EDUC 872 Curriculum Plan Critique Assignment Instructions Overview The purpose of this assignment is for you to critique a curriculum plan based upon what you have learned in this course by describing

60 5 Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation The Giver flicked his hand as if brushing something aside. “Oh, your instruc- tors are well trained. They know their scientific facts. Everyone is well trained for his job. It’s just that . . . without the memories it’s all meaningless.” “Why do you and I have to hold these memories?” [the boy asked.] “It gives us wisdom,” the Giver replied.

Lois Lowry, The Giver A young teacher tried her hand at developing her first differentiated lesson plan. “Could you give it a look and see if I’m on the right track?” she asked me. Her 4th graders were all reading the same novel. She had fashioned five tasks, and her plan was to assign each student one of the tasks, based on what she perceived to be their readiness levels. She showed me the task options:

1. Create a new jacket for the book.

2. Build a set for a scene in the book.

3. Draw one of the characters.

4. Rewrite the novel’s ending.

5. Develop a conversation between a character in this novel and one from another novel they’d read in class that year.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 61 After I looked at the tasks, I asked a question that I wish someone had insisted I answer daily in the first decade of my teaching: “What do you want each student to come away with as a result of this activity?” She squinted and paused. “I don’t understand,” she answered.

I tried again: “What common insight or understanding should all kids get because they successfully complete their assigned task?” She shook her head. “I still don’t get it.” “OK, let me ask another way.” I paused. “Do you want each child to know that an author actually builds a character? Do you want them all to understand why the author took the time to write the book? Do you want them to think about how the main character’s life is like their own? Just what is it that the activities should help the students to make sense of?” Her face flushed. “Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know. I thought all they were supposed to do was read the story and do something with it!” “Hazy” Lessons Many of us could have been this novice. We entered the profession with a vague sense that students should read, listen to, or watch something. Then they should do “some sort of activity” based on it. Consider the following examples:

• A 1st grade teacher reads her students a story. Then she asks them to draw a picture of what they heard. But what should the picture portray?

The story’s beginning and end? How the main character looked when she was frightened by the stranger? The big tree in the barnyard? • A 5th grade teacher talks with his students about black holes. Then he shows them a video about the topic. He asks them to write about black holes. To learn what? Why gravity acts as it does in black holes? To deal with issues of time? To demonstrate their understanding of the evolution of black holes? • As part of a 3rd grade unit on Westward Expansion, students build covered wagons. How does that help them understand exploration, risk, scarcity of resources, or adaptation? Is the activity about pushing frontiers forward—or about manipulating glue and scissors? • A middle school teacher asks her students to convert fractions into decimals. Is the purpose to get the answers correct and to move on? Or does Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

62 The Differentiated Classroom the teacher have a greater goal in mind: understanding how the conversion works and why it works?

In each example, the teacher had a hazy conception of what children should gain from their experience with content. Students did “something about the story,” “something about black holes,” “something about Westward Expansion,” and a bit of what matters about converting fractions into dec- imals. Although these activities weren’t deadly dull or totally useless, they present at least two problems. One is a barrier to high-quality teaching and learning. The other is a barrier to powerful differentiated instruction. When a teacher lacks clarity about what a student should know, under - stand, and be able to do as a result of a lesson, the learning tasks she cre- ates may or may not be engaging and almost certainly won’t help students understand essential ideas or principles of the content they are attempting to learn. A fuzzy sense of the essentials results in fuzzy activities, which in turn results in fuzzy student understanding. That’s the barrier to high-quality teaching and learning.

This sort of ambiguity also works against differentiated instruction. With most differentiated lessons, all students need to gain the same essential knowl- edge, use the same essential skills, and probe the same essential understanding.

Yet because of variance in their readiness, interests, or approach to learning, students need to master the knowledge, “come at” the ideas, and work with the skills in different ways. Teachers who aren’t clear about what all students should know, understand, and be able to do when the learning experience ends have overlooked the vital organizer around which to develop a powerful lesson. That was the problem for the novice 4th grade teacher and her five “differentiated” activities. She just created five “somethings” about the novel.

