FIAE+B2+Chapter+5

Alicia Kenison
Abstraction on Ch. 5: Tiering Assessments

Isn't a tier a layer on cake? How can I tier my students assessments? Through this chapter, Wormeli explains that tiering is basically the process of adjusting their lessons for each individual in their class. As Diana put it, "It's changing the complexity." Mr. Suarez's tiered his class by having a green, blue and black test. The only thing I think I would have changed was making sure that the right student took the test that fit best for them. He took videos and clearly explained how each test differed from the next and why it was important to choose. He put it in words that the students could understand by comparing the colors to ski slopes. [|Mr. Suarez] tiered for his class's well-being, just as Wormeli is teaching us to do through checklists, cubing, contracts RAFT's and menus. Tiering should not add too much work to your schedule and will leave you satisfied and happy with the growth of your students. You must keep in mind all your students and not just those who lag behind. "Tiering" is meant to challenge the higher level students and allow the lower lever students to succeed. Through this chapter I learned most that we need a plan, a method for our madness, per say, because teachers are obligated to seek out success and adjust for all. We are their to make sure everyone learns not just those in which learning comes easy. Tiering may mean tweaking your lesson plans to meet a students' readiness level, interest, and learning profile, but this tweaking will pay off in the end. Wormeli assured us that our students and ourselves will be satisfied with the gained result from our hard work and dedication.

Alicia Kenison
Synthesis of Ch. 5

Over all, after reading the classes responses I found most of us were nervous and still unsure about what exactly "tiering" was and how we could use it in our classroom. I found a useful website that mentions contracts, RAFT, learning menus, checkpoints, tic tac toe charts and how to make a cube. [|Differentiating] lessons are meant for tiering and adjusting. We are forced to make a balance in our class and want everyone to succeed. If students agree on contracts, make choices, and have a checklist, success will come natural. It is our job to accommodate. We cannot do this teaching solely on ourselves, so contracts assure the help of the students and sometimes the [|parents] as well. We need to get everyone involved because if their is no balance the cake will fall over or in another words the learning will halt. Although all these tools are helpful, we still need to rely on ourselves and our students sometimes. We need to ask questions to know that they are learning instead of constantly spilling information. Tiering may seem intimidating, but I'm sure it will come natural to all of us in given time.

Jared Merrifield
Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

Immediately, I was a little confused by the title of the chapter, having never heard the word “tiering” before, and because my spell checker marked it wrong! From what I read in an online dictionary and from the reading, I suppose that tiering, when referring to students and assessment, means setting the bar for a variety of readiness levels among the students. After reading the extended definition, I realized it was deeper than that, and the rest of the explanation fit right in with the tone of the class. Tiering assessment was just about what I expected: it involves considering each aspect of the lesson, taking into account all the students’ current readiness levels, and adjusting the lesson based on the findings. Tiering lessons varies in necessity and required dedication, but I’m sure it will be a helpful method in the end. This chapter also recommends an extensive checklist for which I am grateful. It also provides examples in actual classroom situations, which helped it put the concept into perspective for me. I appreciated the mention of learning contracts. I remember back in my earlier school days when my teachers would hand those out, giving the students expectations and parameters for the classroom. Some teachers even brought up the subject of the contract whenever a student was misbehaving. This is actually comparable to the syllabi we receive in high school and college, only it’s more about learning than classroom behavior. However, I don’t believe I have ever encountered a learning menu, unless the “enrichment” options are considered extra credit assignments. Learning menus do seem like an efficient way to keep the students up to speed with what they are supposed to be doing. The rest of the alternatives seemed effective and original in their own ways. A couple of them are even relatable to what we are doing in class. The RAFT activity is somewhat similar to our GRASPS formula for lesson planning, and the “change the verb” concept has already been done as a part of developing our goals for Stage 1.

Alicia Kenison
Wormeli defines Tiering as the process of which teachers embark upon to adjust assignments and assessments for their student’s growth and intelligences. A tier is the different levels of something like each tier on a cake. They must line up and stay balance, but it is important to not adjust each lesson. Students need to learn the give and take (sometimes we guide them and other times we force them into being who we know that they can be). To assure understanding, we must remember to ask questions and not just spill information. I like the task of making a learning contract. This is an agreement that both the teacher and the student can refer back to as a guide throughout each lesson. Choices are key and keep students interested, I like the tic-tac-toe board approach. This is neat for the teacher and the student. We will not get bored because we would rarely be reading the same thing twice and the students get to do what they want so they should achieve a great grade. The example of RAFT(S) that Wormeli suggested is also something that I may take to my classroom. These are fun ways to choose what their project is going to be. Being shy, talking is something that I tend to avoid, but I appreciated the advice of getting a colleagues opinion and asking questions to decipher if you’re going about an assignment correctly and efficiently, especially if you are team teaching with someone.

