Chapter 5

The big idea in this chapter is tiering. For the purpose of the book and the chapter the author states that tiering emphasizes the adjustments teachers make in assessment according to students’ readiness levels. In this chapter I learned that it is important to start tiering by expecting every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard this way the minimum expectation is the standard or the benchmark performance. I also learned that it is helpful to list every skill or bit of information a student must use in order to meet the need of the task or assignment successfully. As teachers we can do this since most of the material we teach has subsets of skills and content that we can break down for students. This chapter talked about learning contracts and why they were beneficial for some students to have. I learned that they allow students to work at their own pace and that they are teacher and student designed tasks that fulfill the expectations of the unit. I also learned that checkpoints are listed on most contracts. The checkpoint listed help the teacher assess student progress and possibly change the instruction as a result and they keep students dedicated to the tasks and learning. Other things can be helpful when tiering are tic-tac-toe boards, cubing, summarization pyramid. Two other important ideas in this chapter which majorly impacted me were Frank William’s Taxonomy of Creativity and RAFT(S). Using tiering when making my lesson plans will be helpful down the road when I need it instead of having to go back and incorporate them into my lessons and assessments later.