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Alex Randall
FIAE Chapter 5 When I read about "tiering assessments" it made me think of tiering workloads for certain classes. For example, in my honors classes I would undoubtedly have a larger workload, more in-depth conversations and assignments, and higher expectations of my students as opposed to my students in my regular level classes. However, it is not that black and white. There are going to be students in your honors classes that are not as interested in what you are teaching as a student in your regular level class and, therefore, you might develop higher standards for them. So, while thinking about this and reading, the book actually provides some ways to increase complexity in assignments and assessments and has sample tierings of tasks. It also continues to mention learning contracts, which are extremely useful with students (like me!) that have a hard time staying on task or finishing tasks on time. The chapter continued to provide ideas to help teachers find ways to do assessments and activities to help their students learn in more efficient ways. The idea of tiering makes perfect sense to me, but I really enjoy using learning contracts is so great because it can really help things along. A student might have a much easier time making progress (not to mention they may feel that their teacher is actually involved and cares about their work).

Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Chapter 5

In order to further refine assessment, “tiering” them is necessary. Not just saying that a student “struggles” (though there is nothing in particular wrong with this phrase and is certainly better than saying that they are “bad” the subject. Or even worse, “bad students”). Set up scientifically logic levels of mastery and explain what it means to be at one level and not another. Also, it is better to start at the standard benchmark rather than lower or higher. As a future teacher, I find that to be a reasonable condition, but a very problematic one to implement. With levels of mastery varying so widely among whites, blacks, Hispanics, the rich, the poor, and the middle class, it is tough to say what is “standard.” Perhaps there is a study, or several studies, that can assist in this regard.

The tiering of assessments should mean that tasks become more and more complex, with information being manipulated in an increasing variety of ways, such as looking across subjects, sniffing out bias, identifying errors in logic in ones own past thinking, and balance the negatives and positives of any decision by a set of standards that one is aware of. As an example of this, a student in a history course can accurately explain the motivations of everyone in a historical drama without using moral judgment toc

Sam Leal
Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

Chapter 5 in FIAE teaches tips and hints for tiering assessment in differentiated instruction. Tiering is described as, “how teachers adjust assignments and assessments to students’ readiness levels, interests, and learner profiles.” Basically what tiering means is to raise up or lower the challenge of assignments for students. The chapter highlights that the difficulty must start at the standard and then be raised up or brought down from there. In the chapter I learned of many methods teachers use to challenge students with assignments. For example to try and have them apply previous knowledge to help them with situations they haven’t quite experienced. In order to do this it is very important to know your students really well and to not assign an assignment that is too challenging and too big of a jump because that’ll lose the students. I learned many new techniques of tiering in this chapter and a couple that I may try in my classroom in the future. I really like the tic tac toe board idea and I think it could be very useful in math classes. Tiering is important, but to me something that is very difficult and will take time before I can do it well in the classroom. It takes really good understanding of the students in the classroom. So it’s not something I’d do right away, but with practice and experience it will be incorporated into my classroom.

Cidney
Tiering assessments is a method that allows for differentiation based on skill level. Tiering lets the teacher make adjustments to fit student readiness levels, but is begun with the expectation that every student will demonstrate full proficiency within a standard. The minimum expectation becomes the standard expectation. Not every aspect of a lesson may be tiered, but one facet of that lesson may. Some samples of tiering tasks that change the challenge and complexity of a task are learning contracts, in which the teacher and student create goals and expectations to meet objectives; learning menus where students choose from a variety of options that will allow them to achieve objectives; tic-tac-toe boards; and RAFTS.

Tiering assessments provides opportunities for learners at different readiness levels to achieve objectives and meet standards. Since I want my students to do both those things, I would like to offer tiered assessments in my classroom. I have seen RAFTS used at Mt. Blue High School, and really like their formatting and how they challenge students to think from a different perspective on a topic. I also like the idea of learning contracts and learning menus and will try and incorporate them as well.

Colby Hill
FIAE Chapter 5 Tiering will, undoubtedly, be a part of my classroom. Even now, visiting the middle school, there is tiering occurring across the classes. The expectations differ from the “higher” class to the “lower” class, and even if I thought this were wrong it would be hard not to expect it. It would be unfair to throw a student who is not strong in English with a class that is very good and expect the same results. The same goes the other way, too: it’s unfair to throw a really good student into a class with strugglers and give them the same work. It holds them back for potential knowledge gain. The whole list of potential complexity and challenge attribution I like for the most part on page 57-8. And I also like the “look-fors” (59) discussed.

