B1+FIAE+Chapter+5

Bianca S. Abstract & Synthesis
Chapter five of “Fair isn’t Always Equal” is about [|tiering assignments] for your students. Wormeli suggests, “…we usually start tiering by expecting every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less” and that we have a middle or a base assignment that meets the standard and then create a higher level of the standard or a lower level (56). If you start the tiering process at the lower level you are not successfully going to challenge all of your students. The chapter also states that tiering of assignments cannot be predetermined because every class and every student is different. Some examples of tiering given in the chapter were Tic-Tac-Toe boards where students can pick the difficulty of their assignments and get three in a row for a total of three projects and the other greatly commented idea was academic contracts where students can work at their own pace and complete assignments without the pressure of “keeping up with the class.” The chapter also suggests that the teacher hold checkpoints in order to check in with their students when they are working with learning contracts or when they are learning at their own pace because it allows the teacher to get a handle on their students progress. Other ideas included RAFTS, the Taxonomy of Creativity, learning menus, [|etc]. A key point made during the chapter is that tiering is not about making an assignment easier but about making the assignment appropriate for each of students based on their learning.
 * Abstract**

In this chapter as a class we agreed and disagreed about what forms of tiering we would use in our classrooms and which we thought would be useful and which we thought were pointless. Leigh did not think that Tic-Tac-Toe boards would be useful in her math classroom but Carinne wrote, “I thought that this was an interesting concept,” about Tic-Tac-Toe boards and that they allow students to make the decisions on what they do while the teacher still has control over what assignments they can choose from. Kellie and Paul both agreed that learning contracts would be successful in the classroom. Kellie said, “I think that learning contracts are an excellent idea not only in special situations, but for all students. They seem to link very closely with project based learning, which my mentor teacher uses quite successfully in his classroom,” while I think that learning contracts would be too difficult to implement and give the student too much freedom. Even though we disagree about how we would tier assignments and what forms of tiering we believe to be best for our content area and for our students we all did agree that making assignments fit the students is in the best interest for them. We are all unique in how we want to teach our students and hopefully what will make us all good teachers is that we all want to do what is best for our students and help all of our students learn to the best of their abilities.
 * Synthesis**

Paul Santamore
toc Tiering assessments is the subject of chapter five and it is a critical aspect of assessment. The book suggests that adjusting curriculum and assessment in the same ways is critical to student success, and I agree with them. How can a student who has no English language exposure or a high competence for a certain topic focus and grow their intellectual abilities if they are put on the same instructional levels as everybody else? The answer to that question is that they simply cannot and that is why tiering is so important to the success of the individual learner. The basic framework to tier assessment starts with increasing or decreasing workload and or lesson complexity. I think a heavy workload is good for most students but the book suggests that the educator should really think deeply about each student and adjust from there, which makes a lot of sense. As an educator I will always cater to my students’ abilities and needs, but there must be some way to make them all somewhat on the same page at the end of the unit or lesson. I will give them tasks that all wind back into one specific understanding in the end. Also, I will establish learning contracts and menus of some sort, which are referenced and displayed throughout chapter five. Basically I will be fair within my classroom and always work to benefit my students through differentiation and equal assessment.

Leigh Welch
The main element that is introduced in this chapter is “Tiering”. Tiering is moving expectations because of the readiness of the students. This can be done on assignments or assessments. The book suggests that when doing this tiering you should start with the middle (base), which should meet all the standards for the unit, from there you can either do the higher level or the lower level. The reason for the base or middle being the one you design first is because it can sway if you true to do the lower one first and then the base does not completely cover the standards of the unit, or the other way around. If you start with the absolute highest you can go, the middle will come out being of higher tiering solely because you started in the stars. This chapter also talks about different ways to tier assignments and assessments. One of which was a new concept to me that is called Tic-Tac-Toe Boards that look like a really cool concept for an English, or humanities, or history class. I still don’t see the how Tic-Tac-Toe Boards would work in a math setting, but I am sure if enough minds got together, we could figure it out. The Tic-Tac-Toe Board was one of the new concepts; another one was the Cube, which sounds very interesting too. The Cube makes the learning seem like a game because you get to roll the dice and do what the dice tells you to do, but it can easily be tiered. You can write anything on the faces of the cube, making the entries more and less complex as needed. I like this concept because students like to play games, especially in subjects that they do not like, or feel like they are not good at (math).

Bianca Stoutamyer
In my experience with tiering the “honors” student is given work that is not more challenging but is just more of the same problems. For instance in an English class the “honors” students were just given extra books to read during the semester and write about while doing the rest of the class work. For these reasons and more I was skeptical about the thought of tiering assignments in the classroom. After reading the chapter I like the theory of challenging the “honors” students while keeping the majority of the class working at the pace they are supposed to but actually applying that in a classroom of say 10 IEP/504 students, “honors” students, and middle of the pack students actually accomplishing tiering will be extremely complicated. While tiering is skeptical in my books learning contracts will be a no go in my classroom. Once again the theory is in the right place but having students actually stick to and accomplish their own contracts and having the teacher teach lessons when they are all on different pages will not work for a subject like science or math. Khan academy is similar to a learning contract because the students can work at their own pace to learn the material on the site but the website is not their math lesson they are supplementing their knowledge outside of their class. I have noticed that this supplemental knowledge is useful to the students in Mt. Blue Middle School. I especially like the idea of a tic-tac toe board that gives students choices but the teacher also monitors those choices. This type of assessment is something I would use as a project to assess the student’s knowledge of says the human body, universe, or forces.