Scott Bowden
This chapter was about tiering assessments and projects to different readiness levels. I like the idea of this because it allows the teacher to touch on the target content knowledge but build it up in complexity with different students. This could be useful to me as a teacher because I can set up alternate assignments and projects that nail the same content areas but with different levels of difficulty or different key skill sets for different students. I hope that in the classroom that I don't do this improperly and not hit my key points with lower tiers. Even though the book talks about how to avoid doing so, it is rather difficult to gauge that aspect of tiering when designing alternate tiers. I think that it might give students of the higher tier the impression that they are getting more of a workload and that they deserve the shorter and easier load. I hope that if this conflict comes up in my class that I can deal with it effectively.

S arah Robinson
Tiering is a concept that does not come is easy to me, although after reading this chapter I feel better about my knowledge of tiering. From this chapter I have learned that tiering is when teachers have different levels of their assessments or assignments, and these levels are adjusted to the students different learning styles. This chapter explains that, to have a successful tiering of your assessments and assignments that you must stay focused on what you want your students to achieve and understand. I have learned that in my classroom when I use tiering I want to make sure I change my challenges whenever it is needed. This chapter has also taught me that teachers should give students contracts to agree to because that will help their learning. These contracts need to have agreements and understandings for the students to realize what is expected to learn, deadlines, and what will happen if they don’t follow the contract. This chapter gives you many good examples of how to use tiering in the classroom; one that I know I will use in my classroom is learning menus. This involves giving students many options on how they want to complete an assignment. This chapter touches on Frank William’s Taxonomy of Creativity, which includes: fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, risk-taking, complexity, curiosity, and imagination. This is something I would really like to use in my classroom. I have learned from this chapter that RAFT is something that I should use in my classroom. RAFT stands for role, audience, format, and topic (or time). This requires teachers to give students options, and that gives students motivation to learn and complete assignments. Lastly I have learned that by changing a verb when describing an assessment or assignment can help compel students to want to do the assessment or assignment.

Mike Lawson
Chapter 5: Fair Isn’t Always Equal 2/3/10

I really like the idea of having to tier the assessment of students depending upon their level of readiness. By personalizing the level at which you assess a student can help them so much. Not only can make it easier for a student who is a little behind in the mastery of your subject to stay with it and not feel out of place, but you can also take a student who is excelling in your class and challenge them. As a result of reading the twenty something chapters I have read for these books I have come to understand that reading and understanding your students is key to how you develop as a teacher. Being able to know how a student learns and then customizing their assessments is an amazing skill to have. Although it may take years for me to master that skill I will always have an idea and be able to recognize different learning styles in my kids. Wormeli is constantly giving the reader so many good examples. Once again this book will come in very handy.

Eric Cole
This chapter is all about “tiering” assessments. Tiering assessments are basically when a teacher adjusts their lesson for each individual student in their class so that it fits each student’s unique readiness level, interests, method of learning, etc... Now while this book describes many, many ways to do this, I am still nervous about actually doing it. I remember what it was like in high school. High school is a brutal place for a young teenager. There are clicks, and crowds, and everyone is striving to be the best, and to be viewed in the best possible light. That is what makes tiering assessments so hard. For while they are extremely necessary for a teacher to perform, the teacher has to be careful about the way they do it. It is a fine line that the teacher needs to walk so that the student gets the education they want and need, but also so the student is not viewed by their peers as any lesser of a person. The kind of damage something like that could cause is extreme. Now maybe that is a bit of an over-reaction, but then I remember what it was like in high school, and I can’t help but feel like it is a true statement. The other thing you need to keep in mind in terms of “tiering” assessments is that it is not just for the struggling students in your class, but also for the higher level students. Higher level students need to feel like they are being challenged while they are in school, and it is up to the teacher to make sure that happens.

Diana Quinlan
According to Wormeli tiering is changing the complexity of an assignment based on the student’s level of understanding. When tiering an assignment it is important to start at the expected grade level than adjust the complexity up or down based on the students needs. If you don’t do this then you are setting unrealistic expectations for what your students can accomplish. To help decide whether you need to tier up or down you should first list the skills your students have against the skills needed to complete the assignment as is. If the assignment requires skills the student has not mastered than you need to tier down, and vice versa. One of the worst mistakes I could make as a teacher is to grade my students, or assign work based on preexisting expectations. I really need to work with the skills and knowledge the group of students in front of me posses. Tiering is not meant to be done all the time, only when needed. If I am tiering correctly than I am increasing the level of complexity of an assignment a little each day. Tiering can be done through learning contracts, which are contracts between individual students and the teacher. They allow students to negotiate deadlines, as well as ways in which they will demonstrate mastery of a subject, but lets teachers assign checkpoints. Each learning contract clearly states the teacher’s expectations, the student’s responsibilities, and the consequences if the student does not uphold their end of the contract. My favorite example of tiering is through learning menus. Learning menus are set up like regular menus in a restaurant with appetizers, entrées, and deserts. This type of tiering allows students to choose one or two assignments from each category (different categories may be different difficulty levels). This would probably be the way I tier in my classroom because it is related to food which everybody loves so I can really see students getting excited about this.

