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Differentiating instruction presentation
The document discusses four trends in differentiating instruction for mathematics and science: stations, tiered lessons, questions, and alternative assessments. It outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each method, including their impacts on diverse learners in the classroom. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of incorporating strategies to accommodate various academic backgrounds to support all students.
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Differentiating instruction presentation
- 1. Stephen Allen, JacqueeLeininger, Candace Mikkelsen, Tazbah Shortey MTE 533 September 22, 2013 Sylvia Hill Differentiating Instruction
- 2. Introduction Four trendsin differentiating instruction for mathematics and science are: Stations Tiered lessons Questions Alternative assessments
- 3. Four Trends Stations Different types of work at different spots. Tiered Lessons Different levels of work for different levels of learning.
- 4. Four Trends Questions Students can do the same activities, yet have different questions to answer. This can be used in math and science (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010; Martin, Sexton, Franklin, Gerlovich, & McElroy, 2009).
- 5. Four Trends AlternativeAssessment Formal Assessment Project Portfolio Used in math and science
- 6. Instructional Issues forDiverse Learners Stations Advantages • Efficient materials management • Specific locations • Lesser supply of materials • Differentiate levels of accomplishment Disadvantages • Multitude of instructions
- 7. Instructional Issues forDiverse Learners Tiered Lessons Advantages • Enables more students to meet standards • Teacher provides various assistance levels • Work material adjusted to skill level Disadvantages • Whole-class instruction difficult
- 8. Instructional Issues forDiverse Learners Questions Advantages • Higher thinking skills • Real-world application • Intellectual inquiry • Advanced questions and answers Disadvantages • Must not be habitually simple- minded • Poor questions may not develop deeper thinking skills
- 9. Instructional Issues forDiverse Learners Alternative Assessments Advantages • Demonstrate achievement better • Accommodate various abilities • Different formats Disadvantages • Validity? • Reliability? • Bias? • Accurate measurement of knowledge?
- 10. Lesson Plan Outline-Stations Title: One-digit Multiplication Stations Grade Level: 4th grade State Standard: CCSS 4.OA.A.1: Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative as multiplication equations. Objective: SWBAT multiply two-digit by one-digit factors.
- 11. Lesson Plan Outline-Stations Materials Required: Station signs 1-4 Multiplication sheets: Basic, one-digit x one-digit, two digits x one-digit, three-digits x one-digit, four- digit x one-digit, five-digit x one-digit Pencil Dry erase markers Counters Dry erase boards Timer
- 12. Lesson Plan Outline-Stations Sequence of Lesson: Four Stations Station One & Two: Below Level Students Station Three: On-Level Students Station Four: Advance Level Students
- 13. Conclusion "Differentiating instructionmeans that a teacher’s plan includes strategies to support the range of different academic backgrounds frequently found in classrooms that are academically, culturally, and linguistically heterogeneous" (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 65). There are many advantages and disadvantages to the four trends: Stations, Tiered Lessons, Questions, and Alternative Assessments but they help with diverse learners in the classroom.
- 14. References Martin, R.,Sexton, C., Franklin, T., Gerlovich, J., & McElroy, Dennis. (2009). Teaching science for all children (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Van de Walle, J., Karp, K., Karp, & Bay-Williams, J. (2010). Elementary and middle school mathematics(7th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Editor's Notes
- #3 The presentation will discuss:Whether the trend can be used for science, math or both.Instructional issues with using the identified trends for diverse learners.A lesson plan outline that implements one of the trends.
- #4 Stations include different types of work in different areas of the classroom. The students can move from station to station or allow the teacher to separate the students into different levels of work. Stations allow teachers to differentiate instruction by allowing students to separate and work at different levels of work. This can be used in both math and science (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010). Tiered lessons help teachers maintain same learning goals for all students, yet make it more or less difficult depending on the students who are learning the materials. Tiered lessons are designed for different levels of work, so that they can be made more challenging for gifted students. This can be used in connection with stations, specifically for math (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010).
- #5 The trend ‘questions’ allows students to do the same actual activities, yet have different questions to answer. For example, in math, students can learn the same concepts, yet the challenge can be different. For lower leveled students, the students can just do the easier problems. For average students, the students can do more of the problems and a few tricky problems. For gifted students, the students can create problems for other problems using the same concepts. In science, students can do the same lab, yet answer different questions about the lab. Lower leveled students can write observations about the lab, while gifted students can make predictions with changing some of the items of the lab. (Van de Walle, Karp, Bay-Williams, 2010; Martin, Sexton, Franklin, Gerlovich, & McElroy, 2009).
- #6 Alternative assessments can show what students have learned through a variety of different kinds of assessments that focus on students’ strengths, rather than a formal assessment or a standard assessment. For some students, it may be better for the student to take a formal test. For other students, it may be best to use a portfolio or project. Alternative assessments gives the teacher the flexibility to assess students based on what works best for them. This can be used in both math and science. (Martin, Sexton, Franklin, Gerlovich, & McElroy, 2009).
- #7 The advantage of stations are that they can make managing the materials easier, they being sited at specific locations. The stations allow a lesser supply of materials to serve the whole class, group by group, and the stations are a way to differentiate instruction between groups having different levels of accomplishment. A problem is the multitude of instructions that the teacher would need to give because of the diversity of the activities. Each group will be more or less on its own, doing things different than other groups’. Games lend themselves well to station teaching, but it is important that activities be educationally beneficial. The activity must encourage reflective thought aligned toward the objectives, not just repetition or entertainment (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 63). The activity must be followed up with discussion so that the students can express in language what they have been doing and why. The teacher can hold such discussions in the individual groups as the students are working, or with the whole class afterward if the material is of such a nature that a whole-class approach will work. Whole-class approaches will be appropriate when the diverse stations were all supporting the same underlying theme (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 63-64). The station work should be reinforced with some manner of recorded description by the student of the work, which can be in writing or in the form (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 64).