The activities would probably result in five fuzzy understandings about the book—or, more likely, no understanding at all. This chapter will help reduce the fuzziness that pervades much curric- ulum and instruction in general. It also sets the stage for the many samples of differentiated instruction in the remainder of the book. The goal is to help you fashion a sturdy foundation for differentiated instruction. After all, creating one version of an activity or product takes time. Creating two or three—and especially five—is more labor intensive. It makes sense to ensure that you have a firm grasp of what makes a solid, powerful lesson before you create multiple versions of it.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 63 Two Essentials for Durable Learning Over the years, I’ve been fascinated by how savvy students are about what goes on in classrooms. I have had young adolescents say to me with diagnostic precision, “Her class is lots of fun. We don’t learn a whole lot, but it’s a fun class.” They understand the opposite situation, too: “We’re learning math, I suppose, but it always seems like an awfully long class period.” These students voice an implicit awareness that two elements are required for a great class: engagement and understanding. Engagement happens when a lesson captures students’ imaginations, snares their curiosity, ignites their opinions, or taps into their souls. Engagement is the magnet that attracts learners’ meandering attention and holds it so that enduring learning can occur. Understanding is not just simply recalling facts or information. When learners understand, they have “wrapped around” an important idea, incor - porating it accurately into their inventory of how things work. They own that idea. Brain scientists often use two slightly different terms for the two elements required for enduring learning—meaning and sense. Meaning refers to con- nections between the content and one’s own experience and life. Sense refers to the learner’s grasp of how something works and why. Meaning is a close match for engagement, and sense is a close match for understanding (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011). In either case, the message is the same. Students don’t really learn if they don’t connect with or don’t understand the content they study. A student who understands something can do the following:

• Use it.

• Explain it clearly, giving examples.

• Compare and contrast it with other concepts.

• Relate it to other instances in the subject studied, other subjects, and personal life experiences. • Transfer it to unfamiliar settings.

• Discover the concept embedded within a novel problem.

• Combine it appropriately with other understandings.

• Pose new problems that exemplify or embody the concept.

• Create analogies, models, metaphors, or pictures of the concept.

• Pose and answer “what if ” questions that alter variables in a problem- atic situation.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

64 The Differentiated Classroom • Generate questions and hypotheses that lead to new knowledge and further inquiries. • Generalize from specifics to form a concept.

• Use the knowledge to appropriately assess his or her own performance or that of someone else (Barell, 1995).

Lessons that are not engaging let students’ minds wander. They fail to make the case for relevance because students don’t connect the content to what’s important in their lives; students have little long-term use for what they might “learn” in such lessons. Lessons that fall short of developing stu- dents’ understanding of the big ideas or principles that govern the discipline leave students without the capacity to use what they learn in meaningful contexts. Thus, lessons that fall short of engagement and understanding have little staying power and diminish both students’ enthusiasm for learning and students’ power as learners. Levels of Learning Hilda Taba (in Schiever, 1991) understood before many others that learning has several dimensions. We can learn facts, or discrete bits of information that we believe to be true. We can develop concepts, or categories of things with common elements that help us organize, retain, and use information.

We can understand principles, which are the rules that govern concepts.

The terms concepts and principles are the more professional terms for what in education we often call “understandings” or “big ideas.” As learners, we develop attitudes, or degrees of commitment to ideas and spheres of learning.