Amanda Fitzpatrick
Most of the concepts of this chapter I really do not believe they did an adequate job explaining. For example, after reading this chapter I still don't understand the concept of tiering, and I definitely am not completely positive of how to implement it in my classroom. However, I did find some activities that I could use in my classroom, and once I thoroughly understand tiering use that method to better differentiate my classroom. I liked the idea of using a "menu" or tic-tac-toe chart for students to pick and chose what they wanted to do for work. This allowed the students to pick the project that they perhaps wanted to do while still forcing a structure of not allowing the students to be completely free choice. I could also take the cube (I really do like this method quite out of context for this chapter) and create a single classroom cube. The students would then role the cube (either individually or as a group) and dependent on the topic and what they got for their role explain their topic. This would use Bloom's Taxonomy to force the students to learn to a higher degree while being a semi-physical activity. In all, however, I feel that the chapter did a lackluster job in explaining what seems to be a very important concept in differentiated learning. (Perhaps I will do some research so that I can fully understand the topic.)

Sarah McGinley
Fair Isn’t Always Equal Chapter 5: Tiering Assessment 2/2/10

This chapter talks about how students could be at different levels of learning and therefore, teachers need to adjust their lesson plans or the task to fit the student’s level. This is referred to as tiering. Some students could be at the Early Readiness level, where students are a little behind in the content than the rest of the class or students could be at the Advanced Readiness level, where students are a little ahead in the content than the rest of the class. It is a possibility that there will be students on either side of the spectrum or possibly right in the middle. Tiering also relates to adjusting the teacher’s assignments and assessment strategies because of the student’s readiness level, the interests for the subject matter, or the learner profile. Once you have picked a level to start at then it’s a matter of increasing the difficulty of the assignments and the assessments. I like the idea of increasing the complexity instead of starting at a higher level and trying to decrease complexity in order to get all of your students learning at the same level. This is no easy thing to do. I believe students need a starting point where no one is lost on how to do an assignment and then get more complex as the lessons continue. There are a number of ways to achieve complexity in your assignments and assessments.

Jared Boghosian
A good way to define tiering is as follows: "tiering as how teachers adjust assignments and assessments according to students' readiness levels, interests, and learner profiles" (56). Sometimes we need to increase the difficulty or lower it based on student performance. A couple useful ways to increase the challenge of a concept are extending the concept to other areas, integrate more than one subject or skill, work with advanced resources, work in more abstract concepts, identify the big picture patterns and connections. These are great ways to get students thinking more in depth. I like the idea in this chapter of a multiple intelligence tic-tac-toe task board. I will probably pay most attention to Frank Williams's Taxonomy of Creativity. The words used in the taxonomy are things I already do and new words I can think about applying in the classroom.

Susanna Cooper
Chapter 5:

I really liked the chapter on tiering. This is something I plan and hope to use in my classroom. In the third grade class where I tutored for three semesters I saw how efficiently this system works. By adjusting my own lessons to fit the needs of each student instead of the needs of myself or the assessments, my students will learn faster and master the material better. I love the idea of cubing as a project. I think that my hands on students would love doing this. It is a creative and open assignment where each student can show themselves while thinking and learning. I also really liked Frank Williams’s taxonomy of creativity. I think that these four ways of thinking can really get students deeply analyzing what ever I present to them, but in enough of a creative way that they will not get bogged down and uninterested. I love the examples the book gave that went with fluency, flexibility and elaboration. I hope to take examples like them and implement them into my lessons, because I sure would like to do the assignment myself.

Jason Malbon
Teachers are obligated to make adjustments to teaching for students who learn differently. The same can be said for assessing student learning. The author mentions the term “tiering” which refers to teachers making adjustments according to readiness levels. This does not mean that the standards are not the same for each student. There is a danger of lowering standards based on early readiness students. It is a good idea to start with the targeted standard and make adjustments when needed for students. For more advanced students, teachers should look for understandings above and beyond the average. They can be made to; identify author intent, style, bias, or use compare and contrast. The idea of a learning contract is intriguing to me since it puts more responsibility and choice to the student. Assignments can be negotiated for time and how understanding should best be measured.