Today’s classrooms are becoming more diverse in that teachers now have students of all different abilities and learning patterns. Many classrooms contain students representing multiple cultures, and have students with a wide range of exceptionalities and accommodations. Therefore, as educators, it is our responsibility to find ways to help each individual student be successful in our classrooms. One way to do this is by differentiating our instruction.

According to Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson, an advocate of differentiated instruction and the creating of heterogeneous classrooms, differentiated instruction define “a teacher proactively plan[ning] varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they can express what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible” (The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners, 2003, p. 151).

But where do we start? Here at the Center for Educational Improvement, we are determined to create materials that are useful to the teachers we are training. With that in mind, we created a Differentiating Instruction Checklist so teachers may better understand how their students are learning.

Please click here to see the Differentiating Instruction Checklist.  

Please click here to learn more about Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson.

A research base d approach (Project K-Nect) in North Carolina that has resulted in improvement in Algebra scores. While students are issued smartphones, the text and voice capabilities are modified so students are able to use the phones only text for specific purposes.   They are able to instant-message anyone participating in Project K-Nect, including students at other schools.

Some students have created blogs, movies, and graphics. The CSI theme has become popular, with math used to help solve crimes.  Students and teachers have expanded the project to other subjects and enthusiasm remains high.

How do you feel about this type of technology being integrated into schools? Are we promoting non-stop texting within our students, or is it a newer approach that will help to gauge our students’ interest in school, particularly math?

See the  Education Week article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/18/26smartphones.h29.html?intc=mvs

Back to school advice for teachers?  Put your all into the first few days.  Educators often talk of making sure that students get the message about their expectations and discipline during the first few weeks. Be firm; implement consequences.  This is definitely helpful. However, equally important today is to get off to a strong start – to up your game and up the Wow! Factor. That means pulling out all stops so that your students experience some of your best teaching. Give them something positive to talk about. Ideally the grapevine would be buzzing, “Ms. Jones – now she’s not easy, but class was interesting.” 

So how do teachers get off to a great start?  Here are few recommendations:

1. Help students survey your course so that they begin to see the big picture. The SQ3R process (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) works well. Students can survey your syllabus and survey your text.

2. Anchor the instruction with the students’ experiences, perhaps even creating  common hands-on experiences for students.

3. Reflect on a lesson that you love to teach and consider what you did and what the students did. Use those principles to design a few exceptional lessons for the first part of the school year.

4. The best instruction often happens in classes where the class period starts off strong. Get the students interested immediately so you do not have to struggle to get them back on task. Bore them in the first few minutes, and you are doomed.  Scan your class. If they are falling asleep that should tell you something — not only about their home life, but also about your instruction. So the rule is spend your time and energy on planning the first 15 minutes of class. Add mystery, ask questions to get them involved, relate what you are teaching to their lives. And do it quickly — don’t wait until the middle of the class period to get to  these important components.

More  to come…

What is the standard of excellence for schools today? What truly matters? For whom? While the U.S. continues to struggle to gain ground with our standard assessment scores, other countries (such as China and South Korea) are reversing  long standing “uniform educational” practices and replacing them with more flexible, individualized approaches.  They are seeking to recreate their educational systems to develop more innovators.  While educators in the U.S. are reinventing education and “racing to the top,” it may be wise to look more closely at the summit. Which mountain is it that we are climbing and what is the view from the top?  What are the goals for our society, for our future?

Consider in the global view of things, that “national is local.” With instaneous communication, global in fact may often be viewed as local. However, turning to the U.S., many are asking how we allowed the situation in the Gulf to happen. What were the factors that led to such a total disregard for environmental precautions. Greed? Arrogance? Many asked the similar questions with the fall of Wall Street, the housing markets, and, dare it be said, if not the demise, the “down rating” of capitalism.  Thoughtful educators may well ask how we as leaders in the U.S. have failed.  As educators, it seems right to also ask what we would want for tomorrow’s leaders — at local, national, and international levels. How could their leadershp be more effective than ours? What skills and experiences while in school are needed? And who should we look to and work with to create the leadership for tomorrow? Is it global or local? What are the implications for the “race to the top” and for reinventing education?

