Understanding the basic principles of D.I.:  An insight into Carol Ann Tomlinson's D.I for dummies!

Carol Ann Tomlinson has become some sort of guru, mentor or reference when you talk about DI.  I personally enjoyed reading this book for my IDP, not only because the language and the insight into DI is very easy to follow if you're not familiar with terms or ideas associated with DI, but also because I got the feeling that she understands the inner constraints and deceptions? of us teachers in our path of making learning accessible for all of our students.  Mrs. Tomlinson clearly reveals the secret to one of the most successful and powerful changes in the didactics of teaching in this easy-to-read book, defending the need for a new kind of education and a change of perspective from what we are used to think education is.

As a DI rookie myself, I can say I really got to understand the core principles of DI by reading this book.  The vivid examples of classrooms, classroom practices and data associated to learning and teaching issues make the content of the book come alive and progressively helps you shape up what DI might eventually look like in your own context.  Mrs. Tomlinson keeps an insteresting style in which the usual metalanguage and wording of academic texts is replaced with a deeper connection and understanding of the conflicts teachers face when teaching heterogeneous groups of kids.  Most of the chapters in the book tell you about stories in which DI comes in hand as a solution to a teacher's dilemma or even nightmare!

The content of the book flows from the basic understandings of What is a differentiated classroom? all the way through elements of differentiation, and my favorite, How do you make it all work?.  Along with the book you gain also a good understanding of some of the basic but widely-known instructional strategies to differentiate: centers, tiered activities, menus, contracts, choice boards, among others.

Rethinking how we do school and for whom,-one of the chapters, takes you on a walk in time, emphasizing  the changes that have impacted the ideas on education, and how research has been a key element to make education respond to an incredibly rapid-moving world.  I loved to read about the fact that even though there is so much research and knowledge about how we learn now, there is little evidence of how all that wealth is actually producing more visible transformations in education.  The reflection that is given to us in terms of the challenges we can offer, and the opportunities to balance equity and excellence in our classroom, make our efforts worth trying.  "All children come to us differentiated" (p.24), so it really makes sense to offer them a  kind of instructions that values differences and that gets accommodated to those differences.  Thinking that students need to fit what they find when they enter your door, will make those who could be encouraged to give more, to simply give up and lose that intrinsic love for learning. 

 The concept of artful teaching, a response to a desperate geometry teacher who struggled because he was extremely skilled and professional, thought of powerful and engaging activities, and yet his students were not on the same dimension and really hated the class, is a simple and basic idea that serves as the foundation for DI according to the author.  The harmony that needs to exist among these 3 elements:  The Teacher, The Students and The Content will totally make a difference in the way you approach education itself:

I personally liked the fact that Mrs. Tomlinson referred to the extreme need of having "Healthy Classroom" as a condition for developing the right spirit of DI.  In these classrooms:

• Each kid is like all others and different from all others.
• Kids need unconditional acceptance as human beings.
• Kids need to believe they can become something better than they are.
• Kids need help in living up to their dreams.
• Kids have to make their own sense of things.
• Kids often make their own sense of things more effectively and coherently when adults collaborate with them.
• Kids need action, joy and peace.
• Kids need power over their lives and learning.
• Kids need help to develop that power and use it wisely.

You basically, as stated, need to make your classroom turn like a home, where your students, now your children, come eagerly to learn and be taught the secrets of independence and joy!  I loved that simple concept, and the deep impact it could cause if we embrace the 15 or 20 responsibilities looking at us in our classrooms as our own kids, our own children.  Isn't that also what you expect that your children get when they go to school?  Food for thought...

The way in which a teacher manipulates, stretches, maximizes and engages content in his/her daily practice will also make a difference in the way your students see your practice.  A healthy classroom is also one in which independence and perspective are valued, and where thinking and inquiring are encouraged through structured questioning and thought-provoking activities and materials.  As stated by the author "When subject matter is dynamic, intellectually intriguing, and personal -when it bestows power to the learner- the "details" also become more important and memorable".  From my own experience, teaching the broader picture through effective techniques and strategies, has led me to have the kids gain a better understanding of basic things such as accents and spelling patterns in Spanish. The program of Inquiry offers that unique opportunity in our school, and well, it shows to work really well, when you engage in a more meaningful practice and you guide the kids into deep reflection and personal connection with the "stuff" or the content.

