Chapter 10

Wormeli advises that teachers allow students to re-do work and assignments for full credit. This allows students to build mastery on the content and skills, if they did not understand it the first time around. Wormeli stresses that teachers need to have compassion for the student and their circumstances, and that as adults in life we get extra times or re-do's as well. However, the offer to complete re-do's on assignments should not be granted if students don't try the first time or wait till the last minute and come out with a product that does not show their full capability. When a student does this with the mindset that they can blow it off because they can always re-do it when they feel like it, then a re-do should not be an option. If students or a particular student show effort but constantly need to utilize the opportunity for re-dos, it can be an indicator to the teacher that the method they are using needs to be modified. I fully believe that students should have the ability to re-do an assignment. First, because students can have bad days or bad weeks that affect the quality of their work, or they may not have learned the content or built the skills at the same rate as other students.

Chapter 9: FIAE

Wormeli lists ten different things to avoid when differentiating assessment and grading. Mainly these restate past chapters that discussed flaws and ways of grading that should be avoided, such as grading nonacademic factors like attendance. It even jumps ahead by advising teachers to stay away from giving zero's, as is the basis of chapter 10. One thing to avoid that I found interesting, and really does make perfect sense, is avoiding allowing students to do extra credit. Often the extra credit is busy work and does not use the same skills that were meant to be built in the original assignment. At first it seemed a little cruel, but it does make sense. The teacher can allow an alternative and allow students to receive a better grades by allowing re-do's on assignments.

Chapter 8: FIAE

Chapter eight discusses whether teachers should incorporate behavior, attendance, and effort into the students final grade. Overall, Wormeli was against using any of them as part of assessing a student. The argument was that often times these serve to discourage students when they are penalized, and often there are factors or reasons behind why they have not been in class, have behavioral problems, or are missing assignments. I like how Wormeli states that often students missing assignments aren't because they just decided not to do it, but teachers treat them as if that is the case. There have been past experiences in school were I had extenuating circumstances and could not complete an assignment on time, but teachers punished me as if I just decided I did not care or just blew it off. In the case of some teachers, it feels as though they do not treat students as human beings who have a life outside of school with other priorities and problems. Taking time to understand students instead of reducing there final grade for not being in class is important as a teacher.

Chapter 7: FIAE

In this chapter, Wormeli discusses how to give grades meaning. It is argued that letter and number grades in many systems do not accurately describe mastery, and that too much emphasis is put on grades. There were two major points in this chapter that I found particularly interesting. The first in the results of a test that Wormeli quoted, that was taken of A and B students at an impoverished school. It turns out that they tested the same as C and D students at an affluent school. These schools are help to the same state learning standards so why is this? Wormeli claims that it could be because the teachers of the impoverished school have lower expectations. This is unacceptable, it discriminates upon students based on their socioeconomic status. This is no basis for lowering the level of education that is available to students. Another problem described by Wormeli is the idea of a "passing grade". If a student gets by with a D, the lowest grade they need to move on the the next level, then the student does not have mastery of the content. That is the flaw with the system, when we allow students who have not built the skills set forth in the course, to leave without meeting the standards.

Chapter 12: MI

Chapter 12 discussed the ever popular method of students memorizing knowledge so that they can get a good grade on a test, and then forget it after because they don't think they will ever need that information again. As a teacher, MI states that we are responsible for helping students retain what they learn. The chapter explains that memory is intelligent specific. I believe this is true because some students memorize knowledge by putting it to a beat or making rhymes, others like myself benefit by relating the content to real life. If you can find the strengths of your students, than you have to tools to help them retain the knowledge that is being fed to them. Another method of helping students retain knowledge that works with MI is getting students to think and allowing them to come to a conclusion themselves. I can recall many experiences were a teacher made me think and find the answer myself, a method that I think worked very well for me and gave me greater appreciation for the material. The content or ideas that I understood on my own I never forgot, and my self-esteem was boosted along with my ability to think.

Chapter 11: MI

Multiple Intelligence's are found in every human being, including those with special needs. While they may experience difficulty in many areas, they also have a strength that can be related to a multiple intelligence. The example given by Armstrong in chapter 11 is that autistic kids, while having difficulty in interpersonal intelligence, are amazing interpersonal learners and may have an amazing aptitude for music, art, or mathematics. This is why as a teacher, it is important to find the strengths within all of your students. MI insists that this needs to be done at the instructional level and also at the assessment level. Those students will be motivated to learn and gain a higher self esteem. I read that in Europe, an autistic child walks around looking at buildings or famous pieces of art, and with only walking by them, can recreate them in amazing detail and ability. Helping students find what they are good at, will help them succeed in your classroom and later in life.