And, if we are fortunate, we develop skills, which give us the capacity to put to work the understandings we have gained. Full, whole, and rich learning involves all these levels. Facts without concepts and principles to promote meaning are ephemeral. Meaning without skills needed to translate it into action loses its potency. Positive attitudes about the magic of learning are stillborn until we know, understand, and can take action in our world. Joan Bauer, author of the young adult novel Sticks, speaks of the need for children and adolescents to see connectedness in learning. They need to understand that the principles of science, math, history, and art are the same Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 65 ones that we find in a pool hall, in our fears, and in the deep wellsprings of courage that make us taller than our nightmares (personal communication, 1997). In Sticks, Bauer displays the skill of a master teacher orchestrating all the levels of learning. She writes of 10-year-old Mickey, who has a fire in his belly to win the 10- to 13-year-olds’ nine-ball championship at his grandmother’s pool hall. Mickey’s father was a pool champ, but he died when Mickey was a baby. Mickey’s friend, Arlen, is as passionate about math as Mickey is about nine-ball. Arlen hasn’t memorized math. He thinks mathematically. It is a way of life for him. Math, he explains, will never let you down in this world.

Arlen knows what an angle is. He knows that a vector is “a line that takes you from one place to another” (Bauer, 1996, p. 37). These are facts Arlen has learned. Yet he understands the concepts of energy and motion and the principles that govern the concepts, as he explains here:

“Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless acted on by forces from the outside. In pool talk, this means a pool ball isn’t going anywhere unless it’s hit by something, and once it starts moving, it needs something to stop it, like a rail, another ball, or the friction of the cloth on the table.” (Bauer, 1996, p. 177) Because Arlen sees the utility of math, his attitude about math is that it’s a language without which many things can’t be properly explained. To him, the universe is written in the language of mathematics. What matters most about Arlen, however, is not what he has learned, and not even what he understands. What matters most is his skill. He uses pink yarn to teach Mickey about bank shots and geometric angles, about angles of incidence and angles of reflection. “When you hit the eight ball at a certain angle to the rail, it will bound off the rail at the same angle” (Bauer, 1996, p. 179).

Arlen draws diagrams of pool shots so that Mickey sees the lines his balls will draw on the table, but Mickey comes to see much more. He explains:

“In school I keep seeing the table. Long shots. Short shots. Bank shots.

Vectors. I’m seeing geometry everywhere—diamond shaped ball fields, birds flying in V formation. I have grapes for lunch and think about circles. Then I ram the grapes across my tray with my straw. Wham! Two grapes in the corner. It’s all connected.” (Bauer, 1996, p. 141) Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

66 The Differentiated Classroom Arlen knew some data. What gave him power, however, was not so much what he knew (facts) but what he understood (concepts and principles) and how he could parlay his understanding into action (skills) in a situation far removed from a schoolhouse worksheet. All subjects are built upon essential concepts and principles. All subjects, by their nature, call for use of the key skills that professionals in that field use. Some concepts—such as patterns, change, interdependence, perspective, part and whole, and systems—are generic, cut across subjects naturally, and invite linkages. These concepts are a part of physical education, literature, science, computer science—virtually all areas of study. Other concepts are more subject-specific, essential to one or more disciplines but not as powerful in others. Examples of subject-specific concepts include probability in math, composition in art, voice in literature, structure and function in science, and primary source in history. Similarly, skills can be generic or subject-specific. Generic skills include writing a cohesive paragraph, arranging ideas in order, and posing effective questions. Skills that are subject-specific include balancing an equation in math, transposing in music, using metaphorical language in literature and writing, and synthesizing sources in history. Figure 5.1 illustrates the key levels of learning in several subject areas. During planning, a teacher should generate specific lists of what students should know (facts), understand (concepts and principles), and be able to do (skills) by the time the unit ends. Then the teacher should create a core of engaging activities that offer varied opportunities for learning these essentials in contexts that connect with the world of the learner. Activities should lead a student to understand or make sense of key concepts and principles by using key skills. In later chapters of this book, illustrations of differentiated lessons typically are based on specific concepts, principles, facts, and skills that ensure this kind of clarity. Addressing Standards in a Meaningful Way In many districts, teachers feel great pressure to ensure that students attain standards delineated by the district, the state, a particular program, or a professional group. Standards should be a vehicle to ensure that students learn more coherently, more deeply, more broadly, and more durably. Sadly, when teachers feel pressure to “cover” standards in isolation, or when the Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 67 Figure 5.1 Examples of the Levels of Learning in Different Content Areas Levels of Learning Science Literature History Facts • Water boils at 212° Fahrenheit.

