Grouping Strategies

How we (the teacher) create the learning environment will have an impact on the student learning. Think about how you learn / work best. Is it alone? With a partner? In a small group? Whole class?

When considering how to group students consider each of the following areas:

Please share your thoughts and insights for grouping your students - what works best?

Multiple Intelligences

We all learn the same - differently!
Understanding how we learn best and how our students learn best provides a wonderful setting for learning to happen. Generally - we teach like we learn. By doing this, are we missing connecting with some of our students?

Howard Gardner identifies 8 (and growing) intelligences. Researchers agree that we all possess all 8 intelligences - just some are more developed than others. We must work to develop our weaknesses.

Using the Mutiple Intelligences (MI) theory is a great foundation to develop learning centers, menu of options or choices boards for almost any topic.

In class we looked at the Iditarod as a topic to help incorporate the MI theory for learning centers. Zuma's Paw Prints provides ongoing information about the race at various reading levels. (Sanka writes for the higher readers, Gypsy reaches the middle readers, and Libby helps out the struggling reader)

Please share the ideas you had for utilizing the MI theory in your classroom.

Questioning

What makes a question a good question? ....... A good question makes us THINK!
Using primary sources provides a great resource to generate questions. (see links below)

Remember - it's a two way street when it come to questions - What questions are we (the teacher) asking the students? Consider these questions from Richard DuFour:

• What do we want the students to learn?
• How will we know when they learn it?
• What do we do when students struggle to learn?

The other side is the student - What questions are they asking? Are we developing their critical thinking skills? Are we helping them to learn to ask better questions??

Some questioning techniques to consider:

• 5W and an H
• Three Story Intellect
• Bloom's Taxonomy
• Kaplan's Depth and Complexity

Please share the questions you generated. Be sure to include a brief description of the primary source you used.

Census.gov

100 Milestone Documents

Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons

George Eastman House Collections

Learning Centers

Learning Centers provide students with options for both learning and showing what they learned. As a teacher you may vary the content, process or product in a center to help address the learning needs of the students in your classroom.

Please share with us your experiences with learning centers.

21st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills provides a wealth of information and a framework for 21st century learning.

Check it out at:

21stcenturyskills.org

2006 Study:

"Are They Really Ready to Work?"

Differentiation - What do you KNOW?

Maybe you've heard of blogs - maybe you haven't....this is your chance to discover the possibilities that blogs can bring to your personal life, your professional life and your classroom.

Using a KWL model - What do you KNOW about differentiation? Have you considered using Blogs as a tool?

Please post your comments here on what you KNOW about differentiation and how you might use blogs in the classroom.

To do this - simply click the comments button below - write a comment, then select the radio button for anonymous, then click publish your comment! It's that easy!

What do you WONDER or WANT to know about differentiation?

Okay - you know what you know about differentiation.

But I'm sure you have some questions and things you WONDER about using differentiation in the classroom? Here's an opportunity for you to add your comments about what you are wondering. Maybe through this blog you'll find answers to your questions.

Simply click on the comments link on the bottom, write you comment in the box, check Anonymous and Publish your comment.

What have you LEARNED?

What have you learned about differentiation?

We've covered a variety of strategies and there's still more to learn. But hopefully you have enough knowledge to be excited about differentiating your instruction.

Please comment below on what areas you find most interesting about differentiation now that you've had time to explore!

How will you APPLY differentiation strategies?

After learning a variety of strategies to help differentiate instruction in the classroom - how are you applying these to your classroom? ...and more importantly - how is it working???

Please share your thoughts and insights.

Resources

Here are some additional resources:

Cool Timer - free download