Differentiation

It's been several months after I attended Richard Allington's conference regarding RTI and I am still hearing his words of wisdom.
 "Get rid of your "one-size-fits-all" curriculum!"
"Make your content area teacher throw away their text books that many students can't even read!!"

 Our district has made HUGE gains in the area of literacy.  We THREW out our "one-size-fits-all" curriculum and began to embrace our student learning diversity through a workshop model.  I am so PROUD of our H-D teachers who took on change fast and furious.  As a group we decided to jump in feet first....new writing, new reading, new small group reading, new phonics, new workshop model and a new title reading plan.  All this change in one year???  I sometimes forget what we have accomplished in such a short time frame.  

Diversity=  variety, miscellany, assortment, mixture, mix, range, array, multiplicity; variation, variance, difference, contrast.

Mr. Allington stated over and over.... we must have our students reading materials at "their" reading ability level.  This is a great way to differentiate.  We haven't thrown out our textbooks for science and social studies yet but we are definitely bringing in rich picture books and informational text to help in this area.  Our scholastic BookFlix and TruFlix sites through our AEA are helping in this area too.

Differentiation doesn't mean everyone is doing something "different".  Differentiation is responsive teaching rather than one size fits all teaching (Tomlinson, 2005).  To put it yet another way, it means that teachers proactively plan varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they will show what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can, as efficiently as possible (Tomlinson, 2003).  This model and statements are from Carol Tomlinson.  Her work in differentiation is powerful. Check out her work !



I am an early childhood graduate and have my reading masters,  but even through this training in developmentally appropriate curriculum and best practices in reading, I still have much to learn about "differentiation" or creating quality lessons that truly meet the needs of ALL learners.

(Another reason we must establish the RTI process!)

 Through our South Side S.I.N.A. (School in Need of Assistance) reading plan we hope to further study differentiation to help our diverse learners.  If you are a teacher take time to look at Carol Tomlinson's work.  Each child is different unique and he does deserve a teacher who knows his strengths and weaknesses.  Along with Tomlinson's work don't forget Bloom's Taxonomy and the Zone of Proximal Development theories.  Check out the links!  Share your knowledge and learning with others but remember to embrace your own learning.  Model to our students that we are life-long learners!

Happy Reading!  Mrs. Speake