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Kelsea Trefethen
Chapter 5 of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// was focused on presenting ways to alter lessons and activities. The chapter defined tiering as adjusting challenge level based on student readiness. Tiering can also be used to adjust challenge level based on interest and learner profiles, but the book wanted to focus on readiness. The chapter stated that the easiest way to prepare a lesson to be tiered is to start with the standard or benchmark at hand. It is more promising to work you way up from the standard then to start below the standard and work you way above and beyond it. The chapter gave an incredible number of tiering techniques. Some of my favorites include: learning contracts, learning menus, and one-word summaries. When I was in eighth grade my social studies teacher gave me the option to do, what he called, an “independent study.” Essentially, I was excelling in that class and he wanted to give me on opportunity to learn more in-depth material. Like the learning contract idea, I still had to take exams and quizzes with the rest of the class. This meant I was still accountable for what they were learning even though I was not learning it with them. Also, like the learning contract, I had deadlines for my independent assignments. I really enjoyed this opportunity. I hope I get a chance to use the learning contract idea in my classroom. I love Frank William’s Taxonomy off Creativity. Not only do I think they are essential qualities for my students to posses, I think they are crucial for teachers. As I was reading them, I kept think each one of them is exactly what a teacher needs to be successful.

Johnny Buys
Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments Wormeli encourages teiring assessments that work based on a “variety of students’ readiness levels” (56). Teacher can immediately recognize the benefit of tiering as it allows assessments to be catered toward individual student’s to encourage graspable success of assessments. Wormeli suggest that in order to tier successfully by “expecting every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less;” this requires for the bottom tier of understanding to be the basis benchmark or standard (56). Wormeli also argues that successful tiering increases assignment and assessment complexity through a variety of mechanisms (58). Encouraging and expecting success from exercises that challenge students keep them engaged. Wormelia draws attention to Tomlinson’s recommended use on an “equalizer to examine and adjust the challenge level of assignments and assessments” which encourages a directional paradigm shift (60). Transitioning from foundational to transformational or concrete to abstract are such equalizer shifts. Wormeli also encourages a variety of assessments that work as natural tiers in the classroom as well, such as learning contracts which “help the teacher assess student progress and possibly change instruction as a result, and they keep dedicated to the task and learning” or learning menus which provide a variety of options for assessment (62). Assessments that can generate dedication in a student is an important requirement for a teacher and by tiering the assessment a greater variety of learners are encouraged to be dedicated to learning. Other examples of tiered assessment include tic-tac toe boards, cubing, summarization pyramid, or Frank William’s Taxonomy of Creativity, which in essence creates taxonomy for the last stage of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, or RAFTS. Teiring assessments create accessibility for all students while promoting a success.

Leanne Fasulo
The fifth chapter of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// focuses on tiering. Tiering is a technique that teachers use to help students who are at different levels of learning. Teachers using this method can make assignments and assessments harder or easier depending on how advanced the student is. However, successful tiering will still include the expected criteria. Day by day teachers should increase how hard the work is to help them improve and reach the level that they should be at. An idea presented in the chapter was learning contracts. Student can make an agreement with the teacher to reach certain objectives, but the student will be able to negotiate with the teacher on deadlines, and how the work should be done. This way students can work at their own pace and in styles that meet their learning needs. Some teachers have used behavior guidelines in their contracts to help with disruptive behavior. Tiering is important, because students will not learn if they are not doing work at the level they are at. Students should be challenged over time, but if they have not laid the groundwork they will just keep getting further behind. For students who are not being challenged they could resort to checking out mentally from the coursework. Teachers should use tiering when needed to help students succeed. While I feel like I will need practice on tiering my assignments and assessments it makes sense to do this in the classroom. Every student should be getting as much as they can out of school, and this seems like a good way to do it.

