Reflection: Designing for differentiation

Backward design is something I’ve always included in my lessons. I’ve always found it’s hard to get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going and that applies to the classroom as well. I look at the targets for the units or levels, identify what skills are essential and what skills are tertiary to get there, then look at how they can flow into each other. I’ve never really given much conscious thought to looking at the starting point, though I happen to do that unconsciously in topic oriented programs.

Using a summative assessment to pre-assess students for the unit, as opposed to using it to sort them into classes, looks like an excellent way to reduce rehash lessons and give more time to focus on novel activities to support, reinforce, or expand student knowledge. I would love to see how this can apply to my general classes, the resulting activities would be of more interest and relevance to the students and of more interest to me as the teacher.

While looking into this, I came across teacher writings where they used regular pre-assessments before each unit or activity to do a quick group sort of students so they can focus on activities best suited to their knowledge and understanding. Doing this on a regular basis is a wonderful idea academically; students have different strengths compared to each other so it’s reasonable to assume for some topics they’ll need extra help and for others they’re experts (for their age level) and would be better suited pursuing expanded knowledge at a self-pace. I’ve also seen students who were held back even in subjects where they knew more than the teacher because they were “pre-assessed” into the “special” or “remedial” track at school. This is also beneficial for the school and classroom cultures; breaking students out of the labels of “special needs” and “the stupid track” helps students learn to treat others as complex ever-evolving people instead of pre-defined boxes who can never change.

This idea really brings me back to when I taught the Soliya Connect program. There were set goals for the end of the program and regular topics we should cover. Through regular pre-assessments I determined what students already understood and prioritized the material they didn’t understand. For the weekly writing assignments, the students submitted them electronically. After scanning them, I would sort the students into heterogeneous groups so the students could use their strengths to help where others could use improvement. We would then hold large group discussions to reteach anything students were not clear on followed by a general assessment about the next topic before prioritizing the assigned readings.

Now that I have conscious awareness of how I’ve used pre-assessments to shape the path of instruction, I can refine the process in the classes where I’m actively using it and consciously begin to apply it in other classes.