Education

Education
Assignment
A) Outline how you could reconfigure a lesson that you currently teach to illustrate how you could apply Tomlinson’s approach to the readiness dimension of differentiation. Cite the text for support.
B) Design a brief set of questions that will provide information about your students’ levels of readiness in relations to the objectives of a learning task or lesson that you intend to teach. (In other words, design a pre-assessment.)

Readings
Systems and Models
Chapter 22
After you have read the chapter, view the video clip at http://inservice.ascd.org/teaching/di-in-science-class/ of the implementation of differentiation according to readiness in a science clsss.
Overview
In the introductory course, we learned from Chapter 29 authored by Tomlinson that “Differentiation is not a specific set of instructional strategies” (Callahan & Hertberg-Davis, page 289).  It is better conceived of as an approach to instruction that takes into account differences in the readiness, interest, and learning profiles of all students.  It is a commitment to managing the interdependent elements of the classroom—the learning environment, curriculum, assessment, and instruction—to optimize learning for all based on individual students’ needs.  Within the framework of differentiation, a variety of instructional strategies are possible.  With our reading this week by Tomlinson and Jarvis, we have the opportunity to look at differentiation in more depth.
Tomlinson and Jarvis build a strong case for the adoption of differentiation because of “unprecedented diversity of the student body” that schools are experiencing (page 599).  Their model of differentiation draws on theory and research “from the fields including educational psychology, curriculum and instruction, brain research, gifted education, special education, second-language learning, and multicultural education” (page 600). To successfully implement their model, teachers must be highly skilled in proactively addressing student differences through curriculum and instruction rather than being reactive as the case studies on pp. 604-606 make clear.
The framework that supports proactive teaching is based on five principles (pp. 606-610):
1) High quality curriculum that goes beyond national and state standards to help students realize the essence of a discipline or topic and how it might relate to or be transferred to another discipline.
2) Flexible grouping including small groups and pairs based on readiness, interests, and learning profiles as well as mixed groups depending on the nature of the learning task.
3) Ongoing assessment including pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment to gauge student progress and adjust instruction.
4) All students are given intellectual tasks that are meaningful and designed to explore essential concepts, as well as to enable them to contribute value to the classroom community.
5) Students are part of a consciously constructed learning community that is safe and supportive.  This community is characterized by partnership between teacher and students, student self-reflection and evaluation.
Based on assessments, teachers can respond to students’ differences in readiness, interest, and learning profiles through these means of differentiation below.  While the content of instruction generally remains a constant, how students can gain access to content may be differentiated (page 611):
1) The process of instruction or how students gain access to content;
2) The products or ways students demonstrate what they have learned; and,
3) The learning environment in which instruction takes place.
A) How can teachers differentiate instruction based on learning profiles?
B) What are the limitations of basing instruction upon learning profiles?