Chapter 8: MI

Chapter eight discuses many ways to manage your classroom. There are many little things a teacher can do that are meant to get the classes attention at the beginning of each lesson. This chapter gives some great examples of how to do this effectively, and how to use methods that involve one or more multiple intelligences. These are meant to be used during transitions that occur before instruction or when the class gets in to small groups, and before activities. Things such as turning the lights off when students get too loud or having some your own sort of thing to do to quiet a class down is helpful. In my experience it takes much more than words to get the full attention of a group of students.

Chapter 8: UbD/DI

This chapter discusses the problem of grading for the rule book, and the idea of assigning a meaningless letter or number to a student at the end of the year to put on a report card and show to their parents. Often times too much emphasis is placed on making a letter or number grade, and not enough on creating learning and understanding. A student can memorize information just to get a good grade, without really absorbing the material. This method of grading does not really motivate student to understand or achieve mastery in the content. The chapter asks teachers to give grades based on clear goals and performance standards. This way the student needs to understand the content and goals, and the grade becomes almost explained instead of just being assigned. This way, a teacher can use grades to motivate students to understand the content, instead of discouraging them so that all that is focused on is a meaningless letter or number.

Chapter 14:MI

This chapter focuses on the potential ninth intelligence, Existential. The first part of the chapter covers how the intelligence mostly fits the criteria the other intelligences fit into, but it seems to be hard to fully chart aspects of the intelligence or find a way to evaluate students work as existential work. However, the book reminds us that it's important to keep this intelligence in mind, despite certain difficulties. The book gives suggestions on how teachers can incorporate existential intelligence in the classroom.

Chapter 13:MI

Another way to teach to different intelligences is exhibited by Armstrong in this chapter. The author suggests using various software, and gives examples of a few of the many that exist that target specific learning intelligences. Another suggestion in this chapter is to give career counseling to students. I like this idea because explaining the different jobs allows kids to relate to their strongest intelligence and a possible future career they would be good at and can get excited about. This process would help students with their self-knowledge, especially at the adolescent stage, where the students are still trying to figure themselves out. Another message in this chapter is that culture and the environment around a student has an effect on intelligence. This is because different cultures nourish certain intelligences from a young age. I have never personally experienced how culture affects my intelligence, but it is something to keep in mind when I start teaching.

Chapter 7: MI

Armstrong goes deeper into his explanations of the eight multiple intelligences, and discusses how a teacher could use each one in different ways in the classroom. The chapter explains that just speaking does not necessarily work for a linguistic learner, because it matters how you say the words and the vocabulary that is used, because both have an effect on the meaning of what you say. The author offered the idea of creating different activity sections of the classroom that each target a different intelligence. This idea seemed a little elementary for a high school or middle school. Personally, I had this kind of set up kindergarten and first grade, and I feel as though that image would be conjured up by every high school student who walks into their classroom and sees this set up. The idea is interesting, but I find it hard to believe that it would work at a secondary level.

chapter 9: UbD DI

This chapter discusses the backward design model, and how it works with differentiation. Tomlinson outlined an extensive example of a lesson outline that uses the backward design model. What was helpful was when the authors took lessons from the example and adjusted the lessons to differentiate the classroom according to different students needs. Mostly, from this chapter I was able to grasp a better understanding of how a unit planned with the backward design models ends up looking like, and how to adjust it to the needs of other students. As a result I better understand how a learning environment should look in an Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction classroom. Looking back I can remember teachers who outlined essential questions and ideas in the beginning with the introduction to the unit. However, if the class was having trouble understanding something, they would adjust their method or reinforce the idea in a different way.

Chapter 5: MI

Chapter five outlined different tools and ideas for teaching to multiple intelligences. I took note that some of these ideas fit more easily into a classroom, in that they were basic ways of teaching, while others required more creativity. This made me wonder if my past teachers had all of this knowledge about multiple intelligences. I can't help but think that if my teachers had known and been more creative about incorporating different methods into their teaching that I would have been able to grasp some of the lessons I did not understand and never learned. The chapter begins by stating that children learn through experiences. In terms of myself as a learner, I find this to be true. In classes where I found meaning and was allowed to experience through projects or field trips I had more success. In other classes were teachers did not make an effort to create an experience for me I had difficulty. I aspire to be the teacher who creates experience and meaning for students.

