Differentiate
"In differentiated classes, teachers know them so well that they know how to get students engaged with their learning and they use it. These classes are challenging. Students are held accountable and they achieve more." Rick Wormeli, Fair Isn't Always Equal
The last year or so I feel like I have spent a lot of time and energy in articulating my KUDs and learning targets to my students, and this year I have explored more about what I can do in the classroom to engage students in the content and to push them to make progress in their skills now that I know what they are suppose to get out of the class. Through the learning targets I have been able to gather more specific information about a student's skills and give feedback to them. With that information I can then differentiate the student's experience based on where they are at with the skills. I have been using exit cards and formative assessments, just like the ones below, to get a read on where their skills are and have been organizing the students into different groups based on how they did on their exit card or quiz. It allows me to be able to both pair students who are alike in their skills so that I can better address their challenges or misconceptions and to pair students up who can offer support to others.
The use of the Best Practices techniques, in particular student structured math talk and more open ended tasks, allow me to develop more of a community that is more comfortable sharing ideas and working together opposed to being isolated in their efforts. The more they can talk about their own thinking, understand someone else's thought process and learn from each other the more progress they will make as a mathematician in their skills. These have made differentiating activities and instruction easier to do. Although I feel like I have been able to differentiate more in my classrooms this year because of the specific information I have been able to collect on student skills, I think that differentiation is the area in which I think I need the most work. I think that this will continue to be an area of need for me because as the topics change, student needs change. My goal is to get to know my students well enough to be able to understand what they need, develop their own personalized road map, so that they achieve the most success.
"In differentiated classes, teachers know them so well that they know how to get students engaged with their learning and they use it. These classes are challenging. Students are held accountable and they achieve more." Rick Wormeli, Fair Isn't Always Equal
The last year or so I feel like I have spent a lot of time and energy in articulating my KUDs and learning targets to my students, and this year I have explored more about what I can do in the classroom to engage students in the content and to push them to make progress in their skills now that I know what they are suppose to get out of the class. Through the learning targets I have been able to gather more specific information about a student's skills and give feedback to them. With that information I can then differentiate the student's experience based on where they are at with the skills. I have been using exit cards and formative assessments, just like the ones below, to get a read on where their skills are and have been organizing the students into different groups based on how they did on their exit card or quiz. It allows me to be able to both pair students who are alike in their skills so that I can better address their challenges or misconceptions and to pair students up who can offer support to others.
The use of the Best Practices techniques, in particular student structured math talk and more open ended tasks, allow me to develop more of a community that is more comfortable sharing ideas and working together opposed to being isolated in their efforts. The more they can talk about their own thinking, understand someone else's thought process and learn from each other the more progress they will make as a mathematician in their skills. These have made differentiating activities and instruction easier to do. Although I feel like I have been able to differentiate more in my classrooms this year because of the specific information I have been able to collect on student skills, I think that differentiation is the area in which I think I need the most work. I think that this will continue to be an area of need for me because as the topics change, student needs change. My goal is to get to know my students well enough to be able to understand what they need, develop their own personalized road map, so that they achieve the most success.