Objectives:
After this PD, teachers will be able to:
1. build upon their knowledge of differentiated instruction from last week's PD.
2. distinguish between choice board and tiered assignment as a differentiation strategy.
3. incorporate a choice board or tiered assignment into their upcoming lesson plans.
Introduction: Imagine you are having lunch at your favorite restaurant. A full lunch comes with a soup, salad, sandwich, dessert, and drink... but you're not in the mood for all that food! A smaller meal would suffice. You CHOOSE just a soup and salad, and you are completely satisfied and full.
Our students function in the same manner. By providing CHOICE, we are able to differentiate our instruction and provide them with self-directed learning opportunities. When students feel like they have options in their educations, they are more likely to buy into the work.
We can provide students with more choices via choice boards and/or tiered assignments.
What are choice boards?
A CHOICE BOARD offers students a way to make decisions about what they will do in order to meet class requirements. A choice board could be for a single lesson, a week-long lesson, or even a month-long period of study. In order to create a choice board:
1. Identify the most important elements of a lesson or unit.
2. Create a required assignment or project that reflects the minimum understanding you expect all students to achieve.
3. Create negotiables which expand upon the minimum understands. These negotiables often require students to go beyond the basic levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
4. Create a final optional section that requires students the opportunity for enrichment. The optional section often reflects activities that students can use for extra credit.
(Original posting credit here.)
A plethora of choice board templates for nearly every subject area is located at Dare to Differentiate.
Ms. Kingsbury allows her students to choose assignments based on their skills and interests, and samples of that can be seen here, here, and here.
What are tiered assignments?
Tiered instruction is a means of teaching one concept and meeting the different learning needs in a group. It can be an assignment, lesson, or strategy. Tasks and/or resources vary according to learning profile, readiness, and interest. A Best Practices breakdown of tiered assignments, from process through assessment, is available here.
How can teachers easily design a choice board or tiered assignment?
Content grids make the design of differentiated assignments simple. Click here to view a content grid. Ms. Sundeen and Ms. Kane are the OHS resident experts on content grids, so feel free to leave a question for them in the COMMENTS section below if their immediate use is not clear to you.
Finally, please peruse this PowerPoint on the subject of differentiated instruction by David Dillard (and slightly modified to fit our PD's time constraints and topic focus) by clicking here.
TASKS - Please answer the following questions by posting your thoughts about choice boards and tiered assignments in the COMMENTS section at the bottom of this post.
1. Choose an assignment that you gave this year that was not 100% successful. Using the content grid as a guideline, make at least one change in the assignment to address one of the boxes in the content grid. (For instance, changing the process to address learning profile obstacles). Post a summary of the original assignment and the change you would make.
2. If you would like to comment on the articles, as well, feel free to do so.
3. After reviewing the PD on foldables, were you able to implement this strategy in your class?
Posting Instructions: PLEASE BE SURE THAT YOU ARE USING FIREFOX! IF YOU ARE IN INTERNET EXPLORER, CLOSE OUT AND OPEN UP THE FIREFOX BROWSER!
1. Click on the word COMMENT immediately below. A text box marked "Leave Your Comment" will pop up. Please type your answers to the above questions in this box. Scroll down to "Choose Your Identity." Select NAME/URL. Type your last name into the NAME box (do NOT type anything in the URL box). Finally, click PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT.
2. Go back to the OHS PD website at http://ohspd.blogspot.com. Push the F5 button on the keyboard to refresh the screen. Your comment should appear.
I think that the foldable is a very good idea. I did not understand it the first week but now I will try to use it
ReplyDeleteI had used foldables before and find that they are a great application for tiered assignments. Lower level students can do a single layer foldable with just understandings of the vocab and concepts while higher level students can do the multi layer foldables incorporating not only definitions but concepts and applications.
ReplyDelete1. After watching a film in Spanish ("The Motorcycle Diaries") I gave the students a traditional test that asked them questions about the plot of the movie and then asked them to analyze those plot points to make meaningful connections. Many of my students struggled with the content and I think that the assignment would have worked much better if I created something like a choice board. I could have started everyone with a basic assignment about the plot (like creating a timeline) and then let them choose between a number of creative assignments that let them analyze the content in their own way while still making deeper connections.
ReplyDelete2. I was able to implement foldables in my classroom and I will definitely use them in the future.
I think a version of a choice board would be very useful with students with attendance issues. I had the students produce some very nice group research projects, but had a very hard time integrating those with attendance issues. With a choice board those students could have had an alternative, more individually oriented project paradigm.
ReplyDeleteFirst, after the first period a number is presented before the word "comment" giving the impression that the link you refer us to is not there.
ReplyDeleteI will use foldables in my classes, I viewed it last night and was excited by the different implementation of the strategy.
Content rids is what I would use todo complex and new lesson plans for my binder. I might not be able to do one each week but it woudl assist me in seeing my way through to the end of a lesson or even in making changes to a lesson that didn't achieve what I thought it would through the objectives.
**note - you cannot view the differentiated instruction slide show with out a google log in.
ReplyDelete1. Being a Special Education Teacher, I constantly have to revisit assignments. I rethink teaching strategies and reteach lessons that were more difficult. Recently, I taught a Geometry lesson involving matrices. Students were having trouble grasping and remembering the vocabulary associated with the lesson. If I used a choice board, students would have been able to pick and choose which aspects of the lesson they wanted to complete independently. After each student completes his/her part, the class can use expert grouping to share results with the rest of the class. Sometimes when a student presents a difficult topic, other students are more likely to understand.
2. I found the templates for choice boards to be really helpful and plan on using them.
3. To comment on the foldables - I attempted to make one with my class for English !! vocab words... the students told me they felt like they were in elementary school. They seemed to like the creative aspect of the assignment but didn't understand the point. I tried to explain they could use them as a study guide or to help to study for the test. I didn't notice any of them using the foldable, however we are going to attempt to do them again for Geometric formulas.
A choice board would be an asset to health lessons. Harry Trueman always advocated giving the individual ability to make choices. The benefits of this include developing personal responsibility, commitment to learning and feelings positive self esteem.
ReplyDeleteI could have used the content grid to reassess the final product of the last tiered assignment I gave.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked at their end results they were much weaker than I originally assumed they'd be. Students took the easy way out, since I was not specific enough about what I wanted.
I particularly liked the power point.
I've used foldables and they are terrific. I haven't had time to use them this week.
I like the ideas of choice boards and tiered assignments. With mathematics, there is frequent movement between the abstract and the concrete thinking. A problem may represented on a graph and at the same time it could be characterized in a word problem.But the unique characteristics of mathematics is its highly cumulative nature. Everything is layered. So the choices should be carefully planned to avoid students taking the easy way out.
ReplyDeleteSuper article! Your style is so fresh compared to most other writers. Thank you for posting when you do, I’ll be sure to bookmark your site!
ReplyDelete