• Humans are mammals. • Katherine Paterson wrote Bridge to Terabithia.

• Definition of plot and definition of character • The Boston Tea Party helped to pro- voke the American Revolution.

• The first 10 amend- ments to the U.S.

Constitution are called the Bill of Rights.

Concepts • Interdependence • Classification • Voice • Heroes and antiheroes • Revolution • Power, authority, and governance Principles • All life-forms are part of a food chain.

• Scientists clas- sify living things according to patterns. • Authors use voices of characters as a way of sharing their own voices.

• Heroes are born of danger or uncertainty. • Revolutions are first evolutions.

• Liberty is con- strained in all societies.

Attitudes • Conservation bene- fits our ecosystem.

• I am part of an important natural network. • Reading poetry is boring.

• Stories help me understand myself. • It’s important to study history so we write the next chap- ter more wisely.

• Sometimes I am willing to give up some freedom to protect the welfare of others.

Skills • Creating a plan for an energy-efficient school • Interpreting data about costs and benefits of recycling • Using metaphorical language to estab- lish personal voice • Linking heroes and antiheroes in liter- ature with those of history and current life. • Constructing and supporting a posi- tion on an issue • Drawing conclusions based on analyses of sound resources Continued Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

68 The Differentiated Classroom Figure 5.1 Examples of the Levels of Learning in Different Content Areas (continued ) Levels of Learning Music Math ArtReading Facts • Strauss was known as “the Waltz King.” • Definition of clef • Definition of numerator and denominator • Definition of prime numbers • Monet was an Impressionist.

• Definition of pri- mary colors • Definition of vowel and consonant Concepts • Tempo • Jazz • Part and whole • Number systems • Perspective • Negative space • Main idea • Context Principles • The tempo of a piece of music helps to set the mood.

• Jazz is both structured and improvisational. • Wholes are made up of parts.

• The parts of a number system are interdependent. • Objects can be viewed and repre- sented from a vari- ety of perspectives.

• Negative space helps spotlight essential elements in a composition. • Effective paragraphs generally present and support a main idea.

• Pictures and sen- tences often help us figure out words we don’t know.

Attitudes • Music helps me to express emotion.

• I don’t care for jazz. • Math is too hard.

• Math is a way of talking about lots of things in my world. • I prefer Realism to Impressionism.

• Art helps me to see the world better. • I am a good reader.

• It’s hard to “read between the lines.” Skills • Selecting a piece of music that conveys a particular emotion • Writing an original jazz composition • Using fractions and decimals to express parts and wholes in music and the stock market • Showing rela- tionships among elements • Responding to a painting with both affective and cogni- tive awareness • Presenting realistic and impressionistic views of an object • Locating the main idea and support- ing details in news articles • Interpreting themes in stories Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 69 standards are presented in the form of fragmented and sterile lists, genuine learning is hobbled, not enriched.

Every standard in a prescribed list is a fact, a concept, a principle (under - standing), an attitude, or a skill. Some standards imply more than one level of learning. It is a valuable exercise for teachers, administrators, and curriculum specialists to review standards and label each of the components with its level of learning—and then “unpack” the standards, with multiple implicit levels of learning embedded. Some sets of standards are based on concepts and principles, integrating skills of the particular discipline into networks of understanding, as is the case with many of the standards developed by high-level professional groups.

In other instances, however, standards reflect predominantly skill-level learning, with an occasional knowledge level, and less frequently a principle level, included. When this is the case, educators need to fill in the blanks, making certain that learning experiences are solidly based on concepts and principles and that students use skills in meaningful ways to achieve or act upon meaningful ideas.

