Differentiating
When we differentiate, we simply offer students opportunities to think at a level appropriate to their ability – not their age nor their grade level.
Don’t Differentiate A Scaffold
When you develop an advanced version of a task? When do you just let the student move on to the next thing?
Differentiation is Built-In, Not Bolted On
You know you’re in trouble when you’re reading a lesson plan and it has a section called: “Differentiation”.
Writing Lesson Objectives: The Resources
When writing a lesson’s objective, we have to pick specific resources so that students can do the thinking we want from them.
Not Every Student Should Do Everything
If you want to differentiate, you have to be ok that not every student will do every single task.
High Level Thinking in Math
When differentiating for my most brilliant mathematicians, there are two traps I fell into: Just making it harder. (Use more numbers or more steps.) Turning it into an art project. (Design a bedroom!) On Bloom’s Taxonomy, my math tasks always maxed out at Apply or would leap away to a fluffy creative task. I think […]
Preassessment, Differentiation, and Grading
How do you handle grading within a differentiated classroom? While differentiating is certainly complex, this part is pretty simple, actually!
Concentric Circles – Getting Students to Think Bigger (and Smaller!)
This differentiation technique is called “Concentric Circles”. You use it to move students up and down the ladder of abstraction, applying a single idea in multiple contexts.
From “Summarize” to “Synthesize”
Even what seems like a low-level “summarize” task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Thinking Like Producers About Consumers
Here’s how I’d use ethics and multiple perspectives to get students thinking about producers, consumers, and decomposers in new and interesting ways.
Don’t Jump Straight to “Create”!
When we jump from “this kid likes board games” straight to “I’ll have them create a new board game”, we leave out important steps in the creative process and set kids up for disappointment (and end up with a lot of unfinished projects). Here’s how to scaffold a truly creative task.
Focus on Thinking, Not the Product
When I was a new teacher, you would have seen some pretty fancy products hanging in my room, but if you stopped to consider how my kids thought about the content… well, often my students just restated facts that I had already told them.
Scholar’s Cafe
Get students moving, thinking, writing, and reading each others’ ideas with a Scholar’s Cafe.
Remix the Song “Help!”
Students took the classic song, Help!, and rewrote it to be about their collective summers.
Embed A Classic
An easy way to spice up any lesson is to remove the god-awful samples and replace them with selections from great works of art, music, film, tv shows, and historic moments. You get the added bonus of exposing students to new ideas.
Concept Formation: A Model for Inductive Thinking
Here’s are the steps for running an inductive lesson based on Hilda Taba’s model of Concept Formation. Plus a sample lesson about the Nile River.
Synthesize: Make A Change, Explain The Effect
I love the term “Synthesize” from the classic Bloom’s Taxonomy, but it can be hard to know exactly what it looks like. My favorite “Synthesize Recipe” is to ask students to make a change to existing content and then explain the effects of that change to me.
Get Ridiculous!
One technique for finding complexity in a topic is to look for the edge cases, the outliers, the really big or small versions.
Why My Toddler Likes Lego, Not Duplo
Even though he’s in the Duplo age range, my kid is simply more interested in Lego. And it’s always more effective, more respectful, and simply easier to start with a kid’s interests rather than what’s “age-appropriate.”
Students Need More Than Independent Work
It’s so easy to just ask advanced students to work by themselves in a corner. But, the more advanced the kid, the more they need advanced instruction and adult guidance.
The Coloring Problem
How few colors can you use to fill in a map so that no neighboring regions are the same color?
Creating Seemingly Unrelated Analogies
Want to encourage students to find unexpected connections across content? Here’s a quick framework based on the most important terms from both bits of content.
Creating A New Creature
We’re not doing a fluffy art project here. Kids are developing a realistic, made up creature that could have actually lived in a particular biome.
The Surprises Within a Triangle’s Angles
Discovering what is interesting and unexpected about a triangle’s angles. What twists have I unintentionally spoiled for my students over the years?
Make A *Better* Calendar!
The calendar is a source of fantastic factoring problems with many social studies add-ons. Why 12 months? Why 30 (or 31 or 28) days? Why are weeks 7 days long? Why don’t they fit into the months (or the year!)? Why did we do this to ourselves!?
