Tiered Activity Lessons

Perhaps the most common instructional routine is to reflect differentiation through lesson planning. Activities take place frequently throughout classrooms (K-12), but meeting the needs of diverse learners requires pre-planning. The following outline has been provided by Tomlinson (1999, pp. 84-85):

• Select the concept(s), generalization(s), and skill(s) that will be the focus of the activity. These are the elements the teacher knows are essential to helping students build a framework of understanding of the topic.

• Think about the students for whom you are planning the activity. Use assessments (journal entries, class discussions, quizzes) related to the range of readiness for the topic. Add to that your awareness of student interests and learning profiles.

• Create one activity or select one from those that you’ve used in the past. The activity should be interesting, require a high-level of thought, and clearly focus on elements that will cause students to use a key skill to understand the key ideas.

• Think about ways to structure the activity so that appropriate levels of challenge exist for all learners, including those who are regarded as advanced. Once you have coupled assessment data with your knowledge of your students to discern the optimal starting point for each student, it will help you to visualize who needs an alternate version of the activity lesson plan.

• To create alternate versions of the activity lesson plan, “clone” the activity. Cloning takes place when you vary materials students will use (from very basic to challenging even for advanced learners). Students are allowed to express their understanding in a variety of ways that reflect a range of variables (see Tomlinson’s Equalizer).

• Match a version of the task to each student based on student need and task requirements. The goal is to match the task’s degree of difficulty and pacing to student readiness.