Rick Wormeli

I loved being able to watch the short video we were able to in class. Rick Wormeli is truly one of the greats when it comes to differentiation. He makes it look so easy, which is sort of stressful for me, but I know with practice I can become just as great! I loved hearing him talk about how he approaches differentiating for his students and I think the way he split the groups up was so great. Even though the students knew they were in different groups, there didn't seem to be any competition in the classroom, one group didn't feel less than the other. This is something that I feel is extremely important and essential in a differentiated classroom. To get that, I think that you definitely need to build a classroom community where all students feel safe and accepted for who they are. If you can do that in a classroom, whether it be elementary, middle, or high school than you already have a battle won. Once you have done that you can move on to actually differentiating your students and it is so important for you as the teacher to be extremely clear on what you want your students to learn. Just like Mr. Wormeli, you need to sit down, look at the curriculum, and decide what essential understandings you want your students to get out of your lessons. This is a list of things that YOU need to become familiar with, memorize. It needs to be second nature, because if you don't know them, than how are you going to teach them and expect your students to get anything out of your lessons. One other thing that I really liked from the video clip is that Rick continuously assessed his students to see where they were and actually USED those assessments to tailor his instruction. His 3, 2, 1 exit slip at the end of his class was so fabulous and something I would LOVE to use in my classroom. It gives you an idea of where each student is standing, in a way they aren't embarrassed, and gives you useful information to structure future lessons. LOVED it!

Informal/Formal Assessments
Pre-Assessments

Curriculum & Instruction Part Two

Don’t we all feel better when we have successfully completed something that was hard and took a lot of work? I know I do, and even though children are young, they feel the same way when they have completed something challenging. We need to give our students opportunities to complete demanding tasks and we should never water down content for our students. Students need to be challenged in order to grow and become great learners. Differentiation can help us do this! We can measure our student’s abilities and then once we know where they are, we can instruct them based on their level of learning. We should also aim to help that student raise themselves up to the next level, always getting better and better. You can do this by giving students challenging work, based on their level. It is important to scaffold your students and assign them things to do based off of where they are, but raise them up just a little bit each time.  This doesn’t mean to take your lowest students and have them work on the exact same things you have your advanced level students doing, it means that you take what they know and a little bit at a time you help them to increase in their knowledge and skill. It is our job to help students grow and progress, not to stagnate and get stuck where they are already at. It is the same for your advanced level students, you need to assign them work that is challenging for them, which is not going to be the same as what is challenging for a lower level learner. Even though they are already advanced and it seems like your job is already done, it is not. You need to give those students opportunities to be challenged so they can grow as well. You will have students who do not think they can do anything; this is where you need to help them to be successful and point out their successes. Give them assignments in their realm of thinking that you know they will be successful at. Doing this may help them to have more confidence in themselves and may make them more likely to persist when they reach a problem that is challenging to them.  Students need to feel successful and it is your job to help them feel that way, no matter the level or kind of learner they are. You need to adapt your instruction to help each and every one of your students meet the learning goals that you set out for them.