Differentiate Math: Getting Started
Working with a student who is bored in math? Quickly finishing lessons? Needs something more? Here are three ways you can get started differentiating in math.
Acceleration – The Simplest (but Least Used) Differentiation Technique
Acceleration is a cheap and simple way to differentiate for students who are ready for something more. It can mean skipping a whole grade but is more commonly accomplished through subject-specific acceleration. Lots of people have weird arguments against acceleration, but the research shows that it works (when done well).
Choice Menus: Quality or Mere Quantity?
I used to create extension menus, thinking they were an essential tool for differentiation. Overtime, I’ve changed my thinking. Here’s why.
Moving Between the Specific and Abstract
When differentiating, it’s helpful to note where on the “spectrum of abstraction” your content lies. Then, see what happens when you move that content to be more abstract or more specific. It often unlocks lots of new opportunities for thinking.
Where Do I Start Differentiating for Gifted Students?
I get lots of questions from overwhelmed folks who have suddenly landed in a new job in gifted ed and have had little training. “Where do I even start!?” is a very common cry. Here are three places to begin differentiating for gifted kids.
How many students are already ready (already) for next year?
In a climate where we focus on who’s below-level, how many students are already ready for next year (and beyond)? Research from Johns Hopkins sheds light on the (truly) shocking number of above-level kids out there.
Why I Had “Early Finishers”
Wondering what to do with your early finishers? This is probably the wrong question!
Raising Ceilings For One, Raise Ceilings For All
When we create tasks designed to meet the needs of our most obviously talented students, we make it possible for other students to rise up as well. This, except using basketball as a metaphor.
What Differentiation Does NOT Look Like
There’s lots of faux-differentiation out there. In this article, I catalog a few anti-patterns: tactics that look like differentiation, but are actually quite the opposite.
What Textbooks Think “Differentiated Instruction” Looks Like
In a time when teachers feel prohibited from writing their own lessons, many are limited by what their textbooks offer. So what, exactly, do textbooks offer in terms of differentiation for gifted learners?
Becoming A Meddler In The Middle
Here’s a reading assignment: Erika McWilliam’s “From Sage to Guide to Meddler.” This paper discuses how we can get in the middle of our students’ learning, creating productive struggle by allowing kids to sit in their own confusion longer than they might like.
Thinking From Anything’s Perspective
How a small change, with very little effort on the teacher’s part, leads to a delightfully complex task that can will get students thinking.
Aim for High Ceilings and Low Floors
To differentiate, aim for one complex task that is well-scaffolded, not three completely different tasks. Aim high and scaffold down.
Practical Tips For Pre-Assessments
I get a lot of questions about the practical details of running pre-assessments and setting up multiple groups in a classroom. I brainstormed a big ol’ list of tips I learned from my own experiments and those of my colleagues.
7 Ways To Add Complexity
Adjusting a task’s complexity to match a student’s skill is key to success in the classroom, but how can you change the level of complexity?
Small Groups Aren’t Just For Struggling Students
Small groups can both add and reduce complexity to a task. I know that I always let my advanced students just “work on their own.” But think about the power of bringing your five top kids together (even for ten minutes a week) and pushing them a little.
Bad Behavior or Lack of Complexity?
Differentiation means being aware of both a student’s skill and the complexity of a task. And it’s easier to adjust a task in the short term than to change a student’s skill.
Complexity Is A Good Thing
Differentiation is all about balancing the complexity of a task with the skill of the learner.
Encourage Curiosity With Calculators
It’s easy to fall in love with chasing the newest technology to use in the classroom. But sometimes, the perfect tool is a plain old calculator. We’ll be using this tool to develop curiosity about math.
Is a Task Boring, Relaxing, Challenging, or Stressful?
Too easy for your skills and the task is boring. Too much of a challenge, and it becomes stressful. Medium challenge, high skill? It’s a relaxing task. But when we match high skill and high challenge, we can activate “flow.”
Comparing The Best vs My Favorite
Are bests the same as favorites? Can your class come up with a suitable definition of the difference?
A Remix Library
A list of stories inspired by older stories to teach your students about the history of reusing ideas.
Creating A Class Motto
Using Hilda Taba’s model of inductive thinking, use your students’ prior knowledge to develop a statement about expected class behavior.
Introducing “Criteria” To Students
Teaching our students to identify the criteria behind a decision will make them better decision makers and help them understand others’ points of views.
