Why are tiered lessons important

To access hundreds of premium or staff resources, log in or sign up for an account. Relive the learning from the Virtual Summit. Helping All Learners: Tiering Why is tiering an effective instructional practice for some learners?

Far and away, the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Theodore Roosevelt, president According to Carol Ann Tomlinson , when kids are engaged at appropriate levels of challenge, the habits of persistence and curiosity are developed.

Learning Targets I can describe effective components of a tiered task. I can explain how to tier a task while maintaining the rigor for all students. Why is it important to focus on equity when creating tiered assignments?

What might be some challenges that you face when creating equitable and respectful tasks? This excerpt includes a peek into a high school humanities class.

How did the teacher decide who receives scaffolds? How do you currently decide who receives scaffolds in your room? How did the teacher of the humanities class maintain appropriate rigor for all students? As you view the following video, consider the following: How did the teacher tier the tasks in the video?

What strategies might you adopt for your own classroom? How does this lesson maintain alignment to the rigorous Common Core Standards? Analyze View the original note-catcher, download from this page , from the lesson showcased in the video above. Why might some students struggle with this task? How might you tier this task without changing the text the students were required to read?

Now view the tiered note-catcher. Justify how the tiered note-catcher met the same learning targets as the original note-catcher. Watch: Tiering a Math Lesson 1. As you view the following video, what do you notice and wonder about: The learning targets? Different questions can be asked after reading a selection — low students describe the character, middle students talk about the character's goals and high-level students identify clues the author gives. Some students enjoy creative writing.

Others prefer non-fiction. Teaching a tiered lesson on a topic such as the rain forest, for instance, may mean one group writes a story about visiting the rain forest while another colors and labels pictures of rain forest plants and animals. Outgoing students might attempt a persuasive speech on preserving the rain forest. While creating eight different lesson plans based on Herbert Gardner's learning styles or "multiple intelligences" is not recommended, offering different activities to students is a good way to tier a lesson.

For example, when learning about Native American culture, making a toy drum, participating in a game of physical skill or a writing book report on a Native American myth may be choices. Respectively, the spacial, kinesthetic and verbal learner are engaged. When creating a tiered lesson plan, Dr.

For example:. When you tier assignments by complexity, you are addressing the needs of students who are at different levels using the same assignment. The trick here is to vary the focus of the assignment based upon whether each group is ready for more advanced work or simply trying to wrap their head around the concept for the first time.

You can direct your students to create a poster on a specific issue—recycling and environmental care, for instance—but one group will focus on a singular perspective, while the other will consider several points of view and present an argument for or against each angle.

Tiering assignments by differentiated outcome is vaguely similar to complexity—all of your students will use the same materials, but depending on their readiness levels will actually have a different outcome. It may sound strange at first, but this strategy is quite beneficial to help advanced students work on more progressive applications of their student learning. This differentiated instruction strategy is exactly what it sounds like—student groups will use different processes to achieve similar outcomes based upon readiness.

Tiered assignments can also be differentiated based on product. Tiering resources means that you are matching project materials to student groups based on readiness or instructional need. One flexible group may use a magazine while another may use a traditional textbook. From time to time, students may question why they are working on different assignments, using varied materials, or coming to dissimilar outcomes altogether.

Make it a point to tell students that each group is using different materials or completing different activities so they can share what they learned with the class. Be neutral when grouping students, use numbers or colors for group names, and be equally enthusiastic while explaining assignments to each cluster. The more flexible groups and materials you use, the more students will accept that this is the norm.