tiering

I have often wondered how I can possibly give all of my students challenging instruction when they are all on different levels. After reading chapter 6 in Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom, one of the answers is tiering. (Not to be confused with tiring.) haha

To get you excited about tiering, here is beautiful, multi-layered cake:

"Tiering assumes that within a particular lesson or product, a wide range of students should work toward the same knowledge, understanding, and skills. However, it acknowledges the varied readiness levels of students in approaching the task and thus presents the work at different levels of difficulty. Thus, while essential outcomes are similar, the demands of the task are structured and scaffolded in response to learner need."

Let's go back to the cake. Each tier is unique. Some are bold, some are not. Some are on bottom, some are on top. Even though each of these tiers looks different, they all serve the same purpose and that is to feed people. If the cake represents tiering a lesson, then think of each tier of the cake representing different tasks that could be given to different groups of students. The basic nature of the task (or the purpose) should be the same for each group. (i.e learning and exploring the stages of the water cycle) Even though each task entails the same goal, they will not all look the same. (Just like the tiers on the cake.) Some groups might learn best by listening to a book on tape about the water cycle, while some might need to act it out and pretend they are the water cycle.

I really liked the example given in the book with Mr. Johnson and his lesson on buoyancy. I was really interested in his lesson because first of all, I am teaching a science lesson on buoyancy with Brittany this Friday in our science class, and secondly, I was interested in how he tiered his lesson. I loved that each group was given an exciting, yet challenging task. You could see the different levels each task presented, but you could also see how each task appropriately scaffolded the group of students it was intended to scaffold.

Mr Johnson's two-tiered inquiry lesson: In tier one, the students needed to make a boat that could float and hold washers, in tier two (a little more challenging) the students had to create a boat that could hold exactly 10 washers, which meant it would need to sink if it hit 11. Can you see the difference and similarities?

I like this tiering idea. It will take more work, but if we are properly differentiating in our classroom, we have already decided to invest in our students so the extra time will just be second nature.