This point hit home for me when I heard one educator telling another about a classroom she had visited. “I asked the child what the class was working on,” the educator reported. “She told me they were writing para- graphs, and I asked what they were writing about. She told me again that they were writing paragraphs. I wrinkled my brow and asked, ‘But why are you writing the paragraphs? What are you trying to communicate?’ She answered me with some irritation, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter in here. We’re just writing paragraphs!’” Contrast the mechanical way in which this teacher is “teaching” students standards about writing with another teacher who took a more meaningful approach to ensuring that students became proficient with standards—in this case, to understand how particular elements in fiction interact (for example, how setting shapes plot or characters). Realizing that the standard as stated was disconnected from her middle school students’ experiences, she first had students talk about elements in their own lives and how these affected one another. They discussed how music influenced their mood, how they could be swayed by friends, how the time of day impacted their energy level, and so on. She moved from that to helping students discover that the stories they had enjoyed reading worked the same way: authors use elements like the motivation of a character (to Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

70 The Differentiated Classroom drive the action in a story) or the weather (to help readers understand a character’s mood). Students suggested some principles about how elements in systems interact in life and in fiction. They tried out their ideas about the interaction of elements in songs they cared about, in movies they’d seen, and in art and photography—and then refined these principles as their conver - sations about the writer’s craft developed over time. This teacher’s students found the exploration to be not only worth their time and participation but also very helpful with their own writing. Many of them even commented on interaction among elements in fiction and interaction among elements in the scientific and governmental systems they were studying in social studies class. Put another way, teaching information and skills without connection to and use in addressing coherent, meaning-rich ideas is hollow. In addition, as was discussed in Chapter 3, teaching mechanics without meaning is counter to the way humans learn. Standards are an important part of a curriculum, but they should not be seen as “the” curriculum. They are ingredients in curriculum in the same way that flour, yeast, water, tomato sauce, and cheese are ingredients in pizza. It’s a foolish cook who assumes diners who are asked to eat two cups of flour, a cup of water, a tablespoon of yeast, an eight-ounce can of tomato sauce, and a block of cheese will feel they have had a tasty pizza. It’s a foolish teacher who confuses ingredients with an inviting and wholesome learning experience.

Learning Levels: A Case in Point I remember watching two 3rd grade teachers scramble to figure out how they could “cover” another unit in science before the year ended. They told me they had “moved too slowly”; they still had to “do” clouds with students in the few remaining days of class. The two teachers worked hard to lay out materials from science books, which they would have their students read. They found some stories about clouds that students usually liked with the hope that they’d have time to read them. The two teachers agreed on cloud worksheets the students could complete, and they chose an art activity the students would enjoy. All this work seemed very urgent and purposeful. Yet as the two began to decide the order in which they’d use the materials, one teacher discovered she had forgotten the name of one kind of cloud. The second teacher realized she Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 71 recalled the names, but she couldn’t match the names to any pictures. Both teachers had “taught the cloud unit” several times.

This example of “planning a unit” is common. With good intent, teachers try to do what their program of study outlines. In this case, the outline said students should know and recognize different kinds of clouds. Although the curriculum guide may have stated how this segment of study fits into a larger framework of understanding and skills, the guide did not make that explicit to the teachers, who, in turn, would not make it explicit to their students.

Because the unit these teachers prepared was largely fact-based and devoid of understandings (concepts and principles) and skills, it is not surprising that the teachers themselves had difficulty recalling the facts. This did not portend rich, long-term outcomes for their students. By contrast, another teacher mapped out her whole year in science around four key concepts: change, patterns, systems, and interrelationships.

Throughout the year, students examined a range of scientific phenomena, learning how these illustrated the four concepts. At the outset of each exploration, the teacher identified the essential principles she wanted all students to grasp through their study. Some of the principles were repeated in several units. For example, natural and human-made things change over time. Change in one part of a system affects other parts of the system. We can use patterns to make intelligent predictions. Some understandings, on the other hand, were specific to a particular study (e.g., water continually changes in form, but its amount does not change). The teacher also created a list of skills students were to master in the course of the year. Her students needed to learn to use particular weather tools, to make predictions based on observations rather than guesses, and to accurately communicate through pictures and written statements. At appropriate places in their various studies, students used the skills to understand key principles. Facts were everywhere as students talked about specific events just as scientists would. At one point in the year, students used weather instruments (skills) to talk about patterns and interrelationships in weather systems (concepts).