Another year, another “back to school workshop.” For returning teachers it is often “been there, done that” before. For new teachers, sometimes it is information overload. For both, it is often “get me out of here and back to my classroom — I need to be organizing, doing what really counts.”

Our solution is simple. We share it in hopes that others will use similar strategies and enhance the effectiveness of these important sessions. Sure teachers need to learn about school policies and procedures, they need to hear about the latest plans for school discipline, they need to know what the new principal wants, and they need a chance to meet each other, to dialogue, and to set procedures in place for an effective school year. And if the school is embarking down a path with a new curriculum, new initiatives, or new expectations for teachers, teachers need to know about these. 

It is the ‘how” that often presents the problem.  The how that delivers messages quickly is often an “information session” — also known as “we tell, you note.”  So the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI) and the Consortium to Improve Ohio Schools (CIOS) will work with administrators to plan a session that Wows! teachers, keeps them engaged, and sets the stage for an exciting, progressive, and optimistic school year.

Check under “our services” for complete information on Back to School Workshops offered by CEI and CIOS.

Our intent is to offer premium services to set the stage for a successful school year. To do this, school and district workshops in August and September need to be engaging, informative, and highly interactive. They need to include the most relevant information both for new and returning teachers.

Workshops offered by the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI) and the Consortium to Improve Ohio Schools (CIOS) all contain the following components:

• Inclusion of Wow! factors to keep teachers surprised, entertained, and informed
• Modeling to show teachers how they can implement in their classrooms the elements from the workshops
• Timing and pacing to prevent boredom, add the element of surprise, and components designed for participants with different learning styles
• No more than 7 minutes of continuous lecture at any point in the workshop
• The use of think, pair, share; four corners; gallery walks; engaging ice-breakers; jigsaws; and role-plays
• Materials that include templates for future use; relevant websites, resources for additional information.

Not only that, we plan with administrators, so that teachers learn about new strategies your school will be implementing in a way that holds true to our “wow!” approach. We encourage administrators to include teachers on their planning teams so that by the time the workshops occur, some teachers not only have already signed onto the new strategies, but also are able to help lead the workshops.

What else? For the topics we believe are most important to include, see “our services.” If you have additional ideas for wowing! teachers, send your comments along to this blog.

Consider this: two teachers per room. Extra eyes, hands, ears, and brains. With two scanning the room, student questions are answered more quickly; one teacher can handle discipline issues as the other continues teaching; and each teacher could supervise a separate learning center, providing simultaneous instruction. For language immersion programs, with co-teaching, there are two teachers, each excelling in a different language, so students can hear and use both English and a second language on a daily basis. 

When I teach workshops on co-teaching, I often ask participants what they love to teach. With two teachers, each could focus more on his or her areas of strength and the responsibilities for other areas can be shared. So if you are a photographer, perhaps you can bring photos into the class, provide the concrete visuals, to support learning. If you are a musician or love music, perhaps you find music to represent the subject matter.  Music from different historical eras, countries, or cultures. If you sing, perhaps you help students develops raps as mnemonic devices.  With two teachers, the burden does not fall on one person to be everything to everyone. The workload is shared, the grading is shared, and even communication with parents can be shared.

With two teachers who are both using time efficiently in a classroom, student productivity should improve. After all, instead of one teacher trying to meet the needs of 25 students, the workload may be split. With two teachers, it is easier to schedule “think alouds” with the teachers modeling how they problem solve together. Even such tasks as warm-ups and reviews can be split, so that teachers take turns being responsible for those elements of a lesson plan.

For students with IEPs, it is a natural for the teacher with the special education credentials to spend more time implementing specific plans for students with IEPs and other students with special learning needs. Co-teaching can also be  implemented with teaching assistants who assume responsibility for maintaining high levels of student engagement, assisting with technology, or re-teaching materials to students who have been absent or have had difficulties with specific lessons.

Kevin Simpson one of our team members and also President of KDSL (Know Do Serve Learn) is in Dubai. He contributed today’s blog:

Everyday is Differentiation Day! This is the theme in Grade 4S at GEMS World Academy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  Read alouds are selected based on student interest.  Independent reading of just right books is chosen by students according to interest.  Flexible guided reading groups are based on readiness.  During writing workshop topics are selected by student interest. Words Their Way groups were created based on spelling diagnostic assessments. Math groups are flexible and organized according to readiness. Units of inquiry (Primary Years Programme) consist of projects focused on interest and how students learn best.  How did the Grade 4 Team arrive at this place of teaching?  The common factor in setting up this milieu of meeting students where they are has been flexibility and diagnostic assessments.