My own conclusion after reading

The intrinsic connection between DI principles and the  essential elements of the IB-PYP curriculum  lets the teacher materialize the fundamentals of a model of education that becomes more effective, meaningful and more connected to the needs of both kids and the changing world.   The tangible nature of the strategies and methods provided by DI help structure the more abstract concepts of the PYP curriculum into a practice that will enable students to manipulate content, knowledge and skills, helping them develop an incredible sense of awareness of their own learning and the way content is related to life, and to personal development as well.  I find this book to be an amazing  pathway to understanding how we can really make a difference, and also, a great startpoint for all those of us who strive for offering a new way of creating school, and school experiences.

Does it sound familiar?  Isn't it time already to make them part of deciding what's going to be exciting?

Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

A great image that supports a core principle of DI: Assessment for Learning!

Formative Assessment:  A distinctive feature of a differentiated Classroom

Once I decided to embark in this adventure called "Differentiated Instruction", I supposed I was going to not only work a lot! but also gain an enormous amount of strategies that would change the way I viewed and used assessment.  We already know how those chunks of data drive our instruction, our grouping, and also the planning of new and more adapted learning experiences.

Reading the book I am reviewing now, I encountered very meaningful and fun strategies and approaches for assessing my kids.  The book  discusses and teaches you ways to incorporate more assessment for learning  opportunities in your classroom, in  order to "support learning during the learning process".  Formative assessments also match the PYP principles of developing autonomy and skills to self-assess own learning, and identify areas of progress and difficulty so that students develop a comprehensive awareness of their own process of understanding.  Through the use of more formative assessments, students will be able to tell whether they are in the right path or not, and evidence gathered from them helps the teacher to better guide and modify instruction in order to address all the levels of readiness, and comprehension.  As stated by the author " Without time to reflect on and interact meaningfully with new information, students are unlikelyto retain much of what is "covered" in their classrooms". 

The fact that many of the suggested ways to assess comprised in this book are quick and easy to do, low prep and very fun, make it very practical for daily use as well.  You can gather a wealth of information from your students as you try to monitor how their comprehension goes.  Because of the options provided on the book it is also very recommended that we use a wide variety of forms of these formative assessment.  From my experience using the resources in the book, once you use one, you start plotting possible adaptations and changes to suit your group, and from that experience I have multiplied my bank of assessments to triple the 25 the book has offered me!

The strategies in this book can be categorized in 4 main groups:

• Summaries and reflections.
• Lists, charts, and graphic organizers.
• Visual representations of information.
• Collaborative activities.

The great thing about this resource is that the author provides you with a step-by-step guide in order to help you implement the assessments in your classroom from introduction,  instructions, applications, tips for tiering, connections with ICT, samples of students' responses, and reproducible copies of each one.

As I have used the resources in the book, I have grown in awareness of the importance of assessment as a source of information to drive my practice, my students' confidence has been boosted because of the chances they have to demonstrate they "got it", and the daily interaction with content and skills makes the children aware of their own learning and make them become better monitors of their own understanding.  This way, my students know that there is always a chance to feel successful and that these chances are provided almost every day through a wide variety of strategies, games, and interactions that help me better teach them.  My kids in Primero B also know that I use these assessments to plan my classes, and have surprisingly taken them very seriously and rigurously, to the point that some of them say "tenemos que mostrar lo que aprendimos con mucho detalle".

Further scaffolding is provided in the book for struggling learners, and adaptations and accomodations are suggested as well.  A great resource that may benefit your own path of learning and using  DI in your class!  

A Great resource to keep supporting DI within your classroom:
Learning to Listen, Listening to Learn:  Using language to enhance learning and behavior in the inclusive classroom.  A book by Noel Janis-Norton

Would you say your life is perfect if your students :

—  acted in a polite, positive  and considerate manner, listening, helping others and not laughing at other people's mistakes?

—  followed instructions the first time they are given and without even moaning or complaining about the why of things?

—  remembered and followed rules and routines with little repetition? 

—  kept doing their work without bothering their neighbors and probably you?

—  paid attention to EVERY detail of EVERY instruction given out for EVERY task?

As incredible as it may sound, this book offered me tons of ideas and practical insight into how to achieve some of these bulleted "dreams" by giving me a wider perspective on the incidence of language in learning, and also  enhancing the differentiated environment I am trying to build in my Primero B community of learners.  The author shares her experience on the research developed in neurosciences that has provided a lot more of understanding into the reason and causes of many behavioral and learning problems and disabilities in our heterogeneous learning environments.