Ways To Scaffold Your Students

Curriculum & Instruction

It is our number one job as teachers to help our students grow and to help them to become responsible and contributing members of society. Because of this, when delivering curriculum and instruction to our students, we need to make sure that what they are learning is something that will be useful to them in the future. We need to make sure we are explaining to the students why they are learning things and what they are learning can be used for. You should never teach something to your students “just because”, you need to have a better reason than that! Even though there is TONS to teach to students in a given school year, we should ALWAYS find meaning in the content we are teaching the students and convey that meaning to the students. As teachers, we need to make sure students can see how important the material they are learning is going to be for them in their lives. This is why we must look at what we need to teach and delve deeper into that standard to find what the most significant thing is in that topic. Having a “focused curriculum” is extremely important and what is more important is pointing out your objectives specifically to students. Once you have decided what you want to teach the students, you should write out the objectives for what you want your students to take from that lesson and inform them of these objectives before you begin a unit of study. When students are aware of what they are supposed to take from a lesson, it helps them to be more focused on the end goal as well. To start out though, you need to know what knowledge the students already have, so that when you do teach the lesson you know how the best way to deliver the content will be.  After you asses what they know, you can craft your lesson, and come up with a way for those students to show what they actually learned after the lesson is done. Your summative assessment needs to measure what you actually taught them and give students a chance to use their knowledge to communicate what they know in a meaningful way. You would never ask students to name all the letters of the alphabet as an assessment after teaching a unit on addition. That just doesn’t make sense. That is why I think backwards design is so important. You start your instruction with an end goal in mind, and your entire lesson is crafted out of what you want your students to do after you have taught the material. You also need to make the lesson engaging for all of your students, which means getting to know your students and their differing learning profiles. A great teacher should be able to merge the importance of a topic they are teaching and be able to create an environment of learning. A place where every student has access to materials and activities that invites the student to use their individual strengths and abilities to create and build upon ideas. We need to make our lessons interesting and teach them in a way that allows all of the students to gain something from it, whether they are visual, auditory, or hands-on learners. We need to remember that every single child in our class is different and make sure our classrooms are a place where they can grow, hone in on their individual talents and use those talents to become successful.
Tips For More Engaging Instruction

Tiered Learning

 "If you are following the hallmarks and making lesson equally engaging and respectful for all of your learners you are tiering."

                                                 --Nancy Peterson

A great teacher learns to differentiate their lessons by tiering the activities within the lessons, always with the students in your class in mind. It is not enough just to have a good lesson that covers great content; you need to design your lesson in a way that every student in your class will get meaning from it. Not every student is going to be the same; they are all going to be on different reading levels, they will all have different interests and different ways that they learn the best. When tailoring a lesson you MUST take these factors into account so that the objectives you are trying to reach with the lesson are met by ALL students, not just a select few. I know it sounds overwhelming, but I promise, it can be done. When developing your lessons, first look at what you want the students to know, understand and be able to do; from this starting point you can draft up the activities within the lesson.  Once you have done that, stop and look back at the activities, decide which students in your class will understand the context you have put them in and then clone the activity with the other students in mind. What do I mean when I say, “clone”?  Basically, just look at the activity, think about your students and make some adjustments so that your other learners can understand it in a context they know. This is what we call “tiering.” Sometimes you may only have two tiers, other times you may need to clone your activity 3 times to encompass the broad spectrum of your students, it just depends on your class. This is definitely something you shouldn’t take lightly though, especially as a first year teacher. Differentiating can be hard and it takes practice, but as the saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” I am going to adjust that a little, “Practice makes ALMOST perfect.” I include almost because as a teacher you are always going to be learning and finding better ways to do things, you will never be perfect, but you can strive for perfection. Differentiating is something that will get easier with time.

