After identifying essential understandings and the objectives within them, we identify specific tasks we can employ to determine our students' levels of readiness regarding the topics. Think, "These are the things students must learn and her's where they are already. What experiences do I need to provide in order for them to master this material?
Attending to student readiness allows for academic growth. This reminds me of the term "Proximal Development." We don't want the students to engage in a task that is too easy and doesn't require them to challenge their thinking. However, we don't want them to engage in a task that is too complicated for them and sends them in to frustration mode. The most learning occurs when the task is a little beyond the student, but there is support for them to persevere through. Students' readiness to learn particular ideas and skills at particular times will inevitable vary, a teacher must make appropriate readiness adjustments to enable consistent academic growth for each learner. (Tomlinson, C., & McTighe, J., 2006 pg. 19).
Differentiating by Readiness:
Differentiating by Readiness:
- Learners must work at an appropriate degree of challenge or degree of difficulty with what they seek to learn.
- When tasks are too difficult for students, they become frustrated and do not learn effectively or efficiently.
- When tasks are too easy for students, they become bored and do not learn- in spite of the fact that they might earn high grades.
- To learn, tasks for a student must be moderately challenging for that particular student.
- Learning happens when a task is a little too difficult for a learner and scaffolding is provided to help the student span the difficulty.
- Learning occurs through a progression of appropriately scaffolded task at degrees of difficulty just beyond a student's reach.
- Motivation to learn is decreased when tasks are consistently too difficult or too easy .
- (Tomlinson, C., & McTighe, J., 2006 pg. 180).