Chapter 6: MI

This chapter stressed that methods that are successful with one group or class may not always be successful with another. It gave examples of lessons that are targeted to each specific intelligences. As a teacher if I take any one of the examples, that means that it will only reach a select group of students, while leaving others unengaged. The idea is to combine all the intelligences in one lesson, so all students stay engaged and learn most effectively. What I think would be useful would be examples of combining intelligences in the lesson ideas. I realize that reaching every single student in one lesson would be very hard to do. I would aim to be as creative as possible to reach out to as many intelligences in one lesson as I can, if that is possible. Rather than making each lesson target different students. Because of this, I feel strongly that as a teacher my job is to be as creative as possible to cater to as many of the intelligences as possible in each lesson so that success can be reached by each individual student.

Ubd Di Chapter 7

Chapter seven is helpful in discussing how to cover the content with limited time usually given in the classroom. I like the method outlined in this chapter about using essential questions. Throughout the design of the unit we are creating in class, I have learned that the development of creative essential questions is an important part of gearing students minds to learning the appropriate information. I will use essential questions in my classroom as part of the introduction to the unit. Essential questions give meaning to each lesson because it gives the students the answer to where their learning will end up, and also gives teachers a a place to refer back to, in order to keep each lesson on track and stick to the big idea. The essential question in this idea is constantly repeated to frame the lessons, so students can relate one lesson the the others in the unit. I really took to the idea of using a series of lessons with in one unit.

Ubd Di Chapter 6

Chapter 6 discussed how to design a rich, challenging, and learning based curriculum. It gave the reader the key to designing a good curriculum based on the Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction theory. The key is focusing on important ideas, giving the lessons meaning, making the students think, allowing students to find knowledge for themselves, and eliminating the mystery of where the lesson is going. I will try and use this information when I create lesson plans myself. The chapter also discussed several questions that frequently arise from teachers. The answer the book gives for every question is that it takes experience to understand students and find patterns in what works and what doesn't. This impacts me because now I understand that teaching will be very difficult at first, and that once I am a working teacher my learning process is not over, I will always be learning about not only my subject, but about the students and patterns in human beings.

Abstract & Synthesis

Teaching MI theory is simple because all eight intelligences are linked to things that all children can relate to: words, numbers, pictures, the body, music people, the self, and nature. When describing MI theory, it is best to use simple terms when discussing the eight intelligences so the students can better understand the meaning of each one. Terms such as word smart to define linguistic intelligence, number smart to define logical-mathematical intelligence, picture smart to define spatial intelligence, and so on and so forth. Asking simple questions pertaining to each intelligence helps to build inclusion and makes every student feel intelligent themselves. Simple questions such as "How many of you can do math?" and "How many of you can draw?" are questions that a teacher can pose. Doing activities to introduce the model in real life instances so the students can experience all eight intelligences is a good way to introduce how the intelligences work. For example: having a career day in which people from different professions such as having an editor come in to discuss how he uses "word smart" activities in his job, or a tax accountant to see how he uses his "math smarts" in his area of work is something that could be done. Or going on a field trip and taking students to places in the community where each of the eight intelligences are practiced. The idea is to continue these activities throughout the year to give the students plenty of exposure to familiarize them with MI theory.
Most everyone of my classmates agree that teaching MI theory to students is important as it introduces them to different ways of learning. Through this, students can find the ways they learn best and incorporate it when in school and out in the "real world". It is important to get the students involved in activities that give them experience with each of the eight intelligences so they can get a feel for how they can be used. Keeping MI theory relevant to what goes on in the class helps familiarize the students with the model and keeps them focused on their strengths in learning.