“Which group am I in?” is a question some of our learners use to be eager to know. We assure them that the group depends on what they need to know, how they want to demonstrate their learning, or based on their interest.  Teachers also inform students that the groups will change. When learning how to differentiate instruction a core term consistently heard about was flexibility.  In How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, Tomlinson states many rationales for using flexible grouping. For example this strategy is used to “encourage teachers to “try out” students in a variety of work settings” and “keeps students from being “pegged” as advanced of struggling” (102).  So teachers and students have to be prepared to move and change as necessary.  This may be in a group based on readiness, interest, and/or learning profile.  Examples of flexibility in readiness groups this year include: moving 9 students to different reading groups, shifting 3 students into new Words Their Way groups, and transitioning 4 students to new math groups.  Not only do the students move but as a team of teachers we transition too. What is important when it comes to being flexible? 

When our grade level team starts a new unit, the common understanding is that the newly formed groups are flexible and subject to change. We consistently update lists of students in our groups, communicate to each other based on formative assessment data gathered, and discuss our students and groups at weekly collaborative meetings. Another critical piece to flexible groups has been keeping the parents informed.  Information regarding reading levels, Words Their Way grouping, and math groups is sent home early in the year.  Research and applicable web links for teaching in this manner are also made available to parents.  So how are these flexible groups determined? One way is through diagnostic assessments.

What is multiplication?       Solve two ways. 15 x 48

Spell the following words: drive, carries, confident

Games are fun and teach us something.  Think about your favourite game.  What is it and why do you enjoy it.

                What do you know about matter? Write and draw everything you know.

                Above are four examples from diagnostic assessments which were administered this year in Grade 4. These come from computation, Words Their Way, expository writing, and inquiry. The diagnostic assessments the teaching team creates are always diverse, student friendly, and connected to objectives. These assessments are the gateway into the mind and thought process of the student.  They provide students, parents, and teachers with prior knowledge, strengths, misconceptions, and areas to be developed. Other useful diagnostic assessments include discussions and using visuals. Asking students open and closed-ended questions on topics and recording their responses as well as showing pictures related to content are meaningful when finding out what students already know. It is not just about administering a diagnostic assessment, but what you do with the data once it is gathered is crucial.

Acting on data is more important than gathering data.  The team I work on collaborates to examine how our students respond and we have devised an approach for grouping based on readiness. First, we look at our class individually and then we sit together to discuss the entire grade level. Data is organized using spreadsheets in order to look at patterns which exist, strengths, and as a means to create initial flexible groups. These groups are then typed and distributed to the team. Teachers select which group we will work with based on previous groups. We make sure we never work with the same group of students. This allows students to experience a variety of teachers and pedagogical styles. Within readiness groups we can also further differentiate based on interest and learning profile. For example, in addition/subtraction flexible groups students were able to work together with peers and select how they would best show what they learned about the objectives.  Some students created games and others learning posters.   Recently during a unit of inquiry on media students were able to work solo or with a partner, select a task based on interest, and choose how to display their new learning. So differentiation also further occurs within our flexible groups.  The more we use this strategy the more we find students are engaged and able to self manage themselves and their learning.

Meeting students where they are takes educators who are willing to collaborate, be flexible, and really find out what their students know, understand, and are able to do.  For my team this occurs by differentiating instruction, working in flexible groups, and using of diagnostic assessments. With these strategies the focus is always on students and putting their needs, interests, and learning styles first.

Tomorrow I am off to India and into another time and space. This leads me to think of culture and the impact of culture on teaching and learning. While the very best teaching practices tend to be universal, certainly culture plays a role in how they are implemented and even in the planning that takes place prior to implementation. What are you doing in your schools or with your schools to assure that culture is considered?

As we prepare for the next academic year, schools are gearing up for teacher workshops, including orientation for new and returning teachers.   Teachers frequently report that they never have quite enough time in their own classrooms getting organized. Have you built in sufficient time for teachers to get their rooms and lessons ready for the first week of school?