Forming A Big Idea: Details Within Details
We’ll use a deductive-style lesson. While inductive thinking is open-ended and student-controlled, deductive thinking is focused on a teacher-designed topic. It makes it easier to teach a specific concept and raise the expectations of a lesson.
3 Sites For Free Classics
The public domain is a rich collection of creative works whose copyrights have expired. More than ever we have incredible access to this art and literature. Public domain images and writings add depth to lessons and expose students to classic works.
Creating In Science
It’s easy for science instruction to linger in the bowels of Bloom’s Taxonomy as we try to cram everything into the tiny time allotted. However, isolated facts don’t inspire our students. Let’s set up units that invoke creativity but demand knowledge.
Inductive Thinking in Spelling and Vocabulary
Let’s look at a couple ways to bring inductive thinking into word studies. We’ll examine simple plural rules all the way up to etymology of foreign words in English.
Math Game: The Game of 100
The Game of 100 is a simple game requiring no supplies, yet it opens up a rich world of exploring strategy and a little mental math.
Differentiate Math with Inductive Learning
With inductive learning, we still define terms, explain rules, and practice, but the order is different. We’re harnessing gifted students’ natural abilities to enhance our lessons.
Empower Students to Think Inductively
When Sherlock Holmes infers Watson’s hometown from just a few details, he’s thinking inductively. We can set up lessons to capitalize on this same method of thinking.
Climbing Bloom’s Taxonomy In Science
Science should be more than memorizing facts. Let’s spice it up and push our students from the doldrums of remembering to the soaring heights of evaluation. While it’s true that this will take longer than just following a textbook, we’re not just teaching facts, we’re equipping students with the ability to make well-informed judgements.
Building Creative Confidence
Let’s tackle Torrence’s specific elements of creativity and build up students’ confidence in their creativity through vocabulary games, drawing games, and the alternative uses task.
Keep Their Bikes Rolling
Increasing brain stimulation for gifted kids during lessons means a reduction in behavior problems, an increase in enjoyment, and a more comfortable learning environment.
Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time?
It’s essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a “one right answer” mindset.
Fuzzy Problems
Fuzzy Problems are, quite simply, the types of problems we face in our regular lives. Issues that have no best answer and no single path to a solution. Problems that are missing information and require best guesses. They’re the kinds of problems we want our students to grapple with.
Pre-Assessment Documents
In a previous post, we discussed traits of quality pre-assessment. Here are three documents to help you make pre-assessment easier: a parent letter, a daily work log, and a rubric for grading project presentations.
Upgrading Questions with Key Words
How adding a single “key word” can upgrade your questions to a whole new level.
I Read A Book That Was Too Hard
I have a class set of HG Wells’ The Time Machine. It was affordable, a classic, and recognizeable to my students. The problem? It was written in the 19th century and is simply above most of my students’ independent reading levels. However, this book was definitely within their instructional reading level, so I turned this novel study into a read–aloud.
Inductively Evaluate Website Reliability
Last time, we discussed a few ways to help students search Google. Google helps us find related websites, however its ranking system does not necessarily return the most reliable pages. The final step requires our human mind to make difficult decisions that computers can only approximate. Simply choosing the top result is not enough. We must teach our students to evaluate websites.
Discuss Online Reputation Using Historical Figures
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that students need instruction in how to interact online. Unfortunately, we’re stuck using textbooks that teach “computer” lessons about card catalogs. In this unit, we’ll combine famous historical figures, frightening Facebook facts, and the concept of reputation.
What Did You (Not) Do During Summer Break?
Ask your students to write about their summer breaks, but remix their activities into a new genre or setting. Perhaps they vacationed at Hogwarts, Mordor, or Tatooine? Not interested in a writing assignment?
The Tragedy of the Commons
Imagine that we all share a common resource, but no one is really in charge. How do we maintain order without an authority? This is a fantastically fuzzy situation for students to dig into.
Lunar Survival Skills
We’re supposed to rank fifteen items according to usefulness if we were stranded on the light-side of the moon. The items range from pistols to powdered milk. Some seem useful, but are actually worthless while others seem unnecessary on earth, but are actually vital when stuck on the moon. However, the structure of the activity as a website is not optimal. Let’s improve this and make it an awesome problem–solving exercise for our class.
