Assessment is crucial to the success of a differentiated classroom. Assessment gives important information about the intended learning goals. It can help a teacher determine where to begin instruction, or when to modify it. Assessment provides data about necessary modifications for students to help them better access the curriculum. It provides data for grades and reporting to parents. It can also give insight into the student themselves.
Preassessment helps determine where the students are, what their needs are, what they should know, understand and be able to do. Preassessment can also give important clues like what a student's preferred learning style is or isn't. Formative assessment can take various forms like paper and pencil, work samples, and even student discussion. The data obtained should inform the teacher whether reteaching or extending learning needs to take place. Also, teachers may use formative assessment as a means to slow the pace, or change groupings of students. Summative assessment provides information to the teacher about mastery of the content. During this stage teachers may see that a collective misunderstanding of the learning goals have occurred or that students need additional practice or time spent on learning goals or standards. |
|
More info about Assessment
http://differentiatedstrategies.wikispaces.com/Differentiated+Strategies+for+Assessment
http://store.scholastic.com/content/stores/media/products/samples/21/9780545087421.pdf
https://sites.google.com/site/aceeducatorresources/Home/assessment-resources/differentiation-and-assessment
http://gssd.ca/docs/student%20srvcs/Module2PreassessmentStrategies.pdf
http://differentiatedstrategies.wikispaces.com/Differentiated+Strategies+for+Assessment
http://store.scholastic.com/content/stores/media/products/samples/21/9780545087421.pdf
https://sites.google.com/site/aceeducatorresources/Home/assessment-resources/differentiation-and-assessment
http://gssd.ca/docs/student%20srvcs/Module2PreassessmentStrategies.pdf
Since beginning this class, we have learned so much about what differentiation is and isn't. We have learned how to build effective community in our classes and to reach all types of learners. We have begun to see why differentiation is so important and even how to assess it and implement it. We have learned some great tools along the way.
Some creative ways kids can demonstrate their knowledge:
|
Assessment tools
- Quiz Tools
- Rubric generators
- Teachnology http://teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/
- Rubistar http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
- Taskstream- http://www.taskstream.com
FINAL STOP: LESSON PLANNING
Some Guidelines for Learning-Profile DifferentiationThough there is no single way of ensuring that students get to learn in ways that work best for them, some guidelines are broadly useful in establishing classrooms responsive to a wide range of learning preferences.
- Remember that some, but not all, of your students share your learning preferences. For example, if you are a highly auditory learner, you may be prone to be an auditory teacher, as well. That's great for kids who learn like you do, but not great for kids with visual or kinesthetic learning preferences. If you were successful in school, you may find analytic and part-to-whole learning a breeze. Some students in your class will like those approaches as well, but students who need more creative, contextual, and whole-to-part approaches may feel like they are working in a fog unless you stretch your own comfort zone and teaching repertoire.
- Help your students reflect on their own preferences. Give your students a vocabulary of learning-profile options. Let them know you're offering creative, practical, and analytic learning choices today—or that you've intentionally created both competitive and collaborative study formats—or that you're making a connection between whole-to-part (global, big idea) and part-to-whole (detail) portions of today's lab. Then invite students to talk about which approaches make learning most natural and effective for them. That's also a good opportunity to help students realize that not everyone in the class learns the same way, and that a good teacher works hard to honor many routes to learning, rather than only one.
- Use both teacher-structured and student-choice avenues to learning-profile differentiation.Sometimes it's really effective for a teacher to think about using several intelligences as ways for students to explore or express ideas. Often, only the teacher can ensure flexible use of time or combination of presentation modes. Even when a teacher does not have time to structure or craft several learning-profile options for a lesson, much can be accomplished by asking students to make their own choices. Students can select modes of expression and decide whether to work alone or with a peer, to sit in a desk or curl up on the floor with a book, to accept inevitable classroom sounds or screen them out by using earplugs or headphones, and so on. When students are partners with teachers in making the learning environment a good fit, more is accomplished with less strain on the teacher.
- Select a few learning-profile categories for emphasis as you begin. We know a great deal about learning preferences—so much, in fact, that it can seem overwhelming. As you begin to differentiate your instruction in response to a range of learning-profile needs, select a few categories to emphasize in your planning. You may, for example, work with Sternberg's (1985) three intelligences as you create tasks; using both contextual and factual illustrations for your students, you may employ both visual and auditory approaches to sharing information with your students. That's enough to begin. Then, whenever possible, offer your students learning decisions that they can make to further craft the classroom to match their learning needs.
- Be a student of your students. It's very hard to “get inside someone else's skin.” It's devilishly difficult to see life as someone who experiences the world differently than you do. We particularly fail many students whose cultural background is different from our own. It's essential to watch individuals in your class for learning clues, to talk with them about what works and doesn't work for them, and to invite them to make suggestions or pose alternatives that seem more promising. It's also useful to ask parents to provide insights into what works, or doesn't, when their students learn. If we can expand our vision beyond the parameters of our own private universe, we become more welcoming and effective teachers of children who inevitably inhabit private universes different from our own.
research_based_project_rubric.png | |
File Size: | 87 kb |
File Type: | png |
SOME GREAT READING
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/101043/chapters/The-How-To's-of-Planning-Lessons-Differentiated-by-Learning-Profile.aspx
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/101043/chapters/The-How-To's-of-Planning-Lessons-Differentiated-by-Learning-Profile.aspx