It is sometimes called a Tic-Tac-Toe assignment because of its design. Choice Boards can be used to help students learn
Differentiated Instruction: Description of Terms In the TDSB approach to Differentiated Instruction, we recognize that our students are individuals whose culture, race/ethnicity, language, learning preferences and needs, gender, and life circumstances are key considerations for their success in school. In the TDSB, teachers plan, deliver instruction and assess achievement with students’ individual preferences and needs in mind. General Principles Respectful Tasks are learning experiences matched to the diverse needs of the student and the life experiences they bring with them to our schools. Tasks that are respectful of the learner will honour the differences among students’ readiness levels, areas of interest, and learning profiles. Quality Curriculum is a non-negotiable component of a differentiated classroom, and requires focusing on what students absolutely need to know, understand, and be able to do by the end of an achievement cycle. Quality curriculum is relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. Flexible Grouping is characterized by the combination of whole group, small group, and independent work. Learners’ readiness, interests and learning profiles, based upon their individual preferences, serve as the basis for grouping. Student groups remain flexible because they are responsive to changes in students’ readiness, interests, and learning profiles. Continual Assessment is the on-going the use of pre-, during and post- assessment data on learner readiness, areas of interest, and learning profile. Teachers use these assessments to make appropriate adjustments in curriculum and instruction, and to provide focused interventions for learners who need them. Building Community requires connectedness, flexibility, choice, mutual respect, fairness, and the consistent expectation that students will grow and succeed. School and classroom procedures operate smoothly within a physical environment that is safe, organized, comfortable, inviting, and reflective of students’ interests, strengths, and intelligences. Student’s Needs Readiness describes the prior learning and attitudes that students bring to new learning. A student’s readiness for learning is dynamic, and changes as learning circumstances and situations change. Teachers differentiate by providing learners with an appropriate level of challenge according to their readiness, to enable them to grow in knowledge and skills. Interest is a predisposition, passion, or curiosity for a topic or skill. Students’ motivation for learning is ignited when classroom experiences are designed that address students’ interests. Students become engaged when they encounter topics, big ideas and essential questions that are personally meaningful to them. Learning Profile is the combination of ways in which students best process information and make relevant connections to their learning experiences. The learners’ preferences are their preferred ways of processing what is to be learned, including their learning styles, intelligences, and environmental preferences. Differentiated Practices Content is the curriculum, or the “what”. It is described by or demonstrated through the expectations (the skills, content and strategies the students must learn). It is what students will know, understand, and be able to do as a result of the sequence of teaching and learning.1 Process is the “how”. It is how students will make sense of the content. The process is made up of the strategies and methods that form the sequence of teaching and learning. Products are the vehicles by which students demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills. Products are the tools teachers use to assess and evaluate student progress toward, and achievement of, the expectations and content goals. Environment is the physical and psychological “space” in which learning is situated (e.g., desk arrangement; visual displays; access to resources; climate of respect, caring and safety.) Developing a strong community of engaged learners who see their identities and preferences reflected in their learning environment is essential to effective differentiation. 1 Ministry of Education, Differentiated Instruction Teacher’s Guide, Getting to the Core of Teaching and Learning, October, 2007, p.6. Adapted from Burritt & Hedrick of the Virginia Beach City Public Schools and from The Differentiated Classroom by C A. Tomlinson, 1999, 2001; and from Start Where They Are, K. Hume, 2007.
Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Structures
Differentiated Instruction Structures
Strategies (Ministry examples)
Some Additional Strategies
Structures (Ministry Examples)
Anticipation guide Exit cards Metaphors Concept maps Venn diagram Jigsaw Think-pair-share Thinking routines Mind maps Varying parallel organizers Varied texts and supplementary materials Literature circles Co-operative learning Strategic use of first languages Graphic organizers
Independent, pair, small-group, whole class groupings Varied questioning strategies Varied homework Congress Gallery walks Using taped materials Anchor activities
Tiering RAFTs Learning Contracts Learning Centers or Stations Choice Boards Cubing
Readiness Interest Learning Profile
Student Factors
Tiering – When we tier an assignment, we are creating more than one version of a task so that we can respond to students’ varied levels of readiness. To create a tiered assignment, choose or create an activity that is what you would normally provide for your grade level, then create additional versions of that activity to meet the readiness needs you identified through pre-assessment. Remember that all tasks need to be respectful – engaging, interesting and challenging for all learners. Learning Contracts – Teacher and student make a written agreement about a task to be completed. The agreement includes the learning goals and criteria for evaluation in student-friendly language, the format of the work, how it will be assessed, and organizational details such as the deadline and check in points. Learning Centres of Stations – Centres provide different activities at various places in the classroom or school. Learning centres are not a differentiation structure if all students go to all centres and everyone does the same thing at a centre. In order to be differentiated, learning centres either need to be attended only by students who need or are interested in the work that is at them, or the work at the centre needs to be varied according to student readiness, interest, or learning preference. RAFT is an acronym for Role, Audience, Format, Topic. These headings are written across the top of a grid and a number of options are created. Students choose an option or the teacher selects it for them. Students read across the columns to learn the role they are going to assume, the audience they will address, the format in which they will do the work, and the topic they are going to explore. For example, reading across a single row of a RAFT that is intended to have students work with a novel they have read, a student might assume the role of a book critic, for the audience of a daily newspaper. They will write their critique in the form of a column for the newspaper and will focus specifically on the topic of conflict within their novel.
What is differentiated: Content
While there are no approaches or processes that belong to differentiated instruction only, there are a number that work especially well when differentiating because they allow you to easily vary the complexity or the form of the task for different learners. Some of the more common differentiations structures include:
Process
Product
Learning Environment
RAFTs can be created to address student interests (especially in the topic and role columns), student learning preferences (in the format column) and various readiness by altering the difficulty of some of the rows or creating separate RAFT assignments for different groups of learners. Choice Boards – A choice board is a common differentiation structure used to provide students with choice. It is sometimes called a Tic-Tac-Toe assignment because of its design. Choice Boards can be used to help students learn (i.e., instruction and assessment) or as a way for students to demonstrate their learning (i.e., evaluation). When designing a choice board, all choices must address the same learning goal and may be based on interest (e.g., sports, music, art…) or learning preferences (e.g., learning styles or multiple intelligences). Each “choice” is assessed or evaluated against the same assessment criteria. Cubing – Students roll a cube and do the activity on the side that comes up. We can differentiate a cube according to any of student readiness, learning preference, or interest. Cubes can be designed for specific activities such as perspectives on a novel or different aspects of a history unit. Different cubes can be given to different groups and the activities varied to support readiness or learning preference. We can make cubes and write the activities on the sides, or we can simply use a standard die accompanied by a set of index cards with the matching numbers and activities recorded on the cards.
Nov-Dec 2008 Differentiated Instruction/Transitions Symposia/Student Success Learning to 18