Christina L Quach
Chapter 5 discussed the uses of tiering assessments. The chapter listed many different ways to incorporate tiering into assignments. Wormeli also mentioned that it enables teachers to, “Respond to the unique characteristics of the students in front of you instead of imposing a predetermined leveling. (57) Some forms of tiering included: Tic Tac Toe Boards, Cubing, Summarized Pyramid, Frank William’s Taxonomy of Creativity, RAFT(S), Changing the Verb, and One Word Summaries. Wormeli said that the best place to start is with standards. He said, “If we start higher or lower than the standard performance, we tend to distort our expectations for the on-grade-level performance, losing sight of the outcomes or benchmarks.” (56) As I write all these I wonder if I am just forgetting everything from high school, but I do not remember seeing much tiering in the classrooms. I think that the class levels of, TVP, CCP, HAP, and AP, were a type of tiering classes, but I do not recall teachers tiering assignments. I am pretty sure we were always given the same assignment. I think that this is a good way to encourage students who already know the information to expand their knowledge and understanding in a way that is productive to them. I only worry that some students would try to do poorly so that they would get the assignments that seemed easier to them because they already knew the content. I think tiering in classrooms will be a great way to teach students at different levels. Another upside to this is that students may have slightly different assignments, but they will all be concentrating on the same thing and will feel more like they are fitting in rather than that their classmates are smarter.

Brittany Blackman
Chapter five is about tiering assignments, which is just a fancy way of saying differentiating lesson plans based on proficiency. You have a grade level, a high level, and a low level. My favorite example of this was the learning menus. This is where you have a “main entrée” that you must do, but the students can choose from an appetizer and two side dishes. For extra credit, they can also choose a dessert. Then different proficiency levels can have different appetizers and side dishes offered. I love this idea a lot! I think it makes the presentation more interesting, and it allows students to make decisions about what they learn, which usually gets them more excited to learn.

Something I don’t agree with is the tic-tac-toe idea. This isn’t the first chapter I have read about this method. It is when you have a three by three of choices and the children do the assignments to get three in a row. It is a fun way to allow children to make choices, but I think they would simply pick the three choices easiest for them. I did this in my English class, actually. I basically picked the three books that seemed to stink the least.

Another suggestion the book made that stood out at me was changing the verb. I think this is a simple yet powerful suggestion. Simply use verbs that are engaging while describing what the students need to do. It will likely get them more excited. I did, however, disagree with one aspect of this section. One of the words they said you should use was “define”. I don’t see how “defining” something would get the children more excited. Something like “vividly describe” would be much better!

Richie Johnson
Chapter five is mainly concerned with “tiering,” including the different steps in tiering a unit or lesson, as well as tiering for assessment. Tiering a lesson primarily involves adjusting it to fit different “readiness levels” of students. In doing this, the teacher will break down the final product that they are looking for the student to understand into the different steps that need to be first understood. While it is important to break down the content for further understanding, it is also key that in doing so you do not change your end goal or become off task. This is something for me to keep in mind!- I have a tendency to become sidetracked and excited about things that are unrelated to what is at hand. I am going to have to make sure that, as Wormeli suggests, I pay close attentions to the tiers I create and look to see that they build up to the resolution I am looking for.
 * //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//: Chapter 5**

Tyler Oren
Chapter five of Fair isn’t Always Equal is concerned with differentiating assessment, or “tiering” so that all students may be graded and assessed fairly. Wormeli separates students by preparedness into three groups, at grade level, advanced readiness, and early readiness, and gives methods of tiering assessment for each group of students. First Wormeli covers increasing difficulty for students who are at a position of “advanced readiness” and details a list of attributes to add or remove to increase the level of complexity or challenge for an advanced student. Many of the attributes involve taking the information and manipulating it or applying it to other unexplored areas such as, extend concept to other areas, apply content/ skills in a situation not yet experienced, work with the ethical side of a project, defend completed work, among many others. When tiering an assignment Wormeli stresses the importance of slowly increasing the challenge until the student has reached or surpassed an adequate level of understanding. Wormeli suggests tiering an assignment dramatically first and then slowly and subtly increasing the challenge, before the students realize it they may already be working at the expected level before long. An important part of tiering assignments involves learning contracts, while they can be modified to fit any level of student readiness; they appear most applicable to early readiness students. Learning contracts are typically a set agreements or standards that student and teacher agree upon and provide a tangible product for a student to consider, as part of their learning career.