Classroom Environment

The feel of a classrooms environment will either open up or close down lines of communication with you and your students. The way you set up your classroom, the physical attributes, like: bulletin boards, signs, etc will effect how your students learn. When a child walks into a classroom, their first impression of you is going to be of how the classroom is set up. You truly need to plan out and play with the setup of your classroom, it's a balancing act, too much or too little is going to take away from learning.  A teacher is also responsible for the daily "climate" of the classroom, whether it be positive or negative. Each and every day when you enter your room to start teaching young minds, you NEED to put on a bright smile, whether you feel like it or not. Those students can tell when you aren't excited about a lesson and that will rub off on them. You need to be excited about teaching them, no matter what the subject is. If you are excited it will make the classroom environment so much for fun and the students will want to and be able to learn so much! How do you begin to build a positive environment for your students to learn in? Well, first and foremost, GET TO KNOW YOUR STUDENTS, find out what backgrounds they come from, become familiar with their different cultures. Second, when you see a student doing something worthwhile or when they say something awesome, tell EVERYONE about it. Help the students to see one another as significant contributors to the classroom and to society. Third, when someone in the class does something fun and creative, DISPLAY it. Fourth, allow room for all types of learners, some students need interaction to learn, some need it to be quiet. There should be times in every school day to allow each student to learn the way they do best. Fifth, encourage students to get to know one another, this is where MORNING MEETING comes in handy. Lastly, celebrate success, if not every day, every week! Have students volunteer to share positive things they have seen in the classroom or on the playground. This is just a small snippet of what you can do in a classroom to encourage a positive climate where maximum learning can take place. You want your students to be excited to come to school, so making the environment they walk into friendly and welcoming should be on your top ten list of things to do!! I honestly feel that every single one of these things is essential for a classroom to run effectively, in order to produce successful students. I also think it is well worth mentioning, that although you are the adult in the classroom and trained in education, the classroom is not just yours, it belongs to all of your students as well. I think it is extremely important to make sure that each student knows that you are all part of a team and that it is EVERYONES responsibility to make the classroom better. This shared responsibility makes everyone accountable.  I think allowing students to have this type of power and challenge in a classroom is very effective to contributing to how well they learn and makes their learning experience that much more memorable.

Get Parents On Your Side

It truly is the little things that count when it comes to starting off a school year right. It has always been important to get parents on your side, but I think in the day and age we live in now, it is absolutely ESSENTIAL!! As a classroom teacher you need to make parents aware of what is going on in the classroom and most importantly WHY their children need to learn those specific things. You cannot differentiate if you have parents that don't understand why you are doing things a certain way, you need parents on your side to be able to do what is in the best interest of their kids. If you start your year off right, by sending home a letter to parents, it shows that you have taken that extra step to involve them in their child's education. Your letter needs to be just that, a letter, not a "well this is what is going on: A, B, C, D, E." Your letter should be informative of course, but the tone it conveys is CRUCIAL. Write the letter as if you are talking to the parents and please, please, please DO NOT lump all the students together as one, they are individuals, and make sure the parents know that. Show the parents that you will treat their children as individuals in the classroom and that you are willing to differentiate your instruction based on their needs. These are their children you are going to be taking care of each and every day and they want to be sure that you care about them and want them to succeed. Although a letter home to parents just seems like a small thing, the way you approach sending that letter home is going to make a huge impact on the way the parents look at you. I absolutely LOVE the idea of sending parents a letter home with a list of options they can choose from to help out in the classroom. A lot of parents are extremely busy and cannot come in and be parent helpers, I think it is a fantastic idea to give them other ways to help out, like: sending supplies for celebrations in the classroom, or even giving them an approximate date for field trips so they can sign up in advance. I also think that you should find a way of introducing yourself to your students BEFORE the school year starts, if at all possible. I love the idea of writing letters to each and every student and mailing them out at the beginning of August, include in the letter something for them to bring to class on the first day to introduce themselves to you and their peers. This is a great way to introduce yourself, to introduce some of the things you will be learning in the upcoming year, and also a way for you to get a little snippet of what the child is like.

Parent Letter 1
Parent Letter 2

Responsive Classroom

What is a Responsive Classroom?

• Morning Meeting: A daily routine that builds community, creates a positive climate for learning, and reinforces academic and social skills.

• Rules and Logical Consequences: A clear and consistent approach to discipline that fosters responsibility and self-control.

• Guided Discovery: A format for introducing materials that encourages inquiry, heightens interest, and teaches care of the school environment.

• Academic Choice: An approach to giving children choices in their learning that helps them become invested, self-motivated learners.

• Classroom Organization: Strategies for arranging materials, furniture, and displays to encourage independence, promote caring and maximize learning.What is a Responsive Classroom?