Mrs. Janis-Norton bases her views on basic principles such as:

• Learning does not have to be a painful experience.
• All human beings are good in essence. (talking about labeling... and other issues)
•  All children want to love, be appreciated, give their best and cooperate.
• Teaching can be an exciting thing to do every single day.
• everything we try to resist, persists.  Everything we are afraid of or everything we don't like to face becomes a problem, sooner or later.
• We see things the way they are, but the way we are.
• Children know what they want, the adults know what the children need.
• There is a source of strength in every difficult moment.

These may seem to be taken from a book to boost your self-esteem, but according to the author, they are as a whole, aspects that because of their complex simplicity, become clichés in our profession, rather than realities. 

The incidence of language and the power of listening as a powerful tool for learning are the core of this compendium of best practices that aim to give you strategies and techniques to better support those students who lack the necessary processing skills that are required in order to feel successful in our more listening-based classrooms.  As part of my own path of study and application of different strategies for DI, I can testify of the effectiveness of these strategies, I've witnessed stunning growth in some of my own kids just  by following some of these techniques regularly as part of my teaching.

“In the majority of the cases, the biggest difficulties in terms of learning and behavior occur due to the fact that children have difficulties with their auditory processing channel.  This is something really unfortunate because most of the information in our classrooms is given orally" p.25

Some common behaviors:  Reaching out for these kids can be quite a challenge, fiding ways to differentiate within the context of so many things going on at the same time will totally make a difference, and guess what?  It will impact those around that kid as well, they'll become more aware of a style that will make them even better listeners.

• They have difficulty to follow instructions given orally.
• They want to start working before the instructions are given out.
• It is easier for them to follow an instruction once they are shown how to do somethinginstead of simply telling them what to do
• They usually have trouble making connections between what has been taught and what is being heard.
• They have problems with abstract thinking or manipulating concepts.  They tend to be more literal and concrete.
• They forget what they listen very easily.
• They read without intonation or expression.
• They are always trying to call your attention or his/her peers' because of his/her fear for failure.

Some of the strategies you'll find:

1.  A tone of voice that is firm, no yelling or screaming.

2.  Eye contact:  teach these students to gain focus by giving eye contact at all times, by asking them to look at your neck, your nose, etc.

3.  Eliminate visual stimuli from around boards, or working areas.

4.  Write the instructions or have them ready on a poster before the task is presented.

5.  Show how it's done at the same time you are giving the instruction.

6.  Use a wide variety of sentence lengths.  Avoid wordy sentences, and pause when necessary.  Divide information in chunks rather than giving a lecture.

7.  Legitimate all of the questions asked, no matter how foolish they may sound.

8.  Responding properly to "I don't get it... I don't understand..."  (Contact me for more details!!)

9.  Use connective words as you talk.

10.  Establishing clear criteria for success by explicitely telling the outcome of every single lesson.

11.  Think before speaking.

12.  Use gestures, facial expressions, proximity in order to minimize misbehavior or lack of attention.

13.  Wait for silence if interrupted.

14.  Give out an instruction and ask someone why we are doing what we are doing.

Use Descriptive Praise as a powerful tool!

We are very used to praise students by stating simple phrases like "good job!" or "Keep up the good work!", which have become meaningless clichés in the minds of many of our students.  A revolutionary concept of praising is introduced by Dr. Janis in this book when she refers to descriptive  praising as a powerful tool to send a clear message of your expectations to all of the kids.

Instead of the typical "Great work!" you may try to say something like "I really love to see how you used these sentences in your introductory paragrpah, they give a lot more detail and they catch the reader since they start reading, keep using this strategy!"  or "I can see you are trying to use a visual method in order to tackle this math problem and it seems to work well, you got the right answer by also exploring other ways different than just calculating directly!"

—  Our culture values the evaluative praise the most, but it is widely known that this tactic does not encourage change or stimulates students to "do better".

—  The descriptive praise establishes expected behavior clearly  and reinforces positve behavior that helps the whole group create a stimulating and inviting atmosphere, an organized and cooperative environment conducive to learning.

—  Describing instead of judging the actions of others can positively influence behavior.  It states and sends a clear message of what you want them to do instead of what you don't want them to do.

—  Descriptively praising your students develops and stimulates self-esteem of individuals and groups.

