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’ReadinessInterestLearning Profile

What can be Tiered?• Assignments• Activities• Homework• Centers• Experiments• Materials• Assessments• Writing Prompts

ContentProcessProduct

Planning Tiered Activities

Step 1. Identify key concepts or skillsWhat should students know, understand, or be able to do?

Step 2. Think about students an/or use assessments to determine:

Readiness LevelInterestsLearning Profiles

A Four Step Method

Step 3. Create an activity for “on-level” learners that is:1. Interesting2. Challenging3. 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

Anchor Activities

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

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

• “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

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

Compose

Create

Cubing – Generic Cubes

Who

WhenWhere

Why

How

What

Questions

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.

to Differentiate Product

• Choices based on readiness, interest, and learning profile

• Clear expectations• Timelines• Agreements• Product Guides• Rubrics• Evaluation

Some Traits of QualityCurriculum & 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

Begin Slowly – Just Begin!Low-Prep DifferentiationChoices of booksHomework optionsUse of reading buddiesVaried journal PromptsOrbitalsVaried pacing with anchor optionsStudent-teaching goal settingWork alone / togetherWhole-to-part and part-to-whole explorationsFlexible seatingVaried computer programsDesign-A-DayVaried Supplementary materialsOptions for varied modes of expressionVarying scaffolding on same organizerLet’s Make a Deal projectsComputer mentorsThink-Pair-Share by readiness, interest, learning profileUse of collaboration, independence, and cooperationOpen-ended activitiesMini-workshops to reteach or extend skillsJigsawNegotiated CriteriaExplorations by interestsGames to practice mastery of informationMultiple levels of questions

High-Prep DifferentiationTiered activities and labsTiered productsIndependent studiesMultiple textsAlternative assessmentsLearning contracts4-MATMultiple-intelligence optionsCompactingSpelling by readinessEntry PointsVarying organizersLectures coupled with graphic organizersCommunity mentorshipsInterest groupsTiered centersInterest centersPersonal agendasLiterature CirclesStationsComplex InstructionGroup InvestigationTape-recorded materialsTeams, Games, and TournamentsChoice BoardsThink-Tac-ToeSimulationsProblem-Based LearningGraduated RubricsFlexible reading formatsStudent-centered writing formats

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

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.

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 VERBcircle 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.

Exit Card: 3-2-1 Summarizer

After reading over my 1st 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

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

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