Tiering

pg. 136-140 Tiering is a strategy used to look at the student's readiness levels and differ their work according to how ready they are. You look at the essential knowledge, understanding, and skill. You want to put them in groups that will challange them. Making sure it is not too easy or too hard is the key. You want them to know fairly well what they are doing, but also have a little struggle and challange because that is where learning takes place. I liked the equalizer and how is gives different examples of how you can cuntinally assess and adapt to their needs based on their readiness and levels. The examples from the book were pretty clear and I feel like I have a fairly good understanding of what tiering is.
pg.130-135 The tic-tac toe example in the book is definately tiered. The teacher arranged 2 different boards for the same assginments. They vary in some ways, but are still similar in some. What the student is expected to do in the novel think-tac-toe verison 1 is a little simpler then the version 2. They are modified in a way that still the same content is being covered, but they are just required to do different assignments and amount of work for each one. I like how at the end is says that you could let them set an appropriate due date wthin a certain amount of time so that they can regulate and manage their own time. Not everyone works at the same speed. If they know they are better at something then at another assignment, they can give themselves more time on the harder one. I had never really hard that idea and really liked it and think it can work well. The RAFT activity is a good example of tiering as well. Students are able to pick their own options based on how confident they feel. They will likely pick the ones they find most interesting and they feel they know the most about to write a story with. These were both great ideas and something I definately think I would use!
pg. 149-162 As far as I could tell, all of these examples seemed to be tiered, just in different ways. I thought they were all good examples and my understanding of tiering is a lot better when I read all these examples of how to use them. The first examples of a learning contract is tiered. A learning contract is when you let students decide on their time limits for finishing something and what they need to get done and it is signed by the teacher and the students. It is obviously going to be different for every student, since every student has different levels of expectations and different levels of readiness and content knowledge. The think dots with matter was also a tiered lesson. There were 2 different versions of it that were modified based on student's readiness of the subject. They are reach required to complete 6 different questions, but the questions are a little different with each version. All the journal entries were also a good example. It is the same table and outline, just with different questions once again based on the readiness of the student. I can see how some teachers might think this is teduis to make more then one worksheets for each assignment but I can definately see how it is worth it. Each child is able to make progress and grow on their indvidual level instead of the whole class moving at one pace. Tiering is definately a useful tool that I hope to get more practice with in field and student teaching.