From my understanding, tiering (differentiating) a lesson is a process that requires pre-assessment, understanding of students prior knowledge, and different scaffolding techniques for the flexible groups that will be created for my lesson. I understand that to plan a lesson like this, I need to be certain of the Big Idea and the ultimate lesson objective. This will enable me to choose different activities for different groups at different readiness levels that are appropriate and achieve the same learning objective so that the whole class is reaching the same goal in the most beneficial way for each student. I am a little nervous as to how I will exactly know how to make appropriate activities that will target each of my learners. I hope that with practice and observation of other teachers differentiating, I will better be able to understand how to do it in the most effective way. The more times I can be exposed to it, the better I understand it and can come up with my own ideas to implement it for my own classroom!
My world is brigher today...
9 years ago
I'm sorry to say that you probably won't see other teachers differentiating... at least, not very much, and not as thoroughly as you NEED to do it when you're starting out. For one thing, it's not something you need to/should do all of the time, and something you hardly ever do in the same way twice. Really, it's like making gravy and being a wife. You learn by doing it, trying it out, changing things, tweaking it here and there, scrapping some of it and starting over, from scratch. We are going to try some hands-on planning in the next two weeks. I'm impressed with how well you understand what it IS. Chances are, you'll be doing it before long... and I'll be sending folks to watch you do it! 4 points
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