Tiering Instruction

One of my favorite past times is to watch cakes be decorated.  I have tried my hand at it a couple of times, but I can't give it the justice that it deserves.  One thing that I have learned about cake decorating is that each tier is a support for the tier beneath it.  When the cake is finished one can not exist without the other.

Teaching in tiers is similar.  When we tier in differentiation all of the tiers are equally important in the outcome of the assignment.  When we teach using tiers it gives us the opportunity to group students according to what works best for them.  If I am planning a lesson on fractions in second grade and I have a handful of students that have a lot of background knowledge on fractions I can group them together and give them a more challenging assignment.

From my assessment I can see that I have a group of students that has no background knowledge about fractions and I am going to need to provide them with additional support in the assignment that they are given.

My third group that I am going to make is going to be made up of my students that had some prior knowledge, but still need help.  These are my middle of the road kids.  It is most likely the majority of the class.

One thing that I need to make sure is that I look at the curriculum  so that I know exactly what learning goals I want to set for my students. I need to establish what the students are to know, learn and do to achieve the learning goal set forth by the curriculum.

Once my goals are set I need to make sure that my lesson activities are engaging for the students in all tiers.  The activity needs to meet the demands of each student, and that is where I can change the process to suit the needs better.  I also want to make sure that the activities that are provided in the unit are different each day.  There is such a wide variety of activities to use that I don't want to repeat the same activity over and over again.  No one likes to die by Power Point.
Here is a list of activities that can be used to mix up things and to help your students work together in groups:

• Jigsaw- students are divided into groups and then become the "pro".  One student from each group then moves to another group to teach them what they learned.
• Scavenger Hunts- hid clued throughout the classroom and get kids moving.
• Role Play- Great for literacy, social studies, and other activities with  characters.
• Read Children's Books- Children of all ages love a good book.  You can use these to introduce new topics, or reinforce one that you have already started.

Students will get more excited about working in tiered groups once they are used to it.  One thing to remember is to make each student accountable for their own actions in the group and their own work.    Students won't be successful 100% of the time, but if they know what is expected of them and have the skills to do achieve it they will reach greatness.