Tool Box Strategies

So there are strategies that you can use to help with differentiating for your classroom that you should have in your "tool box". Dr. P had us each take and report on one of them. I'll talk about mine in another post because there are a lot of ways to differentiate with R.A.F.T.S. and I'll explain further what that is.

So some tools you can differentiate with are:

Pre-assessment: these strategies can be used to differentiate for interests and readiness. There are several different pre-assessment sheets you can use for students that can be as simple as smiley faces, sad faces, or indifferent faces to see how your students feel about reading, writing, or any subject really.  

This first link is for readiness beginners with just simple pictures and statements on the first two pages.

The third page is a more ready individual student that asks the same questions but at a more advanced level.

The fourth page is one of the higher levels with no pictures and simply asking questions that may provoke multiple answers.

Pre-Assessment Sheets

There were more pages in this document that I haven't provided here because there were a lot of things you differentiate for and I just wanted to give you a taste


Journal entries and note taking.

      We know taking notes is important because that's how we got through high school and college (hopefully), but did you know that 75% of information is forgotten if we don't write it down? However there are also many different ways you can take notes. I like the presentation on this one because I didn't realize that there were different ways to take notes and do a journal entry because I wasn't taught any other way. I simply wrote down pretty much everything the teacher/professor said and then when writing a journal entry I simply just wrote from one prompt.

With our students however you can take one book and have multiple questions that can prompt a journal entry. There are also different ways you can organize a journal entry which will tie into other tool box strategies such as graphic organizers. A journal entry or taking notes does not have to be a full page of words about the subject. We want our students to get the main idea from what they are reading and supplement it with details, be able to analyze and then simply what they read based off of their information.

The link will show an example of different journal entries students can choose from for interests and readiness.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
When you differentiate for your students you are not changing the quantity of work, just the quality of work by allowing them to complete an alternative assignment that is still teaching the same content. We all know that there are tons of graphic organizers out there for one single subject and finding these will help all of your students learn on their level and progress in the best learning environment and style possible. Here are a list of sites that were provided that have different graphic organizers you can look through to see more about differentiation.

http://www.graphic.org/goindex.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/graphicorganizers/biography/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/graphicorganizers/storymap/


These are just a few tools you can use to help you differentiate for the students in your classroom.
There are more that were listed such as think tic-tac-toe boards and choice boards. You can have spelling be the subject and have students do a variety of things that can help them learn their spelling words. Some examples to put on these boards would be-to write words with blue vowels and red consonants
-write words in all capital letters
-write words 3 times each
-do rainbow words 2 times each
-circle the words in the newspaper or magazine
-cut out letters and form a word from various places
-type words on a computer
-write each word in a complete sentence.

There are also Think Dots and Cubing

-differentiated for readiness. If you have a blow up dice or even a cube you can make write different questions on there to help students answer them based on their entry leader. 

There are a lot of tools out there that you can use in your classroom, but not all of them will help you accurately differentiate for your classroom and even some that do may not be able to help the class that you have. So please really look into what you are using for your students to make sure it really is directed towards where they are at and how it will help them progress and build on the things they are learning. Be the kind of teacher that is willing to do what it takes to help all students and find the right "tool" for them.