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Week2 Post

1) Learning goals are essential for differentiation because they ensure all students are working towards the same understanding, knowledge, and skills, even if they take different paths. High-quality learning goals include overarching understanding goals along with more specific knowledge and skill goals. 2) Formative assessment plays a key role in differentiation by informing teachers about student understanding so they can group students and design activities at different levels. Pre-assessments also challenge teacher assumptions and reveal what students already know. Culturally responsive teaching relies on understanding students through relationships and assessments.

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47 views4 pages

Week2 Post

1) Learning goals are essential for differentiation because they ensure all students are working towards the same understanding, knowledge, and skills, even if they take different paths. High-quality learning goals include overarching understanding goals along with more specific knowledge and skill goals. 2) Formative assessment plays a key role in differentiation by informing teachers about student understanding so they can group students and design activities at different levels. Pre-assessments also challenge teacher assumptions and reveal what students already know. Culturally responsive teaching relies on understanding students through relationships and assessments.

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EDG 508 Discussion Post Week 2

Q1: One of the most important requirements of differentiation is ensuring that all students
are working toward meeting the same goal. Why? How is the quality of a teacher’s
learning goals connected to differentiation? Why do learning goals matter for
differentiation? What role do they play?
This question challenged me because I needed to learn more about the intent of

differentiation. Doubet and Hockett (2015) made it clear that differentiation is not just different

tasks for groups of students, but is rather different paths for students to reach the same goals,

“making sure that all students are working toward the same learning goals. Different tasks

aligned to different learning goals are not differentiated; they are simply different. All

differentiated tasks should be centered on shared understandings, knowledge, and skills”

(Doubet & Hockett, 2015, p. 43). Knowing that differentiation is guiding students towards the

same learning goals, it makes the choice of learning goals more important.

High quality learning goals, according to Doubet and Hockett (2015) include

understanding goals, knowledge goals, and skill goals, nested within an overarching concept.

Broad, but well-defined understanding goals allow teachers to design different activities and

resources to challenge each student in reaching that goal. Knowledge and skill goals are more

specific, but a teacher can arrange her lessons so that as students meet those goals, they can

apply their learning towards deepening their understanding of the overall concept. Driving

towards an understanding goal allows students to use their knowledge and skills to explore

patterns and discover connections, rather than looking at a checklist of skills that must be

mastered. For students on the fringes, a checklist of skills may seem too daunting to even try or

it could be a list of things a student already knows. Jenson (2005) asserted that “students acquire

and retain more when they must analyze and restructure information than when they simply
receive or consume it (in Doubet & Hockett, 2015, p. 113), further emphasizing the role of

understanding goals in differentiation.

Reflecting on my teaching, I know that I have misunderstood differentiation. I created

different tasks aligned with different learning goals, thus missing the point. I wonder how I can

reframe my learning goals so that I can still support my lowest students, while at the same time

challenging my top students. Would an understanding goal centered on using math to

communicate information be appropriate? Within that understanding goal, a knowledge goal

could be that the slope of a line is the change in outputs compared to the change in inputs, and a

skill goal could be calculating the slope of a line. I am thinking that I would then create

activities with various levels of support and entry points that are all working towards

communicating using math. That is not how I have been framing my lessons, but if this is on the

right track, I am definitely heading this way next year.

Q2: What role does assessment (e.g., pre/post, formative, summative) play in instruction,
differentiation, and culturally responsive teaching?
Assessment is the center of what happens in schools. Decisions teachers make regarding

student readiness, lesson effectiveness, activity success, and behavior management all stem from

continual assessment of our students and responding to the information we have. I use formative

assessment throughout my lessons to make decisions during class and for future classes, typically

with strategies like fist-to-five or exit tasks and listening to group conversations. Exit tasks also

serve as a way for students to communicate if they enjoy the lesson formats and how well they

think their groups are working together. Formative assessment informs teachers whether our

students understand the content of the lesson we are teaching or have taught and should guide

our future lesson plans. Formative assessment is essential for differentiation because it gives

teachers the necessary information to determine how to focus lessons, group students at various
levels of understanding, and design activities to challenge students or reteach material. While a

teacher could develop lessons with different levels and multiple ways to practice/discuss the

content and allow students choices in their activity, without the formative assessment to know

what students need, this effort could be ineffective or more time consuming than necessary.

I rarely give any formal pre-assessments or use the results of pre-assessments to inform

my instruction. Doubet and Hockett (2015) wrote about the importance of pre-assessments,

explaining that “pre-assessment challenges, informs, and illuminates the teacher’s

preconceptions and beliefs about individual students, about how students learn, and how about

the content itself” (p. 60). In reflecting on the statement from Doubet and Hockett, I think about

a student in my Algebra 1 class this year. He was all over the place in class and could not focus

for more than a minute. I would have said that he was not paying attention and probably not

learning anything. During the closure, I ran lives lessons a few days a week and he was a

faithful attender. Even more than attending, he responded to most of my questions and

demonstrated a deep understanding of the concepts, beyond just crunching numbers. If I had

done a pre-assessment, I imagine that I would have learned that he had a solid conceptual

understanding of math content, even without having all the necessary algebraic skills. I wonder

if his behaviors in my class were because he already knew the material and did not feel the need

to participate further. He would score about average on the unit summative assessments. In

thinking about him now, I wonder if his math knowledge grew at all while in my class. I can and

should be better able to determine what my students already know and then use that information

to develop lessons that challenge my students to increase their understanding of mathematics and

help them to grow.


Culturally responsive teaching requires teachers to know their students. Doubet and

Hockett (2015) write that healthy teacher-student relationships are a necessity for a successful

differentiated classroom (p. 9), but it is also true of culturally responsive teaching. Doubet and

Hockett (2015) continue to promote the importance of relationships when they write about the

need to send the message that each student matters (p. 11). Culturally responsive teaching,

therefore, considers the cultures of each student and strives to represent and include this culture

within the activities and classroom norms. Doubet and Hockett (2015) promote pre-assessments

as, “one tool for discovering what is important to students” (p. 86) and discovering potential

motivators. Pre-assessments/student surveys, give teachers a glimpse into the minds of their

students, including perceived strengths and weaknesses which the teacher can leverage in

designing lessons with these students in mind. I am always intrigued by what students are

willing to share with me about themselves and ways that they ask me to care for them.

References:
Doubet, K. J. & Hockett, J. A. (2015). Differentiation in middle and high school: Strategies to

engage all learners. ASCD.

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