FIAE+Chapter+5+Block+1

Synthesis FIAE C5 B1


 * **Names** || **Abstract** || **Reflection** ||
 * Archambault Michael || Teaching in a differentiated classroom could find a tool called tiering helpful. Tiering is when a teacher changes the complexity of a problem harder or less hard depending on the grasp that some students in the class have on the subject matter. This is designed to work like scaffolding and boost some students along where other students are more advanced. In a classroom that uses the tiering style, it is important that not everything gets tiered. Tiering can also mean making an assignment more challenging for some students with a higher understanding. Using different styles of tiering can increase classroom creativity for the teacher and the students. || This chapter was hard for me to absorb. I appreciate the importance of teaching at a level that is optimum for each student, but at a high school level, most courses do the tiering filter before the students are placed in each class. That obviously isn’t suppose to mean that every kid in a college prep algebra class is going to be at the same level, but they should all have the tools to succeed in that class, or the teacher who passed them into that class didn’t do their job. In an 80 minute period with 25 students, I think it would take away from the entire class learning if a teacher was tiering towards a group of 4 or so students. The 4 or so students should be allotted extra time with a teacher or tutor on the material to get them up to speed with the class, and not have a lower standard of mastery. I would expect a student to spend a study hall or after school time with me to meet the objectives that I hold for the entire class. If an entire college prep calculus class is tiered, and the next block of that class is not, the grades will be essentially curved, and an A in one class will not be worth the weight of an A in the other class. ||
 * Audy Melissa || Chapter 5 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal addresses ways to “tier” assignments or assessments. Tiering is described as adjusting the difficulty of an assignment based on the student’s ability. When tiering, it is important not to stray too far from the original idea, however there are ways to change an assignment slightly in ways that will make a huge difference for a student. A list is given on ideas of how to do this. It is then suggested that as the student’s work progresses, the teacher starts to create greater challenges in the work, allowing the student to continually improve their work. One simple example of tiering a lesson is to change the verb in the prompt. An example given was changing the word “describe” to “analyze” or “critique,” among a list of many other possible verbs that encourage a deeper thought process. The chapter also discusses how to tier assessments, though, this task proves harder. Fairness is often a concern when tiering. It is suggested that teachers discuss this with colleagues to get a better understanding of how to fairly adjust things for certain students. || I found this chapter pretty useful. Though many high school classes are divided by ability level anyway, there is always still a huge range of learners within a classroom. I think tiering is a very difficult thing for a teacher to do, since it often seems unfair to certain students whose work becomes more difficult while others’ work becomes easier. This chapter offers so many examples and tools that can really benefit a teacher who struggles with tiering. As a teacher, naturally we want our students to succeed, and to ensure that this occurs, we must realize that not everyone learns at the same level. Tiering can really help accommodate a slower learners needs, while simultaneously providing more of a challenge to those who excel and would normally become bored. ||
 * Boulter Elizabeth || As we discussed before, every student learns at a different pace. As effective teachers, we need to be aware of their styles and adjust our teaching to their needs. Making these adjustments is called tiering. A lot of these adjustments are made in assessments and are determined by how ready a student is. The chapter discusses where to start and offers many different ways to tier. It’s best to align you standards with those at grade level, not varying either up or down. You must also understand that each class is different and so should be your tiering. You will not always have an even split of tiers and it may need to be adjusts for more groups than just high, medium, or low. The chapter offers examples of how to higher or lower complexities of assignments, tasks, and gives great ideas on learning contracts. || My favorite line of this chapter is after they give tons of examples on menus, contracts, and equalizers, and it says: Students acting on their own ideas are motivated to do the work, and sometimes, their ideas are better than ours”. I love this! It shows that teachers need to tier in such a way that it does not hinder the performance of the student. It needs to offer choices and freedoms, opportunities for creativity, and ways to be independent thinkers. I love the examples they give on how to make tasks more or less complex, I like how they did it in ways that still kept the original task and just altered the process. ||
 * Brown Ryanne || This chapter goes into depth on the concept of tiering. This is the basic action of adjusting assessments, and possibly assignments, to the readiness of the student. Raising the challenge level slowly helps students who may get behind stay ahead, and students that generally get ahead stay challenged. Adjusting levels of complexity and time frames helps accommodate each student. The chapter gives other in depth ways to assess student work according to their level. Learning contracts are one of these helpful pieces. They give students the chance to work as their own pace and at their own level. The chapter explains that some of these learning contracts include check points where the student progress can be evaluated. Learning menus are another way to keep students involved and allow choices for their work. Other tools such as RAFT(S) and cubing are used in tiering and helpful for student decision and progress. || I found this chapter to be really confusing. I didn’t think the initial explanation of tiering was clear or helpful. I felt as thought I really needed to analyze the examples in order to understand the concept. All in all I feel that it very well could turn out to be an offensive way to group students. My question is how would you explain to students that they are group by how slow they are? Would the teacher group the students as what appears to be random and then assign the different levels to work to the different group levels? Or are the students well aware of the grouping? I would feel sort of bad about doing this to my students publicly, and am curious to how drastic the differences can be, or if they could go unnoticed. ||
