2009-2010 TSS Blog: Differentiation!

2009-2010 TSS Blog: Differentiation!
I enjoyed hearing Jeani Rottle speak. I left her presentation with several ideas that I want to try and share with others. First, I loved her rules (Do not stop me from teaching. Do not stop others from learning). These will be my classroom rules from now on. They are specific, to the point, and easy to understand. Second, I really liked her Exit Tickets. I felt that they were a great way to see what the kids knew and what needed to be retaught without having a lot of papers to grade. I also thought that they were great documentation for SBRC. I thought the two most valuable items from her presentation were the Bloom's Taxonomy chart (verbs, sample question stems, and potential activities) and The Ultimate Combo sheet (linking Bloom's Taxonomy to the Multiple Intelligences). I plan to share the Bloom's Taxonomy chart with my principal and hopefully get a copy for everyone at Key. I think that it will help me plan higher level thinking activities and ask higher level thinking questions. I liked her idea of hanging it in the classroom and using a different section each day to pull questions from. I think that this will hold me more accountable for pushing my students to move past the knowledge and comprehension levels and into the application, analysis, synthesis. and evaluation levels. The Ultimate Combo sheet will help me come up with more engaging lessons. After teaching for many years, we tend to be stuck doing the same activities over and over. When I reflected on my teaching, I realized that most of the activities that I do with my children are verbal/linguistic, visual/spatial, and interpersonal. I need to take into account other learning styles. I would like to incorporate more musical/rhythmic, bodily/kinesthetic, and naturalist activities into my classroom. The Ultimate Combo sheet will give me examples of activities that I can do to incorporate more learning styles into my teaching. For example, I could let my kids act out a response or write a song for a response instead of everyone having to respond in the exact same way. I will definitely be referring back to hand-outs and plan to give a copy of them to my mentee.