3-2-1 Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Chapters 5 & 6
In reading the text, Fair Isn’t Always Equal, by Rick Wormeli, I found out three things.
- Tiering is another word for differentiating the difficulty of tasks, in order to meet the needs of students.
- Adjusting complexity is one way to tier, but sometimes simply adjusting the timeline will suffice.
- Assessments should be designed to be graded quickly and efficiently so students receive timely feedback.
Two interesting things from the readings are:
- Frank William’s Taxonomy of Creativity, because I wonder if I could use those ideas for generating service learning ideas, and
- the idea of One-Word Summaries, because I can imagine using it in my class to evaluate effectiveness of decisions.
One question I still have about this portion of the book is whether, given options, most students will differentiate on their own in a project-based classroom. For example, my students recently made documentaries. Most of them met the standards of the rubric, but the higher-level students created more complex products, and the lower-level students produced very simple work.