Carinne Haigis
The concept of tiering assessments is introduced in this chapter. Wormeli describes tiering as, “primarily emphasizing the adjustments we make in assessments according to students’ readiness levels, not interests or learner profiles” (Wormeli 56). He also suggests that, “…we usually start tiering by expecting every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less” (Wormeli 56). Tiering does not mean making an assessment easier for a student, per say, but has more to do with ensuring that the assessment is appropriate for the student. After describing exactly what tiering is, the author then offers some samples of how to tier. One of these examples involves the creation of checkpoints. I thought that is was a fantastic idea for students. Having set checkpoints ensures that students are completing certain portions of a task by a particular date and time. This practice keeps students from procrastinating and then having to rush through a long term assignment in order to meet the deadline. Checkpoints also allow the teacher to gather data regarding what stages the students are in at a particular point and time and also enable him or her to offer constructive feedback along the way. Another sample given by the author is called a “Tic-Tac-Toe Board”. I thought that this was an interesting concept. It allows the student to sort of decide and be in charge of which tasks they would be most interested in completing, but also allows the teacher to exercise some control over what students choose to do. This is a good example of a teacher allowing flexibility in the classroom, but still making sure that the key goals and standards are being met.

Allison Reynolds
Chapter five looked at the idea of tiering assessments. Now that we have this idea that teachers need to meet the different needs of students, how do we create different assignments? The idea of tiering simply means adjusting the material in order for a student to reach full potential in it. I love all of the ideas in this chapter. There are so many to tap into, like contract, RAFTS, the Taxonomy of Creativity, and so many. My favorite new one that I read about in this chapter is the learning menus. Those are a lot like the tic-tac-toe idea where students pick a topic out of each area that needs to be addressed in the assignment. I feel that this could work in the classroom, much like we did in the class the other day when picking our standards. Students could look at the standards list, like a menu, and see which one they want. This could give them a starting place to work from.

When tiering though, the teacher has to be aware of the best way to tier. The book mentions that the leveling cannot be predetermined. I agree. Each student is different and will need a unique option. I like the idea of creating a contract with the student then in order to have both the student and teacher understand what will need to be done. I think I could use all of these ideas in my classroom. The RAFT’s idea may not work as well because it does seem to work best with English and History, but that is where the challenge of being a teacher comes in. Also, I really want to have students give me ideas of what they want to do as an assignment. It will give me ideas for the future as well as have student have control of their own assignment.

Kellie Sanborn
I found myself incredibly frustrated by some of the assumptions made in this chapter. While I do see tiering assessments as necessary in some situations, and I do think that providing opportunities for more or less advanced work in cases where it is needed, I find it extremely difficult to tier most things in an English classroom. The only way that I could really see most things being tiered would be in the grading portion. As a teacher, you cannot expect one student to turn in a five-page paper and another in the same class to turn in a two-page paper, and you can’t really say that one argument would be easier to make than another. You can, however, grade to the sophistication of the writing. What I was most frustrated by, though, is when he did actually suggest ways to tier an English classroom and said that as an early level assignment a student could identify the plot structure of a short story rather than a novel. In this situation, the student would completely miss out on the novel that the rest of the class got to read and would therefore have to pull completely different ideas from it. Secondly, a short story, in nearly any situation, has no guarantee of having a more simple plot structure than a novel and vice versa. I am very interested in the idea of learning contracts. I think that learning contracts are an excellent idea not only in special situations, but for all students. They seem to link very closely with project based learning, which my mentor teacher uses quite successfully in his classroom. In that situation, students have a project proposal that explains what they will get out of their project and are expected to follow through with what it is stated in the proposal.

Chris Whitney
Chapter 5 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal talks about tiering assignments to fit the needs of different students. This makes sense and I agree with the process. As has been mentioned in almost every teaching book read this semester, students are all different, and each brings different home lives, interests, and thoughts to class, so it is easy to see that not every student is going to benefit from being tested or taught the same way. For example, I remember a professor telling me a story about a student who could not speak much English but was fluent in Spanish, so the school enrolled him into a Spanish class. However the student did not do very good because he already knew all the vocabulary and concepts of the class and it was pointless for him to be there. Teachers must always be aware of the audience that they are teaching to. Another example is that maybe students come into the classroom without information because it was not taught to them in previous years. There are only so many days in a school year and teachers rarely get through everything they would like to in a year so that one or two things that they didn’t get too is something that is important to the next level teacher. The teacher must be willing to adjust curriculum and assessment for students because not all students will be where the teacher would like them to be.