They explored two principles: (1) change in one part of a system affects other parts of the system, and (2) people can use patterns to make intelligent predictions. Then they predicted (skill) what sorts of clouds (facts) would be likely to form as a result of the patterns and interrelationships they saw.

They illustrated and wrote about their predictions using appropriate cloud terminology. They then observed what happened, assessed the accuracy of Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

72 The Differentiated Classroom their predictions, and communicated their observations in the form of revised drawings and explanations.

This kind of planning for student learning creates a structure for coherent understanding all year. Facts illustrate and cement key ideas that are redis- covered repeatedly. Skills have a purpose rooted in meaning and utility, and learning promotes both engagement and understanding. These students are more likely to understand how their world works and to feel more competent as learners and young scientists. They also are more likely to remember the names and nature of clouds in years to come—and so is their teacher.

Curriculum Elements To ensure effective teaching and learning, teachers need to link tightly three key classroom elements involved in learning: content, process, and prod- uct. (The other two elements are learning environment and affect. Those elements were introduced in Chapter 3, and they must consistently remain central to thinking about, planning for, observing, and assessing instruction.) Content is what a student should come to know (facts), understand (concepts and principles), and be able to do (skills) as a result of a given segment of study (a lesson, a learning experience, a unit). Content is input.

It encompasses the means by which students will become acquainted with information (through textbooks, supplementary readings, web-based doc- uments, videos, field trips, speakers, demonstrations, lectures, computer programs, and a host of other sources). Process is the opportunity for students to make sense of the content. If we only tell students something and then ask them to tell it back to us, they are highly unlikely to incorporate it into their frameworks of understanding.

The information and ideas will belong to someone else (teacher, textbook writer, speaker). Students must process ideas to own them. In the classroom, process typically takes place in the form of activities. An activity is likely to be effective if it • Has a clearly defined instructional purpose; • Focuses students squarely on one key understanding; • Causes students to use a key skill to work with key ideas; • Ensures students will have to understand (not just repeat) the idea; • Matches the student’s level of readiness; and • Helps students relate new understandings and skills to previous ones.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 73 A product is the vehicle through which students show (and extend) what they have come to understand and can do as a result of a consider - able segment of learning (such as a month-long study of mythology, a unit on weather systems, a marking period spent on studying governments, a semester learning to speak Spanish, a year’s investigation of ecosystems, or a week focusing on the geometry of angles). The examples in this book use the term to signify a culminating product, or something students produce to exhibit major portions of learning, not the pieces of work students routinely produce during the course of a day to make their thinking evident. For the purposes of this book, those short-term creations simply are concrete and visible elements of an activity. A culminating or summative product might take the form of a demon- stration or exhibition. Students could design a solution to a complex problem or undertake major research and written findings. A culminating product can be a test, but it just as easily can be a visual display such as a narrated photo essay. In other words, a product can be a paper-and-pencil assessment, a per - formance assessment, or a project. Whatever the type, culminating products • Tightly align with the knowledge, understanding, and skill that are clear to the teacher and students throughout the period being assessed; • Emphasize student understanding rather than repetition of knowl- edge or algorithmic use of skills; and • Are accessible to students with a range of learning needs (e.g., vision, reading, writing, attention, language problems).

