Tiering

Tiering is an instructional approach designed to have students of differing readiness levels work with essential knowledge, understanding, and skill, but to do so at levels of difficulty appropriately challenging for them as individuals at a given point in the instructional cycle. When tiering you think about the readiness levels of students based on pre-assessment, ongoing assessment, and continually growing teacher knowledge of students' general skills levels. A great example of tiering is the Words Their Way program. The students are pre-assessed with the one of the spelling inventories, a way to discover the differing readiness levels in the classroom. The information obtained by the inventory is then used to identify the students' developmental stage of word knowledge or the students' instructional level. Once the students' instructional level has been identified the new information is used to group the students for instruction, the students should be placed in groups that are appropriately challenging for them as individuals. Students should be grouped with other students who are ready to study the same word features. Once the groups have been formed it is important to continue monitoring their progress over time (ongoing assessment). The advantage to Words Their Way is that these groups should be fluid, as the teacher you need to keep close watch as to what is going on in each group, understanding where each of the students' general skills levels lie. If a student is frustrated or not challenged by the activities then the group should be reorganized.
When tiering it is important to clearly establish what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of the activity or the product assignment. It is important to develop an activity or assignment that is interesting and engaging for students, one that requires students to work at a high level of thought. It is very important to pre-assess, to use ongoing assessments, and to continue to grow your knowledge, as the teacher, of your students' general skills levels. As the teacher you need to also develop enough versions of the task to challenge the range of learners, this means you may need to create one, two, three, four or maybe more additional versions. I like how it mentioned in the video we watched in class, to start with creating the task for the higher level students and then work your way down. I understand that this will take a lot of work on my part. However, I also understand it does not have to be done for every subject or lesson and the work will be well worth it in the end.
As I read about Think-Tac-Toe and RAFT I kept thinking why didn't we do stuff like this when I was in school. Both of the activities are amazing and a great way to get your students to use a higher level of thinking. I want to use the Novel Think-Tac-Toe for some book reports. My plan is to have a list of different types of book reports for each month, this is definitely going to be added to my list. The RAFT activity could be used in social studies, science, even for math. Wouldn't that be fun to have my 5th graders write a paper as the integer, to our class, about what it is like to be forgotten when doing math problems!
Alright! Enough already! While reading pages 149-162 I have officially decided I am not going to be selling this book on Amazon! I NEED A CLASSROOM!!!!! Learning contracts, Thinkdots, Journals, the list goes on and on! I can't wait to try all of this out on my students! I feel like I am armed and ready with so much ammunition, I hope I can remember where I have put it all! As I write this I have tears in my eyes. I want to teach!!!! I want to be that teacher that every parent wants their child to have. I want to be that teacher that will be remembered one day in a past students college class as they are talking about people who have had a major influence on their life! I have worried as to how I am going to accomplish these goals, but with the knowledge I have gained from this textbook and in your class I know I can do it! I want to do it! I will be the best I can be! Watch out, come next fall I will be implementing these things into my classroom and my students will not want to leave!