled with graphic organizers Community mentorships Interest groups Tiered centers Interest centers Personal agendas Literature Circles Stations Complex Instruction Group Investigation Tape-recorded materials Teams, Games, and Tournaments Choice Boards Think-Tac-Toe Simulations Problem-Based Learning Graduated Rubrics Flexible reading formats Student-centered writing formats

17. If you want to feel safe and secure, continue to do what you have always done. If you want to grow, go to the cutting edge of our profession. Just know that when you do, there will be a temporary loss of sanity. So know when you don’t quite know what you are doing, you are probably growing. Madeline Hunter

18. Multiple Evaluations 1.EXIT CARDS (“Tickets Out the door”) –Used to gather information on student readiness levels, interests, and/or learning profiles. They can be used as quick assessments to see if the students are “getting it.” –The teacher hand out index cards to Ss at the end of an instructional sequence or class period. The teacher asks the students to respond to a pre-determined prompt on their index cards and then turn them in as they leave the classroom or transition to another subject. –The teacher reviews the Ss responses and separates the cards into instructional groups based on preset criteria.

19. Exit Card Example Multiple Evaluations Explain the difference Between a noun and a verb. Write one sentence. Circle the noun and underline the verb. The boy runs home. In the sentence above, the underline word is a… NOUN VERB circle the correct answer Notice how these exit cards have been differentiated by readiness. Each student is still expected to know about nouns and verbs, but their individual questions are based on their skill level and their degree of knowledge.

20. Exit Card: 3-2-1 Summarizer After reading over my 1 st draft for writing…….. 3 revisions I can make to improve my draft. 2 resources I can use to help improve my draft. 1 thing I really like about my first draft Multiple Evaluations

21. Some Sample Exit Card Questions: 1.Write one thing you learned today. 2.What area gave you the most difficulty today? 3.Something that really helped me in my learning today was…. 4.What connection did you make today that mad you say, “HAH! I get it!” 5.Something I still don’t understand is…. 6.Write a question you'd like to ask or something you’d like to know more about. 7.Draw a picture of ____ and label it in English. 8.3-2-1: 3 new things; 2 things you still want to know, 1 question you still have

22. EXIT CARD GROUPINGS Multiple Evaluations Group 1 * Ss who are struggling with the concept or skill Group 2 * Ss with some understanding of concept or skill Group 3 * Ss who understand the concept or skill Readiness Groups