Culminating products that take the form of performance assessments or projects should also • Clearly define what students should demonstrate, transfer, or apply to show what they know, understand, and can do as a result of the study; • Provide students with one or more modes of expression, which may include the opportunity for a student to propose a format, as long as the learning outcomes to be demonstrated remain constant; • Communicate precise expectations for high-quality content (infor - mation gathering, ideas, concepts, research sources), steps and behaviors for developing the product (planning, effective use of time, goal setting, origi- nality, insight, editing), and the nature of the product itself (size, audience, construction, durability, format, delivery, mechanical accuracy); • Provide support and scaffolding (e.g., opportunities to brainstorm ideas, rubrics, time lines, in-class workshops on use of research materials, Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

74 The Differentiated Classroom opportunities for peer critiques and peer editing) for high-quality student success; and • Allow for meaningful variations in student readiness, interest, and learning profile.

Joining Learning Levels and Curriculum Effective teachers ensure that the unit or segment they are exploring with their students addresses all levels of learning. They make certain to build activities so that the content, process, and product incorporate materials and experiences that will lead students to engage with and genuinely understand the subject. This means that content, process, and product are squarely focused on exploring and mastering key concepts, essential principles, related skills, and necessary facts (see Figure 5.2). For example, Ms. Johnson and her middle schoolers will soon undertake a study of mythology. The concepts she and her students will explore in this study (and throughout the year) include hero, voice, culture, and identity.

The principles they will investigate include the following:

• People tell stories to clarify their beliefs for themselves and others.

• Our stories reflect our culture.

• Understanding someone else’s worldview helps us clarify our own.

• When we compare the unfamiliar with the familiar, we understand both better. • Who a person or culture designates as hero tells much about the per - son or culture. • Myths are mirrors of values, religion, family, community, science, and reasoning.

The skills that will be emphasized in the month-long study include syn- thesizing text, comparing and contrasting, interpreting and using similes and metaphors, abstracting themes from fiction, and supporting ideas with text.

As is the case throughout the year, Ms. Johnson will make certain students use the vocabulary of fiction (plot, setting, protagonist, antagonist, tone) as Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 75 Figure 5.2 Joining the Levels of Learning and Elements of Curriculum Content, process, and product are used for the purposes of achieving A Topic of Study consists of Key facts/ information (essential knowledge) Organizing concepts (essential understandings) Guiding principles Associated attitudes Key skills (essential skills) Content (what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of the study, or how students will gain access to the knowledge) Process (activities designed to help students make sense of or “own” the content) Product (how students will demonstrate and extend what they have come to know, understand, and be able to do) Powers aslearners These components are used to develop Clarity, durability, and retrievability of knowledge Teacher clarity Student clarity Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

76 The Differentiated Classroom they talk about and work with the myths. Ensuring that students encounter characters and events (facts) from key myths often and in various contexts will familiarize them with important names and events that contribute to the vocabulary, symbols, and allusions in their own and other cultures. Knowing the key facts, concepts, and principles she intends her students to learn directs Ms. Johnson’s selection of myths (content). She knows, for exam - ple, that she must select myths from several cultures; include clear exemplars of heroes; reveal views about religion, community, and science; and introduce events and characters that are the basis for often-used cultural symbols and allusions. Ms. Johnson develops core activities (process) to help students link what they read and talk about from the myths with their own cultures, beliefs, and ways of thinking. The activities will require students to use targeted skills, and she plans to directly teach these skills as needed. For example, she and her students will explore the idea of a “hero” as presented in Greek, Norse, African, and Inuit myths. For one sense-making activity, she’s considering having students write (and perhaps present) a conversation between a mythological hero and a contemporary hero on a theme that is relevant to both times and cultures. This activity will require students to compare and contrast the heroes’ cultures and beliefs. To do so, they will have to know important characters and events, understand the concept of hero, apply the principles they’ve been studying, and use the skill of synthesizing text. They will use excerpts from myths to guide development of their conversations. For a culminating product, Ms. Johnson plans to offer several options, all of which require students to • Demonstrate their understanding of myths as mirrors of the concept of hero and culture; • Use core knowledge about important characters and events from important myths; and • Use the targeted skills of understanding theme, metaphorical thought and language, synthesizing text , comparing and contrasting, and using text to support ideas.

