When designing a tiered math lesson, the teacher must first think about what is the learning goal for the class, but then adapt the difficulty of the task up and down based upon individual student needs. Tiering is often confused with tracking.
Let me explain my understanding of the difference. Tracking is deciding to have three or four groups of students, teachers then "fit" the students into the appropriate group. In tracking, students usually do not move as often and are often "stuck" in a group. In tiering, the teacher first assesses the students abilities and then decides how many groups are needed. This may be one, two, three, four, or even five groups. Students are moved between groups on a more regular basis. Movement between groups are more flexible because the skills/concepts are much more specific. This keeps students from being "labeled" or "stuck" in the blackbird group.
Let me explain my understanding of the difference. Tracking is deciding to have three or four groups of students, teachers then "fit" the students into the appropriate group. In tracking, students usually do not move as often and are often "stuck" in a group. In tiering, the teacher first assesses the students abilities and then decides how many groups are needed. This may be one, two, three, four, or even five groups. Students are moved between groups on a more regular basis. Movement between groups are more flexible because the skills/concepts are much more specific. This keeps students from being "labeled" or "stuck" in the blackbird group.
The example below is a tiered example based upon readiness.
Blaze has (8, 13, 125) toys cars. Miguel came over to play and brought his (6, 16, 162) cars. Can you figure out how manytoy cars they have together? Explain how you know.
Teacher can have different students use different numbers. Varying the number size allows students who are struggling with basic number facts to work with numbers less than ten, but also allows students who can handle larger numbers to work at their level. In this example, students can work as a whole group. The queston can be placed on a card and the appropriate numbers underlined specifically for each student.
Other ways you can advance this task is provide the challenge:
Give the problem and leave blanks in the place of the numbers and challenge students to choose their own number size to work with. You might be surprised with what students are capable of solving.
Blaze has _____ cars and Miguel has _______ cars. Together they have 25 cars. How many cars might Blaze have and how many might Miguel have?
If you have any questions, comments, or other ideas of how to differentiate, I would love it if you would post a comment. We all learn from one another.
No comments:
Post a Comment