Six Traits of Quality Pre-Assessments
Judy Galbraith identified boredom with school as a gripe of gifted students. This complaint is completely understandable. How many meetings have you sat through, going over material you had already mastered? For our gifted students, their school career is a long stretch of those meetings.
Finding Students’ Gaps
I’m constantly reminded that just because a student is gifted, doesn’t mean they have mastered every skill. In fact, it’s just as possible to have a first grader reading at a sixth grade level as it is to have a sixth grader who lacks third grade skills. Being a teacher of gifted students means feeding their appetite for big concepts while also fine-tuning fundamental skills that may be lacking.
To Show Or Not To Show Work In Math
We must be careful not to admonish our intuitive learners for being intuitive. As teachers of the gifted, we must set up learning environments that are best for our students. And if they’re doing it all in their heads (and getting it right!), then the environment needs to change.
Patterns In Writing I: Introduction
Take a break from teaching the details of writing and examine narrative writing from a larger perspective. How can structure increase creativity in writing? Take your gifted writers on a journey through common patterns in narrative writing.
How I’d Change this Question from my Textbook
Here are a dozen ways to transform a not-so-critical-thinking question from one of my district’s textbooks.
Adding The Beatles to a Lesson on Cause and Effect
For my students, simply teaching a direct instruction lesson about cause and effect is a recipe for boredom and behavior problems. My solution involved bringing in a little help from The Beatles.
The Original Puzzlement: A Zoetrope
As teachers, I spend a ton of time searching for inspiration to enliven my lessons. But sometimes, inspiration hits as soon as you leave the desk and books behind. Friday my wife and I took a trip to Disneyland and saw this unbelievable (literally, it seems like magic) intersection of art & technology.
Remixing Stories With Gifted Students
One of my favorite ways to differentiate for gifted students is to create “remixes” of an existing idea. Students take an existing story, reshape it, and create a new product. It encourages them to explore the stories behind existing stories, helps them to understand how real writers work, and gives them a creative way to explore literature.
Concept Attainment: A Model for Inductive Thinking
The first grammar lesson in our reading program is titled “types of sentences.” Nothing excites gifted 11 year olds less than watching me explain the difference between interrogative and declarative sentences. This year, rather than teach the lesson using direct instruction, I used another model of instruction: concept attainment.
Introducing Universal Themes and Generalizations
Generalizations, big ideas, abstractions, universal themes… they are designed to help our gifted students learn. However, what I didn’t realize was that they would help me teach!
Differentiating in Math: Running Multiple Groups in One Class
100%, 100%, 100%. If you’ve ever taught gifted students math, you’re probably familiar with those kids who can knock perfect scores out week after week. You’ve probably also questioned what good you’re doing for those students. A differentiated math program may be just what you need.
Movie Previews and Poems’ Tones
In California, both Third and Sixth grade teachers are required to teach students to recognize elements that contribute to the tone of a written piece. I struggled with this abstract concept before landing on an engaging tool to help express the meaning of tone: movie previews.
How To Write A Lesson Objective
Creating a differentiated learning environment for gifted students doesn’t mean throwing out everything you learned in your credential program. Learn how to add on to or adjust the base program, curriculum, or standards that any general education teacher uses.
Using Pre-Assessment To Group Within My Class in Language Arts
Nothing stirs up behavior problems like trying to teach a gifted student something they already know. After watching my class average over 90% month after month on their Houghton Mifflin end of unit tests, I began to get a sneaky suspicion that some of them already knew the material prior to my instruction. This realization led to my use of the HM Theme Skills tests as a pre-assessment to create flexible groups.
Solving An Authentic Classroom Problem: The Desk Arrangement
How often do you give your gifted students the opportunity to solve authentic, relevant problems? What is more authentic to a student than solving classroom problems? And what excites students more than having ownership over the classroom seating? Here’s an authentic problem solving idea that ties in public speaking skills, group work, and classroom ownership.
Building Confidence in Speaking Skills
When preparing your students for standardized tests, those little standards labeled Speaking And Listening can easily slip by the wayside. And yet, is there any skill more important in landing a job, surviving social engagements, or being a successful leader than confident oral language skills? Teach your students to analyze great speeches to become better public speakers themselves.