Mel Christensen
Learning to tier assessments is an important skill for teachers to develop. Most classrooms have a range of students with different abilities or learning styles that teachers need to account for, but even in the most uniform classroom tiering gives students clear expectations and the opportunity to challenge themselves or tailor an assignment to suit their needs. Tiering allows teachers to set clear and structured goals for students working at different levels in the classroom. One way to do this is to create learning contracts between students and teachers that outline realistic goals for student accomplishment within a certain time frame. These contracts are mutually agreed upon and include steps the student should take if they fall behind or need help as well as ways they can challenge themselves if they get ahead. The roles and responsibilities of the teacher in helping the student achieve the tasks in the learning contract should also be agreed upon. Tiering also allows student to have some flexibility in determining the format of their assessment. Tools like Tic-Tac-Toe boards, learning menus, or RAFTS provide structure for assignments but still allow the student to make choices about the shape their final product will take. These kinds of resources empower students because they can decide what types of assessment reflect their accomplishments best. Tiering allows students and teachers to differentiate lessons and assignments collaboratively. Student involvement and feedback is an invaluable resource to teachers and can help them to make better decisions regarding student learning in the future.

Ashton Carmichael
This chapter discusses how to work with students who are at different levels in your classroom. The author gives advise and examples of how to make problems harder or easier depending on the readiness of the students. The author introduces the term “tiering” in this chapter to mean “change the complexity or challenge of tasks more and more subtly each day” (Wormeli 59). He introduces this term to give light to the idea that students will grow over time and if they can gradually work up to it, they will do better. I like the idea of letting students have options and work off of other tiers. As long as the student is growing and learning the material, I do not see the problem with them taking creative license on my assignments; within reason, this would be a great way for them to take ownership of the task and be better learners because of it. The RAFTS concept is really interesting. I really do like the idea of letting students choose their own assignment. This would be a really good way to give out an essay assignment because students often have a hard time thinking of a place to start. This would outline the beginning for them; they would have some choices to pick from. I am not sure how I would feel about giving out a variety of these papers though, that is, having them pre-designed to meet the levels of the students. Students often look to each other for inspiration and if the papers do not all match up, then it can cause some confusion. However, with enough variety, it could work itself out and the students would not even know I am tiering their assignments.

Kaite Bukauskas
This chapter explores the strategy of ‘tiering’, which is a way for teachers to adjust their assignments and assessments to meet the individual needs and readiness of the students. In any given classroom the students are all at different levels of skill, all have various interests, and are coming from different learning styles. Tiering is a way to develop lesson plans to ensure that all of these needs are being met so that students get the most out of the unit. The expectations used when using a tiering style of lesson planing includes a spectrum which ranges from the standard, which would be the minimum expectation of students, to more advanced content and assessment. Learning contracts create an environment in which students can learn at their own pace and agree to settings which benefit the learning process such as agreeing to not disrupt other students and to use indoor voices. The chapter suggests using eight levels of creativity when planning out a tiered lesson- fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, risk-taking, complexity, curiosity, and imagination. Teachers should be mindful of a student’s emotional and intellectual state when creating a lesson that utilizes the eight levels of creativity. By creating various levels of expectations and ways to reach out to students, teachers can reach out to all levels of students in a room more efficiently.

Megan Hoffman
This chapter focuses on the idea of tiering assessments, which separates the class based on their content mastery levels. The levels are then specialized to fit the learning needs of these students. The students who understand quicker are given more challenging assignments to master. Students who are learning at a normal pace can keep going at that pace and the students who are struggling can receive more instruction and an easier-to-understand explanation of the topic. Tiering assessment is a somewhat new idea to me, I have briefly heard of it but this chapter went into it more and fully explained the idea. It is essentially a different way to create a differentiated instruction style. However, I am on the fence of whether I like it or not. The biggest thing that I am confused on is if tiering assessment is as good as the 8 way MI assessment mentioned in chapter 10 of the MI book. In 8th grade I was introduced to RAFT assignments and found it incredibly boring because it was just writing- it didn’t target my visual learning style and desire for creativity, I couldn’t create anything with it so I was just uninterested. It seems to me that tiering is functioning on the conventional smart-dumb scale instead of aiming for the idea of different types of learning. I suppose it is good to keep in mind the three paces when creating lessons, but to me it just doesn’t seem as effective as other methods. To me it is like offering different chocolate bars to someone who doesn’t like chocolate- you can explain things as simply as you want, but if you don’t put it into perspective of how they learn best, it just won’t be as inspirational.

Jason B
Chapter five mentions the idea that teachers should tier assignments. Tiering is the idea that teachers should make assessments based on the student’s readiness levels, interests and learners profiles. This chapter poses some pretty cool ideas, such as the tic tac toe board for assigning tasks. My favorite idea would be cubing. The students would make a cube, and on each side of the 6-sided cube, students would write a response. The categories of response would be to describe, compare, associate, analyze, apply, and argue. This really allows students to put their thinking cap on. The idea of tiering seems to make learning seems more like a game. This is awesome because students like playing games. If the students think they are playing a game while they are learning, then they can learn some really cool things. I am not sure how I will use tiering yet in my own classroom. As a future teacher, there are so many uses for tiering. I could use the cube in my class to get students to explain an idea so that the students can learn from each other. There are so many options, and I am not sure which direction I want to take off with them yet.