The idea of learning contracts is interesting, but I am a bit skeptical. Even if a student has choice about the completion time, I can still envision students waiting until the last second. An extended due date may just mean an extended procrastination period. This would work wonders on the students who took this seriously, however, and may allow a very fair time for the student to pass in excellent work and demonstrate their mastery. One thing I really did like about it was the idea of the checkpoints. This may allow the teacher and student to stay on the same page and, hopefully, eliminate most of the desire to procrastinate. If done right, the teacher will receive the student’s spectacular work and the student will produce it because of their ownership

Jordan Hale
The idea of tiering assessments means to alter the skill level depending on who is taking the test. Tiering begins by expecting each and every student to show full proficiency with the standard, nothing less (56). An example of a tiering method is a tic-tac-toe board. In each space in the 3x3 grid is a certain task that fulfills a unit requirement. The middle space, however, is labeled student’s choice to give the students some freedom. I was intrigued by the tic-tac-toe board because I thought it was a pretty simple but effective idea. As a student myself, I would love to have the choice of tasks to accomplish for a unit. I would be more interested in the topic and therefore put more effort forth because //I// am interested in it and //I// chose it. As a teacher, you could alter the difficulty by altering the tasks on the tic-tac-toe board. Another tool I thought would be useful is the idea of a learning menu. Under titles such as appetizers, side dishes, entrees and desserts there would be certain tasks The entrees menu could be mandatory to do for all students, but they could pick the other tasks they want to do from the other sections with complete freedom.

Elizabeth Sargent
After reading chapter 5 from //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// I found myself thinking of ways that I could integrate tiering into my lesson plan I am making. While for most students the lesson will be challenging enough in itself, for others it might be too challenging or not challenging enough. Some student’s readiness levels are lower and higher than others. Judging by the variance in classrooms today I know that I will encounter this in the field and in my career. I learned that in the future, I need to look for the subsets of goals in each task, and be able to break it down and explore the itinerary. I think that decreasing the complexity of an assignment would be harder to do than increasing it. While to increase an assignment, as a teacher you simply extend the content area and ask the student to go above ad beyond. In decreasing the assignment how will I know when I have gone past the student readiness level? How do I know I’m not making this too easy for the student? I know assessment can be helpful in this area, but what if after the assessment the student has learned nothing. I am back to square one and the rest of the class is ahead of this student.

Also, while I have seen learning contracts before, I have only seen them used for behavioral management. I think it is a great idea to get students to agree to do their work at their own pace, as long as they get it done.

Emily Haskell
Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

I really like the explanation of tiering here. This is a very important part of learning and teaching. In high school I had a teacher who decided not to help us with the problems or to make sure we had the skills to do it ourselves. Instead he decided to give us a packet of questions and have us try to solve it on our own for homework. If this teacher had taken the time to ensure that we learned all of the material step by step then perhaps we would have succeeded a little more in his class. Instead it was really difficult to not only learn the material, but to keep up with everything new when some of us were still learning the old things.

Though I am skeptical about the idea of a learning contract, I am a large supporter of the idea of academic checkpoints. I have seen in the schools how it can really help a student to have some things do on certain days, rather than have a project or one large paper due all at once. I really hope to use this when I become a teacher because I was one of the kids that was really helped by checkpoints while we were in the midst of a project. With a lot of projects or large papers I tended to look at the finished product and get overwhelmed. It was much less intimidating if I had some smaller goals to work towards instead.

Karina Sprague
Although the term “tiering” is new to me, I have some knowledge about it. I find this to be an extremely useful program. Basically, the book suggests that teachers should create assessments that fit the individual student’s level. For example, if you have a student that is constantly struggling, you can give them an easier assessment. Likewise, if you have an advanced student, you can give them a more challenging assessment. I think I will use this practice a lot in my class because I think it is extremely unfair and unreasonable to give every student the same assessment and expect the same work from every student. I also think that by giving each student a different type of test, there will be less cases of cheating. When students look at an assessment, they should think “I can do this”. Having confidence will help students achieve a better understanding.

However, I can see a few downfalls in tiering. If you have an advanced student, before you throw an advanced assessment at them, you should make sure that they were able to do the lessons at an advanced level. What I mean is that you should not teach everyone the lessons at the same level and then give out tiered tests. This is unfair to the advanced students because you have not covered the advanced material during lessons. Likewise, it is not a good judge of comprehension for the lower level students because they will have an assessment that is easier than anything they did in the unit. If you used tiered assessments, make sure your used tiered lesson plans, too.

Spencer Hodge
Chapter five introduces the idea of tiering assignments. Tiering is when lessons are adjusted based on student’s prior knowledge and experience with a subject as well as their interests and learning style. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and, because of this diversity as well as the student's individual learning styles, students are on different levels when it comes to previous knowledge on certain topics. Thus, to keep the students with more knowledge on the subject from becoming bored and to help those lacking the skills to easily achieve the learning goals, lessons are tiered or set up at different difficulty levels. It is important to note that the actual standards of a unit should not be changed but rather these standards are made the bare minimum of understanding acceptable in regards to the subject and the tiering is set up accordingly. Although it may appear so, this also does not mean setting low expectations for some students and high standards for others.

Prior to the readings I had never heard of this idea before, but thought it would be a useful tool for some students. Some students need the structure of a set of rules and requirements as well as a given schedule to accomplish tasks. As a teacher, I would look for opportunities to give my students options like the contract that allow some flexibility, but also set specific guidelines to their work. The only thing that could be a problem with this concept is that students cannot be singled out in a direct way or other students will notice and may treat them differently.