 * DePue Margaux || Chapter Five of Fair Isn’t Always Equal discusses tiering in the classroom, or how teachers adjust lessons based on the readiness of students to learn certain material. The chapter lists ways to vary learning for students based on their level of learning. For example, to make a lesson more challenging for higher-level students, a teacher could work in more abstract concepts with the topic or extend the topic to other areas of learning for discussion. The chapter briefly touches on Tomlinson’s equalizer, a series of spectrums by which a teacher can measure an assignment to see if it is being used to effectively teach a lesson to their students. Learning contracts, or student and teacher-created expectations and goals for a unit is also a good way of tiering, as well as learning menus, which give students the ability to choose their own assignments dealing with the same material. || This chapter was very helpful in pinpointing how to adjust lessons for certain students who may be ahead or behind in certain skills in the classroom. It gave great specific examples and I was very interested in working with learning contracts. I want my students to have many options for learning the same material so that they may more effectively absorb what they are learning. The only thing that was a bit fuzzy was the description of Tomlinson's equalizer, which I may need some more information on. ||
 * Dunne Kaisha || This chapter goes into tiering assessments. “They define tiering as how teachers adjust assignments and assessments according to students readiness levels, interests, and learner profiles” (page 56). It goes on to talk about adopting assignments for students, how to check if their ready, and creating complexity and challenging tasks. Tominson’s equalizer was also introduced here which recommends that students use an equalizer to examine and adjust readiness levels. Also learning contracts are in here which is kind of like what you have for sports, agreeing to have a certain grade and maintain a certain level of respect in the classroom. || I believe this was a great way to show us how we should really be checking into where students are at in our classroom and if their ready to move on. They introduced questions that one should ask themselves as a teacher before moving on and I don't think I could fully incorporate this into my lesson, but I hope that in our lecture today maybe we could go over how. ||
 * Hudson Kimberly || This chapter was about how to tier assignments for specific students. Tiering is how a teacher adjusts assignments and assessments according to the student’s readiness, interests, and learning style. In order to successfully tier, the teacher should have the lowest level be the standard. That way, expectations from the student are not distorted. Also, the teacher needs to realize that the material that is being taught can be broken down and explored at a deeper level. In order to prevent a pitfall, the teacher needs to stay focused on the concept they are trying to teach. In order to tier so that the assignment is more complex, a teacher can extend the concept to other areas and manipulate the information. Another way to tier assignments, is to make a learning contract. These allow students to work at their own pace in the area that best meets their skills and interests. Checkpoints are listed on the contract and are important because they help the teacher assess the student’s progress and they keep students on track. Learning menus give students choices of tasks to complete in a unit from a list of options. ||


 * I really wish that my math teachers would have used tiering for me in math. I usually take a long time to figure out problems and have a hard time perceiving them in my head. If my teachers had recognized this, then maybe I would not have struggled so much. I am not a big fan of the learning contract. I had a really bad experience with learning contracts in middle school. My eighth grade history teacher made contract that had a list of projects that we had to complete and because they were so pointless and time consuming no one really learned anything from them. I also think that a lot of students would not take them seriously enough. ||
 * Korn Shauna || This chapter is about how teachers can tier their assessments so that the material is set for those learners who need work that is above what the class level is doing and work that is also below what the class level is. This way students who are capable of really excelling in the class will not be bored with everything that everyone else is doing. Those students who need to have things broken down and are not at that level will appreciate things being a little bit easier and still on the same topic as their peers in class. There was also a chart that showed the progress that the teacher would keep track of for that student explaining at the end of a certain time where that student should be standing in class. || I feel that reading this was extremely important because there will be students who need to have something to do because they will be so above everyone else. There will also be those students who need really to be in a lower level class or a basics class and will need that little bit of extra help and breakdown. I think that by using the chart that they gave you or the checklist I would be able as a teacher to create realistic goals for my students to reach and would be a better teacher for taking the time to expand my students interest in the subject content by letting them know that I do understand that they need to move forward or need things explained better. ||
