Tag Archives: Differentiated Instruction

LLED 320 – Websites of Interest, Performance Tasks/GRASPS, Unit Plan Sharing, and DI Readings: Update for Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Leave a reply

Websites of Interest

Here’s a list of websites that you’ve found useful as you created your unit plans (Thanks to Will for jotting these down – LH):

Performance Tasks and GRASPS

After a short daily write based on looking over a collection of performance tasks, I took some time to outline the nature of the tasks – including roles, audiences, products, and performances – and show some examples from my work as a Humanities 8 teacher at Hillcrest Middle.  I made reference to the following tasks:

– Hot Spots Around the School Poems: After a walk around the school to gather information, I asked students to pick a favourite place in the building and write a free verse poem about that place.  Final copies were published, illustrated, mounted on construction paper, and then posted in the place that was the poem’s topic.  Painless integration of audience and presentation…and stakes!

– The Outsiders Memorial Museum Task:  This culminating activity for The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is described in the handout below.  I showed an example of a student presentation in class:

– The Outsiders Opening Statement: The students choose one crime from The Outsiders and act as the attorney for the state or the alleged perpetrator.  In role, they create the opening statement to be presented at the trial.  Here’s the handouts for this activity:

– Children’s Book Task: My grade 8 classes met and interviewed a buddy in a primary class at a nearby elementary school.  My students studied short story writing and children’s lit before writing and illustrating their own tales.  As a culminating activity, we revisited our buddies and shared the stories.

Here’s the handout that supported the presentation:

Unit Plan Sharing

I set aside 45 minutes or so for you to talk to your classmates about the activities and highlights of their unit plans.  The post-class feedback indicated that this was time well spent.

Differentiated Instruction

The T in WHERETO stands for tailored; how will we tailor learning to varied needs, interests, [and] styles?

Pre-and During-Reading:

Things got pretty meta here as I differentiated my instruction on differentiated instruction.  I provided you with a selection of articles (DI – content) and suggested that, as you read, you could make sense of the text in a way that worked for you (DI – process) – taking notes in the margins, mind map the text, summarize each paragraph, and, well, the list goes on.

Here are the articles we were working with:

Post-Reading:

When the articles were read, I urged you to engage in an activity that would allow you to consolidate your understanding of the reading (DI – process).  Some chatted with a peer while others took notes on how they could use the ideas from the texts in their own practice.  To end, I asked for any key ideas you found while reading.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

A FREE How-to Webinar on Differentiated Instruction

Leave a reply

Middle Years TCs:

If you’re free on Wednesday, 7 December 2011 @ 11:00 am PST, you can watch a FREE webinar on DI – Hybrid Learning Pushes Personalization Forward – hosted by Education Week and presented by 2 practicing middle school teachers from Edmunds MS in Vermont.  For more details check out the webinar rego page.  You can find access to more webinars and many other educataionally-themed resources at the Education Week website.

– LH

LLED 320 – Martha Game, WHERETO Tableaus, Unit Sharing, & D.I. Readings: Update for Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Leave a reply

WHERETO

After a few drama activities to get you warmed up – Zip, Zap, Bop, Bang! and the Martha Game – we played with WHERETO, an acronym that summarizes the key elements that should be in your learning plan / lesson sequence.   Here’s the WHERETO information package we worked with:

The WHERETO task was as follows:

  1. Form a group of 4-5
  2. Choose a WHERETO letter from my Boston Bruins hat
  3. Read the section of the handout relating to your chosen letter
  4. Come up with 2 or 3 key ideas related to your section.   Ask yourself, what do my classmates really need to know about this section?
  5. Design and rehearse a tableau (some movement was allowed, if needed) that visually represented the key ideas from the section
  6. Present and explain your tableau.

In doing this task, I was trying to model one way to use drama as a means of working with content.

Unit Plan Sharing

After asking for suggestions on how to approach the unit plan sharing piece, we decided to do the following:

  • Identify the subject and topic of each unit plan
  • Meet in subject and / or topic groups
  • Share any interesting ideas, activities, or assessments in the unit itself

I asked you to consider what you were considering through the WHERETO lens.  In the post-sharing debrief, many of you mentioned that you had picked up some great ideas that you could weave into your own planning.  Success!

Differentiated Instruction

The T in WHERETO stands for tailored; how will we tailor learning to varied needs, interests, [and] styles?

