Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Compacting & Differentiation in Content Areas
Chapter 4 gives great strategies about compacting curriculum & differentiation. I think both of these buzz words are going around right now. My question for you is do you personally use any compacting or differentiation in your current classroom and can you give us examples of what they are and how you use them?
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I recently tried something new in my geometry classes. On a homework assignment, I offered a "challenge/extension problem" for students to do as a bonus. The problem introduced trig. identities and I showed an example of simplifying an expression. Then I offered two easy expressions for students to simplify. These are concepts that are usually taught in an Honors Geometry course, but unfortunately we don't have any honors classes at my school.
ReplyDeleteThe three students who tried the extension problem then ASKED ME for more, similar problems to try out. So since they've already mastered the simple trig ratios that the other students need more time and practice on, these three students are now doing trig identity problems and learning the law of sines and cosines, while the majority of the class is mastering sine/cosine/tangent.
This is the first time that I've felt that differentiation was very natural for me, and I loved that my students were so into doing the "hard" math - so much that they asked for harder work (little did they know that I was planning on giving it to them anyway :)
That is wonderful & it sounds like it was very easy to do. Did you have them self correct or did you correct it? AND did you allow them to collaberate with others while doing it?
ReplyDeleteI like it too when you have at least three students onto an idea. They fuel each other with enthusiasm and raise the expectation.
ReplyDeleteTwo of the students are in my first period class, so they work together on it during that class. The other, very advanced student, is in another class, and he is able to work on it alone.
ReplyDeleteWhat is REALLY amazing though, is that ALL three of these students come to my classroom every day during lunch to continue working on the problems. During lunch I have plenty of time to answer their questions and I try to guide them in the right direction - but as much as possible I try to have them solve the problems without my interference or direction. I never asked the boys to come at lunch, they chose to do so themselves.
Reis,S.M. (2004). Grouping and acceleration practices in gifted education. Corwin Press and the National Association of Gifted Children, Thousand Oaks, CA.
ReplyDeleteThis is just one book in a series of books put out by the NAGC. Each book covers a different aspect of gifted education and contains research papers from the premier publication on gifted education, "Gifted Child Quarterly."
Please check out my new blog on the scientific research related to gifted instruction.
http://scientificresearchgifted.blogspot.com
This is a new blog and will be expanded as I collect more research. The primary purpose of the site is to give teachers and administrators’ research based information related to gifted instruction in a compacted format.
Too many teachers and administrators are now telling gifted coordinators, "Prove that the methods you want to implement are scientifically based." I hope this site will answer some of these question.
Perceived challenges of compacting and differentiated instructions:
ReplyDelete- Lack of repertoire of instructional strategies.
- Lack of modeled training in implementing differentiation in a heterogeneous classrooms.
- Lack of time to create, plan, and implement diverse learning activities.
- Fear: grading nightmares; classroom management nightmares; assessment tracking nightmares; and logistics of teaching different topics to different groups of students.
- Inability to effectively group students to their learning abilities or styles.
- Lack of administrative support.
84% of teachers have never received training in differentiated instruction or have only received minimal training in how to compact and differentiate instruction.
Fear of the unknown is our greatest challenge. If you do not dare to try, knowing you might fail, then you fail to learn.
Is there a proven model in which gifted differentiation works well? I would love to visit that site!!
ReplyDelete