Incorporating all of these things into your classroom help to make it a more stimulating, challenging, safer, and happier environment for all of the students. I think that most of these things help to directly affect how well your classroom is going to run and you can start to build a classroom community with them. Fostering a classroom where students feel like they belong and they are safe opens the window to the students becoming more involved in their education. The responsive classroom helps you to create a positive place for the students to share their insights and you can even increase their motivation and get them excited about their learning by giving them "choices" in what they learn. For example, if the students need to study about marine life instead of assigning them what they need to learn about, you can give them the opportunity to choose which marine animal they want to learn about. This way you are still fitting in the curriculum but are also actively involving the students and giving them motivation to learn about their animal because they chose it out of their own personal interest. I definitely plan on approaching my classroom with this type of teaching in mind. Although I am sure it is hard to incorporate of these things all of the time, it definitely seems to be beneficial to try :)

Students' Needs

It’s the first day of school and every student that walks through that door has different needs that need to be met. They all have some needs in common though, they want to feel: safe, important and that they are capable of accomplishing things, like they are fully functioning members of class, like they understand and are good at things, they need to be given a purpose for what they are learning, and like they are able to overcome challenges. Making your students feel positive in all of these aspects will keep them coming back to learn more. They are not concerned with what they are going to be learning in your classroom, they are concerned about feeling like they belong. That first impression you make on a student is CRITICAL. Make sure you are warm and welcoming, make them feel like your classroom is a safe place for them to learn and grow. Most importantly make sure that they know you care for them and are there for them no matter what. It is so important in the classroom that you are telling your students the purpose for what they are learning and please, please, please make connections to the real world! Students need to understand that they are not just learning things to know for a test, they are learning things to help them grow and succeed in life. Once you become aware of your students needs you can begin to effectively differentiate. This basic understanding helps you as a teacher to realize how different experiences in the classroom affect and meet the needs of your students. You need to be aware that students come from all walks of life and bring many things into the classroom that will directly influence their learning and how you teach. Sometimes you cannot meet the individual needs of every student. Unfortunately, you will at times need to take a “snapshot” of the class and determine who is understand a concept and who is not. If most of your students are getting it, great! You may have a few stragglers that you will have to plan to address at a different time. This part stresses me out a little because, being an overachiever, I want to help ALL of my students 100% of the time. That isn’t always possible though. There just isn’t enough time in the day to stop in each lesson and adjust for those who aren’t getting it, but that doesn’t mean you give up! You will just need to find some time to get the students together and discuss with them the missing chink in their understanding of a concept, then find a way to move them past it. You should never stop trying because you may be the only advocate and resource for learning that those children have. When you don’t reach them all, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again.

Creating a Caring Environment

"Teachers see the person we can all become someday."

                                                 -Kid President

Teachers need to create a learning environment where they portray an attitude that makes students feel that:

§ You respect who they are

§ You want to get to know them

§ They are unique

§ You believe in them

§ You have time for them

§ You listen to them and learn from what they tell you

§ The classroom belongs to them too

§ They are needed

These are building blocks for differentiation. When you show that you care about who your students are as people, it establishes a classroom community that is uplifting. It shows students what it should really be like in the real world. You need to promote an environment of learning that is positive and inviting. A place that students feel they are learning meaningful things that truly connect to the real world, something beneficial. It is so critical to let your students know that you want them to succeed, that is your main purpose in being an educator. You are there to help each and every child develop into a functioning and efficient member of society. They are not at school just to memorize facts, they are there to learn how to contribute to the world as a whole and you need to provide them with many opportunities to do that. We need to see the potential in our students and let them know that they can do anything they can set their minds to. They are our future leaders, our future teachers, they are our future. We need to always make our students feel that we will help them no matter what; when one way of teaching something doesn't work for them, we will make the effort to find another way to help them learn.  An effective and lets be honest, caring teacher, never gives up on their students, they are persistent and always find a way to provide each and every student a means in which to succeed; they inspire and encourage. Being a teacher means to go above and beyond to help each student, it means constantly reflecting on your instruction and changing things if they aren't working. Teacher are learning how to better help their students every day and they should never stop learning. Students may get taught by teachers but students always provide the most empowering life lessons for teachers. We must always remember that.