Pre-and During-Reading:

Things got pretty meta here as I differentiated my instruction on differentiated instruction.  I provided you with a selection of articles (DI – content) and suggested that, as you read, you could make sense of the text in a way that worked for you (DI – process).  Some noted that they would take notes in the margins, others were going to mind map the text, others were going to summarize each paragraph, and, well, the list went on.

Here are the articles we were working with:

Post-Reading:

When the articles were read, I urged you to engage in an activity that would allow you to consolidate your understanding of the reading (DI – process).  Some chatted with a peer while others took notes on how they could use the ideas from the texts in their own practice.  To end, I aimed high, as I asked for any epiphanies you had while reading.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Unit Plan Conferences, KUD, Performance Tasks & DI: Update for Thursday, 3 Feb 2011

Leave a reply

Well, today’s class didn’t go quite as I’d envisioned.  In my mind, I spent too much time talking and, as a result, we didn’t get done all that I had hoped we would.  Anyway, here’s what we did accomplish:

Writing Tasks In

I’ve collected the pieces and will mark them over the next two weeks or so.  There’s a lot of them!

Assessment Q&A

I took some time to address some of the assessment questions that you had posed on exit slips at the end of a previous class.

Unit Planning: Individual Conferences

I’ve cancelled class on Thursday, 10 Feb 2011 to set aside some time for 15-minute conferences about your unit plans.  Also, to ensure that I had times set aside that suited everybody’s schedule, I also will be holding meetings on Tuesday, 15 Feb and Thursday, 24 Feb.  Here’s the schedule (as of 3 Feb):

In preparation for this meeting, please prepare the following items and bring them along to the conference:

  • Subject and topic of your unit (Science & Water systems, for example)
  • Key PLOs related to your topic
  • Desired Results / KUD (Knowledge, Understanding, and Do/Skills) for your unit
  • Rough ideas on assessment for your unit.
  • Ideas on how you might be able to integrate some aspect of LA – writing, representing, reading, viewing, speaking, or listening – into one of the unit’s lessons

Unit Planning: Goals, Performance Tasks, and Differentiated Instruction

I attended a Pro D Workshop last Friday with Cindy Strickland from ASCD.  She is a Differentiated Instruction guru doing work playing with and extending the DI thinking of Carol Tomlinson.  Seeing as the information I picked up was very relevant to our work on unit planning, I thought I’d share it with you in this class.

Here were my goals:

  • Demonstrate a way to outline a unit’s goals using a KUD framework
  • Show how performance tasks can be developed as a means for students to show their attainment of the KUD
  • Illustrate how performance tasks can be differentiated to better meet the needs of all students
  • Allow you to apply your understanding of performance tasks and differentiation to a unit you’re developing for the long practicum.

After showing a short PPT on clouds – Clouds PPT Slideshow– to get you up to speed with what information the students working on this weather unit had been working with, I showed you an example of three summative performance tasks for the weather unit and asked you to determine, by looking at the tasks, what you thought the KUD of the unit was.  In other words, what did the teacher expect her students to Know, Understand, and Do that was related to clouds?

After that, you thought of other final product scenarios that the students could complete that would show their KUD but tap into different student interests and abilities.  This is where the differentiation piece came in.

How can we, as teachers, provide varied opportunities for students to show us what they know?  As we answer this question, we can start to find ways to differentiate our instruction and our assessment in ways that are responsive to the needs of all students.

Here’s the handout we used in class:

Unit Planning: GRASPS Peformance Tasks

Performance tasks are summative assessments that are:

  • personalized
  • open-ended
  • complex
  • based on real-world work
  • aimed at an identified audience

The Understanding By Design (UBD) unit planning model we’ve been working with in 310 class promotes the design of performance tasks based on the features suggested by the acronym GRASPS:

  • G=goal
  • R=role
  • A=audience
  • S=situation
  • P=product, performance, & purpose
  • S=standards & criteria

We analyzed the cloud unit performance tasks through the lens of the GRASPS aspects and then did one of two things:

  1. Looked at other performance tasks to see how they demonstrated the GRASPS elements
  2. Developed a GRASPS based performance task for a unit you’ll be teaching on the long prac.

Here’s a handout with all sorts of info related to performance tasks, including a handy dandy list of Possible Student Roles and Audiences in addition to Possible Products and Performances:

Haikus Handed In

As a ticket out the door, I collected your 3 haiku poems.  We’ll be revising these in a future lesson seeing as we ran out of time this class.