—  Children learn to CHANGE their behavior, without being forced to do so!!

We're not too far from this scene if we don't change our tactics and accommodate to a now, more empowered and problematic generation of learners.

 

The Ongoing Assessment Window

A word cloud showing the content of the blog so far... no wonder why DI is student-centered!!

According to Betty Hollas, ongoing and meaningful assessment should guide our practice, they are the core and heart of DI, they drive our decisions and planning as well as the ways in which we handle content and adapt for specific needs.   Data gathered in assessment defines the way you will design the upcoming learning opportunities.   Providing the students with opportunities to prove what they know in different ways and formats, allows us to have a wider view and perspective on how to accomodate for special needs as we teach and try to reach every student. 

When students are included in the process of assessment, there are real opportunities for them to grow as learners and also obtain better results as we make goals clear and also give them opportunities to reflect upon what they learn. 

Some of the strategies I've used are:

•   The human continuum for pre-assessment.
•   Analogies
•   Evaluating the appropriateness of reading materials
•   Signal cards
• If you know it, show it! (by using thumbs up, standing up, remaining seated, smiley faces, colors, etc)
• Exit cards
• Student self-assessment.
• Three facts and a fib.
• Learning logs and response journals

-----Our Math continuum:  a great tool to develop self-awareness about learning!








Our inquiry board ---

Open-ended question board.

Our Unit board depicting artifacts, a museum and students pre-assessment on time.

The Flexible Grouping Window: Prioritizing interaction to enhance learning

Sometimes I hear people say that the only way to display DI is through small group instruction and by having a thousand centers in our classroom.  It might  sound ideal, but let's be practical, who has all that time for that cumbersome load of work that is needed to put everything together?  I love the idea of incorporating varied settings for group work in which students could gain understanding, a strong feeling of belonging and still construct meaning and master concepts and skills.  Betty Hollas sythetizes her third window as follows:

Some aspects to take into account are also:

1.  Group size.

2.  Building students' awarenss on accountability and roles within the groups:  I have incorporated a group checklist after students finish a task.  They know that they will have to self-assess at the end of every project and that gives them a clear view of what I expect from their work.  Prompting and scaffolding is provided along the way, thus developing a sense of increasing independence, something that I love to see in my first graders.
3.  Agree on protocols and norms to make group work a smooth thing to do.
4.  Teachers are coaches and facilitators.

Incorporating flexible grouping within your daily practices for DI makes sre that you approach learning styles, multiple intelligences, skills, interests, readiness etc.  Grouping promotes student achievement and a personal interaction with knowledge that sets the tone for a more meaningful way to learn and also teach!  Flexible grouping also offerss the opportunity of extending student understanding of concepts and content through anchoring, a concept that is closely related to DI and something that we have incorporrated into our daily planning as we teach in Primero B.

Students will soon start understanding and using the language of DI as you develop the awareness of grouping as a powerful tool to  meet each individual's needs.  My students for example, already know there are groups for Language and Math and they've realised that the group setting changes over time. They've also realized that once you master certain skills you are able to move on to another group.  Sometimes we mix students (a yellow, a blue and a red member into one group) in order to add variety to the interaction, and also so that students in the lowest spectrum of skills development are in touch with successful learners and strategies they use to tackle learning opportunities and activities.  The learning they get from this interaction is valuable, and clearly sets the tone for further reflection and awareness in our classroom.

Some practices we've been using in our classroom are:

• Numbered Heads Together:  Grouping students in fours and assign each one of them a number 1 to 4.  Then you pose a question or an issue to be discussed.  The group will then get together, discuss and share their response, and everyone needs to be very attentive and be able to respond if I call them up to share the group's opinion.  Those students to tend to be "wiser" will somehow "teach" the others, while the "lazy" ones need to find a way to contribute as well at least by paying attention because they don't know which number will be called. 
• Discussion Cards for Narrative Text:  Students are given a reading assignment according to their level of readiness and they are assigned a given "job" in order to focus on one element of the reading:  characters, setting, theme, and resolution.  We have included differentiated question prompts for each one of the "jobs" so that students have a clear target as they read and prepare their product.
• 4-6-8:  As a whole class, you could work out the names of 4 characters, 6 settings and 8 events that might happen in a story.  Then you can circle a character, a setting and an event and encourage the students to write a story using these cues.

