innovative differentiation strategy for 1st grade reading and writing

1. 12 students who have some knowledge, but need to develop higher order thinking skills: (Ready or not group) These students were responsible for reviewing reading and writing terms. This station required the students to work in pairs to read through directions, read the story out loud, and discuss what happened. Students in the experiment station explored personal opinions and facts about the story—with both voluntary and involuntary responses. This learning task encouraged the students to further explore what took place in the story and be able to explain what they read. Having paired discussions cleared up the few misconceptions the students had.

2. READING Pre assessments: 1) With prompting, does not ask or answer questions about the details of the text. May respond only with prior knowledge or offer questions and answers unrelated to the text or topic 2) Asks or answers question(s) about details in the text.May incorporate some prior knowledge, but connects response to at least one detail from the text. Asks and answers questions about key details in the text. May incorporate some prior knowledge, but mostly connects responses to details in the text. Asks and answers questions that gesture towards more inferential thinking: such as “why” and“how” questions (versus “what” and “where” questions). Demonstrates consistentattention to the details in the text.

3. WRITING Pre assessments: 1) Uses a combination of drawings, oral language, and attempts at writing to tell about a topic. Some information is connected to the topic and the genre of the task. 2) Names the topic and draws, writes, and/or dictates to tell about the topic of the task. Most writing and/or drawing is connected to the topic and some is informational 3) Names the topic: possibly in a brief statement, a cover page (combination of writing/drawing) and/or with top-of-page headings. Most writing and/or drawing is connected to the topic and is informational

4. 5 students that answered the most difficult: (Mastered group) I decided to use the computer to extend the knowledge of students who scored 100 on the quiz. The advance games on the writing summary responses, required not only a high level of understanding of the the theme, charcters and setting, but also the ability to make opinion based responses on characters in the story. The game included a large amount of reading and decision making to make students comfortable with material.

5. 5 students who appear to have limited knowledge about the topic: (Rhodes Scholars) This group met with me to review the material in the standard. Students reviewed orally; made flash cards of key concepts they missed, such as the parts of the reading and writing vocabulary; and quizzed one another before they retook the quiz.