 * LaRose Rebecca || This chapter went over the concept of tiering. Tiering is when a teacher gradually works upward from lower level problems in order to build a skill. This helps students who easily get ahead stay challenged throughout while helping students who fall behind build upon their skill level and see the steps that it takes to reach mastery. Learning contracts are also helpful because the teacher can notify when checkups will be made so progress can be followed in order to keep up with work. || I liked this chapter because it gave more ways to keep a differentiated classroom on somewhat of the same level. If we as teachers left all students to fend for themselves, some students will stay on the grade level, whereas others would either surpass the level greatly or fall behind drastically. I really like the idea of learning contracts in order to allow students to have some sort of investment in what they learn and a timeframe in which to do so. I feel that this will help with work initiative in the classroom and remove some of the negative connotation regarding progress report grades. ||
 * Murphy Amber || This chapter described in detail ways to tier or change assessment to suit the student. This chapter provided a number of different ways to tier material such as learning contracts, learning menus, tic-tac-toe boards, cubing, and summarization pyramid. All of these have different concepts, but the ideas are all similar which means providing the material at an appropriate level for your students. All students learn differently and it is important to present the material at a level which they feel they can handle. If this isn’t done accurately many students may give up or get board easily. Providing change to different students doesn’t always mean altering the work sometimes just an extended deadline can do the trick. Tiering is a teaching skill which gets easier with time and it becomes easier and easier to identify the students which need it and those who don’t. || I feel that it is very important to alter the work and assignments for certain students. Everyone has a different learning style and when the work is altered it has a positive influence on the students. Often times they feel it is a privilege and will push themselves to maintain or continuing to get that privilege. Students are very different from one another and when you tier assessments as a teacher you are more likely to get accurate results. It is important to keep in mind that what is best for the students is often the best solution. ||
 * Nieuwkerk Hannah || Tiering is how teachers adjust assignments for students of different learning levels that are in the same class; each student is learning about the same subject, just at different levels that are more comfortable for them. It is also important to give a pre-test to make sure that the teacher is not a subject that was taught last year, it is a waste of time for the students and the teachers. To start out tiering, begin with the on-grade-level task and adjust it to be harder or easier for the students that need the lesson to be tiered. There are several ways to tier assignments: one example is having a learning contract between the teacher and student, this is special for each student and does not go exactly along with what the other students of the class does. Learning menus, tic-tac-toe boards, and RAFTS boards are neat because the students have several options to choose from and hopefully allowing for different multiple intelligences. Tiered learning is a very effective tool for teaching and is a great way to get down to the level of the student and push them comfortably. || I like the idea of tiering a lot, but to be honest, I have never had a teacher that has tiered assignments for me. It seems like a lot of work to be constantly adjusting assignments for several different students in the class. It is a wonderful idea, but tiering is a lot of work and is something that takes patience and practice, both of which many teachers I had, did not have. I also like the learning menu idea because it allows for the student to pick and choose what they like, it can agree with their learning style, and it does not pin the student down, therefore making them more willing to do the project. ||
 * Scheffler Erich || This chapter was about tiering assignments for students. To tier an assignment means to alter an assignment in some way based on the readiness and interests of students, and according to what kind of learner they are. The chapter then went on to give ways of how to tier assignments for students. The chapter then talked about learning contracts. These can be helpful because they allow students to work at a pace that best suits their needs. The chapter then talks about RAFT, which stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic or Time. || I didn’t really like this chapter. I feel like changing assignments for different students is unfair. The author almost made it seem like the teacher would make assignments given to overachieving kids harder, and assignments given to underachieving kids would be a lot easier, and it made it seem like the teacher would think the underachieving kids are not as smart as the overachieving kids. ||
 * Simoneau Andrea ||  ||   ||
 * Stevens Newcomb || This chapter dealt with how to differentiate difficulties in assignments. If a class is smarter than the assignment, it is a good idea to deepen the assignment: try to gather deeper understanding from the students. The book demonstrated ways to make basic ideas complicated and how to make some complicated ideas simpler. There are also ways for students to select their ideal assignments based upon their needs. One can make a menu of assignments or even play assignment tic tac toe. Assignments should be made to be flexible and adjustable so students can learn optimally. || I found this chapter to be quite intriguing. I was able to take some examples from this chapter and I may use some of these methods to teach some of my students. I think that the menu of assignments would work well for some students bored with how a normal day goes. These would have to be used in some moderation because they can lose some effectiveness if used too much. I think that the menu could be used daily actually. ||