- #8 Differentiation of instruction can operate at the level of content, of process, or of product. (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 65). Tiered lessons are defined as those that have the same learning objective for all learners but are adapted to the abilities of the learners. This is not considered a modification of the goals, and thus is appropriate for students who are capable of reaching the standard objective with adapted lessons. Tiering involves differentiating the amount of teacher assistance provided, the degree of scaffolding structure provided, the complexity of specific tasks, and the level of mental nimbleness that the teacher assumes when presenting the material to the student (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2010, p. 65). An issue, of course, is that doing this to the whole class at once can be difficult. A solution is to include assistances in the normal presentations, such as visual cues for ELLs, speaking loudly for the hard-of-hearing, enlarged print for the visually impaired, etc. Another solution, particularly with the mentally slow, is to give general instructions to the whole class, then apply additional assistance to select groups. Another solution lies in the nature of the work material used, that can exist at several skill levels.
- #9 Good questions are essential to good teaching. The trend is to ask thought-provoking questions requiring higher thinking skills, particularly applicable in science and math, in order to develop the ability of the student to connect the rote facts and symbolic manipulations to real-world situations, and to develop in the student the habit of intellectual inquiry. For this reason, an issue with questions is that they not be habitually simple-minded. Although rote recitations of facts may have a place, the teacher must make effort to move beyond that into deeper thinking skills. A good questioning procedure in the classroom is also important. The teacher should begin by asking an interesting general question related to the objective, allowing students to discuss possible solutions. This would be preliminary to leading into an investigation of some kind. The teacher, when asking a question, should make effort to allow the student time to think of an answer. The teacher should also avoid the habit of allowing classroom discussion to take place only between him- or herself and the most vocal students. The teacher needs to make effort to direct questions across the entire classroom, and to give time for the slower or less vocal students to answer intelligently. Doing so will help avoid creating a learning environment that is biased on the basis of language, culture, gender, or sex. Another aspect of good questioning is to ask advanced questions of students that are capable of advanced answers. By making a portion of the questions advanced, the teacher allows the more talented students to engage more meaningfully. Such questions would fit in with an advanced tier of lessons for such students. After completing the investigative work and other related activities, the teacher should ask questions that lead the students to think about what they have found, summarize it, explain it, expand on it. The students then can ask their own questions when their groups trade work and evaluate it.
- #10 A trend to support inclusion of all students is to differentiate assessments to match these different abilities. There are many exceptionalities and learning styles, and a diversity of assessment types allows the students to more fully demonstrate their actual achievements. Many of these fall into the realm of accommodations for the variously disabled. Assessments can vary in type, such as written, multiple choice, oral, graphic presentation, dramatic performance, audio recording, or tactile project. An issue, or course, is whether differentiated assessments are valid. The outcome sought by policy makers is that all students will learn to the state standards. A question about alternative assessments is whether they can reliably measure this accomplishment. The makers of formal assessments attempt to carefully design them so that they do, although a further criticism is that so many such assessments are reduced to machine-gradable multiple-choice form, and that in itself is biased against some students. Another issue that comes up is whether an assessment accurately measures the knowledge of someone from a different language, culture, gender, or sex. The philosophy supporting alternative assessments sometimes is cited to support accommodations here, such as testing material in other languages, and the same thinking could endorse special tests for persons from different parts of the country, or one set of tests written for boys and another for girls. However, this sort of thing raises obvious social issues, and some states specifically legislate against alternative assessments in many circumstances for this reason. Commercial test makers generally attempt to weed out questions that hinge upon personal characteristics rather than upon content knowledge. In the classroom, the teacher must attempt to do likewise. When observing or questioning students for the purpose of informal assessment, the teacher must be conscious of such things and linguistic or cultural background, and that these things could distort the teacher’s observations; but then again, detecting their existence may enable the teacher to adjust instruction so as to better connect with these students.
- #13 Four stations: after reviewing concepts from lesson on multiplying two-digits by one-digit, students will be separated into one of four stations. Station One and Two-Below Level Students:Students will be at station one for ten minutes and station two for twenty minutes.At station one, students will work in pairs in completing a basic multiplication sheet with facts from 0x0 to 12x12. They can use counters, graph paper to make arrays, and/or dry erase boards to find their products. Upon completing their fact sheet, students will then complete a worksheet containing two-digit x one-digit multiplication problems and word problems independently at station two. Students will receive similar word problems as on-level and advance level students with simplified language. Counters, arrays and dry erase boards can be used to help students solve problems. A model containing the steps to multiply will be displayed. Students will solve problems on graph paper and record answers on worksheet.After completing their worksheet, students will check their papers with a partner and mark products that are not the same. If they have different products, they will go back and check their work.StationThree-On-Level Students:At station three, students will work independently on two-digit/three-digit x one-digit multiplication problems and word problems. Students’ word problems will have similar language as advance level students, but will be made with simpler language. Students may use dry erase boards to help solve problems. Students will solve problems on graph paper and record answer on worksheet.Students will be at this station for 30 minutes.After completing their worksheet, students will check their papers with a partner and mark products that are not the same. If they have different products, they will go back and check their work. Station Four-Advance Level Students:At station four, students will work independently on four-digit/five-digit x one-digit multiplication problems and word problems. Students’ word problems will be multi-step to include addition and subtraction. Students will solve problems on graph paper and record answer on worksheet.Students will be at this station for 30 minutes.After completing their worksheet, students will check their papers with a partner and mark products that are not the same. If they have different products, they will go back and check their work.