FIAE — Ch. 5: Tiering Assignments

Tiering an assignment means to start less complicated or smaller, and gradually assign a task or question made more difficult or larger. You may decide to use a teiring model to plan what you will be teaching in a lesson to students who are on-grade-level, below it, or above it. If you choose to do this, it is best to begin with the on-grade-level students curriculum, because starting higher or lower than that can skew how you view the on-grade-level assignments, causing you to expect too much or too little.

Other forms of differentiating and tiering tools include: Tomlinson's Equalizer (a set of coupled words which can lead you to decide where your lesson falls between them, and if that needs to be changed), Learning Contracts (a contract signed by both teacher and student (and sometimes parent) when the current curriculum isn't working for the student. The contract states that a student will finish certain tasks by a set time or return to the planned curriculum), Learning Menus (a list of options to choose from to complete a project or check for understanding), Tic-Tac-Toe Boards, Cubing, RAFT(S) (other option-based game-like tools), Summarization Pyramid (a structure to answer questions or perform tasks in), and Frank William's Taxonomy of Creativity (achieving "Fluency", "Flexibility", "Originality", "Elaboration", "Risk-Taking", "Complexity", "Curiosity", and "Imagination")

One of my favorite parts of the chapter was where it explained how to "change the verb". An example on page 71was taking the original task of asking "What's a mantissa?" And replacing it with the more elaborate, "Interview the mantissa of a logarithm (the decimal/fraction part) about its role in a logarithm." By making the task sound more dynamic, students will be more interested in exploring the answers and will be more likely to challenge themselves creatively with their replies. As a student I always responded better to these and saw them as creative challenges, so I will also try to change my verbs to light a fire under my students.