Ms. Johnson’s clarity about what students must know, understand, and be able to do as a result of a unit promotes both student engagement and student success. Students see ancient myths as very much like their own lives. The Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 77 myths make sense, seem real, and connect to things they feel are important.

The myth unit will promote understanding by linking new knowledge and insight with the familiar. As Ms. Johnson and her students explore myths, she will teach them to use appropriate terms and skills in discussions and writing so that they connect knowledge, understanding, and skills into a meaning-rich whole. These types of activities help students build frameworks to organize, think about, apply, and transfer knowledge, skills, and ideas. They provide reinforcing and connective learning opportunities through all elements of the curriculum. Ms. Johnson has not yet started to think about differentiating instruction for varied student readiness levels, interests, and approaches to learning. However, she is laying the foundation for doing so in a rich and meaningful way. The Curriculum–Assessment–Instruction Connection It seems little more than common sense that teachers who care deeply about both their students and their subject, and who invest heavily in both, would be vigilant in determining where students are at a given time relative to crit- ical learning goals. Common sense, of course, can be uncommonly difficult to achieve, as habits, desires, and other distractions cause us to function in less than logical ways. A sensible cycle in teaching would be to set clear goals for a unit of study, develop tentative plans to help students master those goals, check to see where students are relative to those goals prior to beginning instruction, adapt the tentative plans based on what is learned about students’ needs, teach the first segment of content with both the goals and students’ needs in mind, check to determine student grasp of the content in the first segment, adapt plans for the next segment based on what is learned about student progress, and so on. Sadly, the pattern many of us follow in school is often more like this:

decide what to teach first, teach it; decide what to teach next, teach it; decide what to teach third, teach it; and so on. At one or more “concluding” points in the cycle, we give a test so that there’s something to record in the grade book. Then we repeat the cycle. Despite the prevalence of this progression, Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

78 The Differentiated Classroom when we teach this way we’ve abdicated the essence of effective teaching.

Effective differentiation depends on • Teacher and student clarity about what students should know, under - stand, and be able to do as the result of any segment of learning; • Teacher and student clarity about where the student is relative to those goals at a given time; and • The teacher’s acceptance of responsibility to ensure that subsequent segments of learning deal directly with student gaps, misunderstandings, and advanced mastery in ways that are highly likely to promote significant growth.

In other words, goal clarity informs design of pre-assessments and for - mative assessment, which in turn inform teacher understanding of students’ points of learning, which in turn informs teacher instructional planning.

Formative assessment and pre-assessment can incorporate both formal and informal measures of student readiness, interests, and approaches to learning.

The alignment of clear curricular goals, ongoing assessment, and instruction drives meaningful differentiation.

• • • Fundamentally, differentiation is an instructional model focused on how teachers teach and how students learn in a classroom—not on what teachers teach or what students learn. The “what” is a curricular issue. So it would seem that a model of differentiation would be unconcerned with the nature of curriculum. But, of course, teachers have to differentiate “something,” and the quality of that “something” will certainly affect both the power of the differentiation and the quality of the student experience in the classroom. If a curriculum is all “drill and s(kill),” it likely still makes sense to differentiate that curriculum, but consider how much more potent the curriculum, the instruction, and the learning could be if students learned those skills in pur - suit of solutions to authentic dilemmas or problems encountered by adults in their jobs or avocations. Consider, too, that if a teacher differentiates even a promising curriculum but lacks clarity about its essential knowledge, meaning, and skills, the differentiation will offer students multiple pathways into fog. Curriculum ought not be thought of as a document or program teachers teach “as is” but rather as a starting point for helping learners make sense and meaning of the world they inhabit. Much of the art of teaching resides in Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.

Good Curriculum as a Basis for Differentiation 79 the capacity to integrate required content outcomes into coherent learning experiences that capture young imaginations, build reliable organizational frameworks in young brains, and ensure that learners learn deeply what matters most in the disciplines they study.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom : Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-11-29 22:24:10.