In this chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, it talks about the various methods and techniques one can use to tier assignments to help students of various learning levels meet the standard.
Some of things I really enjoyed about this chapter was how it encouraged tiering to start at the standard or grade level performance, then move up to reach more advanced students. Tiering down wasn’t discouraged, but it was suggested to be used only when it was clearly indicated it was needed. I really like this idea because I agree with having high expectations for your students. I think it makes sense to expect every student to be at least at the standard, so that when moving on to the next grade, or even the next lesson, the student is prepared. In concordance to that I really support the idea of creating tiers for what was determined through pre-assessment. This is using differentiated instruction at its finest, and also can help strengthen your pre-assessment techniques so that you are sure you’re getting all the necessary information. I really like the ideas of using tiering subtly by giving students choices, which also relates to differentiated instruction. In this way students are also using self-assessment techniques to choose what they understand to work with, or even to push themselves past what they know. Also, this prevents students who may be at a lower level from feeling like they are only able to do lower level thinking, because everyone has the same choices. Clearly this is an ideal system to use in any classroom. I also feel that with these choices, if the students are struggling, or maybe getting work done to easily, you are able to challenge them both by asking them to try a more suited choice. All in all, this is a useful technique that everyone should use at some point.
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