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Welcome to Edumentality.com!

                        A Voice for Innovative Education



Edumentality offers practical, teacher‑ready methods and protocols designed to help both new and veteran educators strengthen daily instruction. It supports intentional planning, meaningful feedback, continual assessment, purposeful grouping, and high‑interest systems that keep students reading, writing, thinking, and talking every day. Edumentality shares useful instructional protocols by collecting the practices teachers pass along and making them accessible to others. It doesn’t claim to have created these methods; instead, it credits the educators who share them while recognizing that the original developers may be different from those who contributed them and strives to acknowledge those originators whenever possible.  Website graphics were designed with help from Microsoft Copilot. 

 


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It's easy to be frustrated at the numerous "trends" in education.  Educators are constantly bombarded with new ideas, new vocabulary, and yes, new policy.  It seems that just when teachers have mastered understanding and implementation, the trend loses its luster and a new one replaces it. One educational trend in particular, differentiation, has inspired both love and hate.  Critics say it's an impossible goal to customize every lesson for every learner.
Advocates claim that each student deserves to be taught at the correct level of difficulty; otherwise, it's a futile endeavor.  I am going to ride the fence on this one and say both positions have merit. Critics have a point about the overwhelming feeling teachers get when they begin to think about personalizing lessons. To make matters worse, PD on the subject can be confusing, intimidating, and guilt-ridden. Supporters believe that a teacher can be more intentional in planning lessons that benefit the maximum amount of students.  Most “new” ideas in education begin with a perceived shortcoming.  In the case of differentiation, could it be that years ago most high school teachers lectured, assigned homework, and gave a test at the end of a unit and moved on to the next unit? I know that was standard for my high school experiences!  Even if you are uneasy about the "differentiation situation,"  take a look at the protocol below.  With the help of Bruce Campbell, I have listed ways to incorporate differentiation in the classroom.


TIER TIME (Writing, Reading, Discussion)

Description: Comprehensive in manner, Tier Time outlines various approaches to differentiation within a classroom. Author-teacher Bruce Campbell encourages teachers to use more than one approach within a lesson.  

Application: Tier Time is appropriate for all classes and levels of students.
 
Process: Examine the six different approaches:
  • Tier by level using Bloom’s Taxonomy.
  • Tier by complexity as it addresses the needs of students at foundational levels as well
                 as the needs of students who are ready for more advanced work.
  • Tier by resources by choosing materials at several reading levels and complexity.
  • Tier by outcomes so that students use the same materials, but products differ.
  • Tier by process as the products are the same, but the ways students create the
                 products vary.
  • Tier by product by grouping students via learning styles, personal preferences, or dominant multiple intelligence and creating assignments that correspond with those preferences.  


Campbell, Bruce. “Using Tiered Activities to Differentiate.” 2nd Annual SDE National Conference on Differentiated Instruction: Theory Into Practice. Las Vegas, NV. 18 July 04-21 July 04.
1 Comments
british assignment writer - 7 years ago
Education is a huge part of our country's future. If you do not take education seriously, then you can easily go down the wrong path. Sure, there are people who succeeded without education, but those are just the really bright ones. It is not always good to use them as idols, instead, we should look at education as the backbone of our future. To be honest, I have been studying for quite a while now, and I am gaining valuable knowledge every day.