Cyril Lunt
This chapter was mostly about tiering of assignments within a single project, what the tiers were, and how to implement it. The system was split into three types of assignments: Grade Level, Advanced Level, and Early Readiness (which were ordered almost counter-intuitively). These parts of a project tells you where the student is, and their level of understanding of the topic. It also helps you out in planning out the assignments for the project in the first place.

While this seems overly complicated, the idea is simple enough, and for the most part I have to agree with it. It makes sense, and also gives me something to base projects on. Using the tiering system along side other forms of assessment could potentially be a powerful combination in not only grading the student, but also understanding how the student works and what to improve on next time.

Kalib Moore
Chapter 5 of //Fair Isn't Always Equal// was full of information on how to tier the assessment of students based on the level they are on. I found this chapter to be a bit overwhelming and somewhat confusing. I had never heard of a learning contract before, and I especially liked the "checkpoints" aspect to the contract found on page 62. I feel that without checkpoints, the student will feel more overwhelmed when looking at a list of five or six tasks all due in the near future. Wormeli points out that checkpoints "sever two purposes: 1) They help the teacher assess student progress and possible change instruction as a result, and 2) they keep students dedicated to the tasks and learning." (62) He also discusses increasing the challenge of certain assignments for students who are learning at a higher level. By changing different variables, the same material will continue to challenge students. I hope I will get a chance to see what an actual tiered assignment looks like when I go into the classroom for the first time, so I can get a stronger explanation from a teacher that has experience tiering students in his or her classroom. Wormeli also points out that preassessment is the best way to figure out early on if you are going to need to tier for students, and then you can plan your lessons and assignments accordingly. I believe that tiering is a necessary in the classroom to help students continue to learn at the highest possible level at all times.

Kyle Kuvaja
The common theme in chapter five of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// is tiering assessments. Wormeli gives both the definitions of other differentiated instruction educators and his own definition of “tiering”. Most educators believe that tiering assessments takes in account readiness, interests, and learning profiles. Wormeli’s definition does not account for the students’ interests or learning profiles (56). He believes that educators should design assignments to “meet the standards” and then raise or lower the difficulty on a student to student basis (he calls this “ratcheting”). Another important aspect of tiering to remember is not to group students. At one point of the lesson there could be one student out of ten struggling and the next all of the students could be struggling. Educators should tackle each situation individually. Many times the solution is as simple as adjusting the amount of time that students have on an assignment, rather than changing the skill level. Tiering is a dynamic process. Learning contracts are one way to facilitate tiering. These contracts allow the student to negotiate with the teacher how/when they will progress to higher levels. Another tool for tiering is a learning menu. Learning menus are made in word processors and give the student many options that they can choose from for one particular assignment (like a dinner menu). I connected with this chapter on a personal level more than a lot of the other chapters. Many of the teachers I had growing up were not aware of tiering, so I was held back from progressing in some of my content areas. I am aware that I am not the only student who is being affected by this, so I believe teaching about tiering is important. Frank Williams’ s Taxonomy of Creation was another interesting part of the chapter. The taxonomy is a structured form to push creativity in various ways, in numerous content areas.

Evgeni Bouzakine
“Tiering” or ratcheting is an interesting idea for the use in the classroom. Tiering refers to teachers adjusting the difficulty of the assignments and assessments. The adjustment could be to increase the difficulty or decrease. This is not to be confused with giving less work or homework. If a teacher was to increase the difficulty, the work assigned would dive deeper into the content area. The complexity would increase and a deeper understanding will be achieved. When tiering with a class it is important to find if a class can handle the increase or the decrease. The goals of the assignments will not change, but only the difficulty. Can this be applied to a whole unit? It depends on the size of class and the students’ abilities. But I would be scared to push it for a whole unit. It is important to avoid offering more difficult assignments and easier assignment to individuals in the classroom. I would consider offering the whole class something that is a little more difficult, and not on an individual basis. Paying attention to individuals is important but if students are more advanced than others, it might be a good idea to send them up to a higher level class. It would not be fair to the teacher or student to give more challenging work to only one student.