– Lawrence

The Final (Practicum) Countdown & MIAB Speech Analysis Tasks Gallery Walk: Update for Monday, 4 October 2010

Leave a reply

NOTE: You’ll get so much more enjoyment out of this post if you read it while the music from this video plays.  Trust me.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyggY_R3jU8&p=61349DCC17CB1C98&playnext=1&index=55[/youtube]

Clock Partners

Clock Partners are a great way to set up partnerships in a classroom setting.  It gives students some choice over who they will speak/work with for a given activity while speeding up the partner finding process.  Here’s the Clock Parnters sheet I handed out for you to record your appointments.  There are instructions for the activity on the back of the page:

Weekend Rating

We found our 6 o’clock partner (I think) and rated our weekends… positively, on the whole.

Pre-Prac Prep Wrap Up

Improv

In a nod to my weekend – I went to see live Improv with Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame – we did some improv to get our brains working this morning.  We started with “Hey, what are you doing?” and progressed to One Word Story.  Directions for these activities and many, many more can be found in the online Impvov Encyclopedia.

A video clip with hilarious highlights from one of Richard Simmons’ visits on WLIIA? is below.  Watch at your own risk!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTxkxG3DF4k[/youtube]

Protocols

Please observe the following protocols when you arrive at the schools:

  • Arrive by 8:30 am
  • Check in at the office and meet the secretaries
  • Expect to wear a Visitor Badge to identify yourself as a guest in the building
  • Smile and make eye contact with students you meet
  • After OKing it with the classroom teacher, interact with students as they work
  • Use the Staff Washrooms
  • Bring a journal and take notes in it about what you see
  • Have fun!

SA Expectations

A lot is expected of you during practicum.  You can expect your SA to support you as you grow into a dynamic beginning teacher, mind you.  Below is a list of the type of assistance your School Advisor should be offering:

  • Get to know your teacher candidate. Endeavour to create a warm, friendly working relationship.
  • Learn specific strengths and needs of your teacher candidate. What does s/he need to know and understand about you and your classroom to help ensure a successful working partnership?
  • Be a listener: Be empathetic, patient, and encouraging. Provide opportunities for your teacher candidate to discuss what was learned in coursework on campus.
  • Introduce your teacher candidate to your class as a “teacher.”
  • Help your teacher candidate become a welcome and participating member of the school staff.
  • Maintain open communication and consultation with the faculty advisor.
  • Ensure that the match between your teacher candidate and yourself and your class is appropriate. Raise any concerns with the faculty advisor and/or school coordinator at the earliest opportunity.
  • Provide opportunities for your teacher candidate to become familiar with the school and district personnel.

If you feel your needs for support in the classroom aren’t being met, please advise me as soon as possible.

Teacher Presence – Introducing Yourself

As a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s meetin’ and greetin’, I asked each TC to:

  • State the name they want to go by in the classroom
  • Give a brief introduction of themselves

EDUC 315 Task Expectations

Journal: Bob and I are asking you to keep a journal of your thoughts as you tour the school and, eventually, as you work with your SA on 6 consecutive Tuesdays starting on 19 October.  Here are some observation tips that will help you focus your classroom viewing:

Lesson: Also, at some point, you will need to teach (a minimum of) one lesson.  The what and when of this lesson will be worked out with your SA.  We’ll be covering a lesson planning format soon in class.  We ask that you please email a lesson plan to us 24 hours in advance of your teaching and that you send us a copy of your reflection on the lesson, too.

Me In A Bag Gallery Walk

There was great diversity in the post-speech analysis products on display in class this morning.  We viewed them with a Gallery Walk strategy and I collected all the pieces at the end.  It was a bit hard to hear the songs, so I’ll take time next class to play them for the whole group.  Also, next class we’ll consider the benefits and drawback of differentiating end products in your middle level teaching.

That’s a wrap.  I may bump into some of you in the morning as I visit various schools firming up the placements.  Of course, I’ll see all of you in the Montgomery Middle School Library at 1:30 for a debrief of the morning’s happenings.  (I promise to not make any mention of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Happening, if you don’t.  Here’s a way better Happening from The Pixies that I’d be more than happy to talk about:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNm1ZF8wwg[/youtube]

Later alligators.

– Lawrence