Chapter 6: Creating Good Test Questions

Tests should not be a list of tiring questions that may or may not judge a students comprehension. They should test a students mastery, and should keep the student engaged and give them freedom to answer questions with their own knowledge. It is a good idea to mix traditional and non traditional questions and writing essays. Mixing up questions with forced choice questions (questions that require students to choose from assessments from the teacher) and constructed response questions (questions that require the student to generate information themselves) are ways to effectively set up an assessment. "By using a variety of questions and prompts, we get a better picture of students' mastery"(FIAE page 75). Providing "T" and "F" rather than true or false make grading easier for the teacher because they get rid of interpretations of messy letters or words. Keeping matching questions on the same page and having fill in the blanks toward the end of the sentence are both things that help with comprehension issues. When giving a prompt, the teacher needs to create questions that do not give room to roam. Providing specific instructions on how a question should be answered keeps the responses concise and on target. A fun way to construct an exam is to include students name in questions. They will have more fun answering the questions and will look forward to seeing their name appear in print on the exam. The fashion in which a teacher gives feedback on an exam is equally important. Students spend a lot of time studying and taking the test, it is the teachers job to grade them promptly and provide feedback so the student can learn from mistakes before further learning is implemented.

Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

The whole point of tiering is to adjust assignments and testing based on individual students' readiness, interest and way of learning best. This is not to make assessing easier for some, and harder for others, but to actually create the best way of learning for the individual. It is important to not tier every aspect of every lesson. "It's often okay for students to do what everyone else is doing..."(FIAE page 57). It is the teacher's job to change how they tier and to adjust the complexity of assignments more subtly each day. A learning contract is one method of tiering assessments. They give each student the ability to work at their own level in each lesson at their highest level of performance. They help the teacher assess progress and keep the student dedicated to their work. Learning menus can be used to give your student a choice of assignments to complete from a list of options. "Through tiering, we teach more effectively"(FIAE page 73). The object is to push students. They will be comfortable being pushed and will succeed as long as the bar is not set too high.

Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment

When assessing students learning, there are three very helpful methods that FIAE recommends. First, portfolios. "Portfolios are an excellent way to determine accurate grades for students in differentiated classes"(FIAE page 43). This is helpful for teachers, because they do not need to make any guesses as to how the student is mastering a subject. Many student samples of work give a teacher a broad range of work and gives the teacher a better idea of how learning is progressing. Portfolios are helpful to students because they help to set goals for the next thing a teacher will grade. It can be a good reflection period for both the teacher and the student. Rubrics are another popular tool used by teachers. They help focus learning and give a clear report of student comprehension. Student self assessment "is an important aspect of successful differentiation"(FIAE page 51). It give invaluable results and helps to set goals for both teacher and student. A recommendation is to make the first and last assessment of a unit the same. That will really give the teacher an understanding of how the students have grown.

Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

Assessment is a very important aspect in a differentiated classroom. It guides practice. Giving students information up front that they will need to know at the end of a unit is a positive thing a teacher can do because it gives students an idea of what is to come, and maybe what they can do to prepare. Students are likely to be more involved and actually do the work if they have a clear idea of what the finished product will look like. A stratedy to teach understanding can be done by offering essential questions; larger questions that are interesting to ponder and have more than one answer. I feel that students like to have discussions more than they would like to be lectured to. A teacher that assesses their own work benefits them because they can alter lessons as they go along. A teacher should be able to have a curriculum that can be changed, as through assessing students one will know what things need to be fixed.

Chapter 2: Mastery

The concept of teaching mastery to students was the main focus of chapter two. "Mastery is more than knowing information, of course, but it can even go beyond manipulating and applying that information successfully in other situations"(FIAE page 11). Mastery of something can be difficult to accomplish, but methods for teaching are improving to give students the knowledge needed to complete tasks. If a student can be proficient with each aspect discussed in a subject, mastery has been achieved. I feel that having every student being able to demonstrate a thorough understanding of a subject is a definite struggle, but that's what keeps teachers teaching. Things such as tests, quizzes models, demonstrations, videos, cds, and rubrics, are all things that puts students on the right track to achieving mastery of a subject. To have students be able to tell you how they got to the point where they have mastered something is key to understanding if they have really reached that level.

Chapter 1: The Differentiated Instrution Mind-set

I like how this book started with discussing what differentiated instruction is. In our UbD book, it defines the term but I feel that this book explains what it is a lot easier. The book describes differentiated instruction as "doing what's fair for students"(FIAE page 3). It is giving students all the tools necessary for them to succeed. What is important to remember is that it is not individual instruction. It is a highly developed method of teaching and research shows that teachers that use the method have students who succeed at higher levels. Using differentiated instruction will help students use the method in future classes, regardless of whether they're differentiated or not, because they have acquired the tools necessary to handle whatever comes their way.