By clearly stating the roles within the group, this quad of first graders was able to put together a song that tells about our responsibility towards our natural resources.  Careful planning using the guidance of the teachers, and appropriate monitoring and self-assessment at the end, with clear criteria for success made it possible to hear a wonderful product!

THE QUESTIONING WINDOW: How to use questioning to build Student-Centered Instruction

Pace is sharing his findings on "The most polluted places on Earth" based on his own question during class. His inquiry led other classmates into researching polluted rivers, cities and pollution-related issues such as the tree-chopping crime in the Amazon rainforest!

Sometimes we feel trapped in the middle of a monologue when we teach. Avoiding these "lectures" as we teach will put the ball in the right side, giving students the responsibility for developing learning experiences and insights as we move along the curriculum. Such a demanding task is well-supported by our school's flexible use of time and the Program of Inquiry that drives day-to-day instruction. In her book, Betty Hollas reminds us all of the need of having the students as the center of the instruction, "it means the focus is off you an on your students, it means students are doing something,as opposed to just sitting and listening" pg.27. Teaching will become a more effective task if we deveote more time to really think our questions and if we provide enough time for students to develop questioning skills and come up with their own questions. All of these elements will provide a high-quality instruction in which you are aiming at higher-level thinking, students will be more engaged and encouraged to see new perspectives and construct meaning, aspects which related and fit perfectly into the PYP curricular framework. She then moves on and keeps us thinking by asking "Which is more important in your classroom, the question or the answer?". What do you think? How much more can your students learn if you let them drive the questioning? Are students doing self-differentiation when they ask their questions? How far can we go as teachers if we use the well-known Bloom's taxonomy to consciously reach higher levels of thinking in our questions?

Some of the strategies I've been using in my classroom include the following:

• Differentiated Wait time: giving enough time for students to think about what they're going to say. I usually prompt my students after a question to say it in their minds, double check to see if it sounds good, then say it again and then raise their hands. Mrs. Hollas recommends that we have teh students show understanding of what we're teaching every 8 to 10 minutes by pairing up students and share, playing a quick game, etc.
• Question Tic-Tac-Toe / Cubes (using Bloom's taxonomy): a great way to validate elarning styles and readiness in your classroom!
• Question posters: Display a piece of poster paper with a question related to your current unit, then encourage students to add their answers on sticky notes as the lesson moves on. By doing this, my students have been able to propose their own poster questions to be answered by all the class.
• Questions Wall (Adapted from Betty Holla's Questions that Keep going around my head): I created a wall including a photo of each student in a thinking pose, then I added speech bubbles and laminated them. Every time a student asks a relevant question related to our unit of inquiry, or if he/she makes an interesting statement, I record those on the bubble for further study or research. Valuing these questions has promoted a culture of questioning in my classroom that the children enjoy and feel very proud of. We also include an Inquirer of the Week in our weekly homework summary sheet, highlighting the questioning and inquiiry skills of one of our kids and sharing that with the parents of our class. See the attachment for details.
• Give me five! using a graphic organizer depicting a hand, students answer the following questions when we read a book: What mental pictures do I see? (visualization), What does this remind me of? (Connections), What do I know now, even though I wasn't told the information in the text? (inference), What might happen next? (Prediction), What was this mostly about? (Summarization/conclusions)
• But the Answer's not here!: An adaptation to this strategy has led me to work hard with my students on types of questions: right-there questions, questions that need research and thinking, and questions that require that I connect with the text.
• D.E.A.Q (Drop Everything And Question): every other week, we would stop our routine and use question starters to tell the kids to think of questions using these. I collect the questions and use them for further work on ur inquiry or for reading comprehension/homework purposes.

As we are immersed in an inquiry-based program, we should become aware of the need to always be ready in terms of questioning. Betty Hollas suggests a common-sense practice that we might disregard as we plan our instruction: Planning questions as a key aspect of our teaching. By following our goals and indicators, targeting these and translating them into activities that make meaning of the content and constantly monitoring our students' success through ongoing assessment, the questioning comes in handy in order to articulate everything altogether.

I love the image that Mrs. Hollas shares about us teachers being a pitcher in a baseball game, "the pitcher determines what pitches to throw, and he determines the speed and location of the ball. The greater the variety of pitches a pitcher can throw, the more he can influence the success of his team" Pag. 4

Useful Resources I've found:

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKqs3D0Z0M
http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/01_VisibleThinkingInAction/01a_VTInAction.html