Tic-Tac-T-Oh my Goodness, what a cool idea!

 

             Looking for a fun and effective way to individualize learning tasks for students (either based on different levels of readiness, interest, or learning style)? In her 2005 text, Differentiation in Action: A Complete Resource with Research-Supported Strategies to Help You Plan and Organize Differentiated Instruction – and Achieve Success with All Learners (Whew – what a title!), Judith Dodge recommends an often-cited approach: she calls it “choice boards,” I call it Tic Tac Toe. (You say potayto, and I say potahto.) The concept is, the teacher creates nine different assessments designed to assess student mastery of the same objective. Type those nine assessments up in boxes to resemble a Tic Tac Toe board (three rows of three columns each). If you’re mixing it up for different readiness levels, you make sure the range of levels is represented on the Tic Tac Toe board. Addressing various interests instead? Just make sure there’s a true variety in types of assessments. Learning styles? Refer to our friend Mr. Gardner, and try to address all or most of the types of learning styles in your nine assessments.

            Here’s what one may look like if the teacher is aiming to address preferences in learning style (Note: this is a quick example just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about – as you’ll see, these assessments are not fully fleshed out!):

         Auditory                                            Visual                                                    Tactile-Kinesthetic

Teach a Lesson	Create a Web Site	Gather an Artifact Box
Conduct an Interview	Create a PhotoJournal	Present a TV Newscast
Engage in a Debate	Design a Graphic Organizer	Role-Play with Props

            Now, hand out those beautifully-crafted Tic Tac Toe boards to your students. You can ask them to choose three different assessments from anywhere on the board, the only requirement being that they create a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal “tic tac toe” line connecting the assessments they’ve chosen. (Using the above example, a student might make a horizontal line, choosing “Engage in a Debate,” “Create a PhotoJournal,” and “Gather an Artifact Box.”) You can leave the choice completely up to the student, or you may want to engineer more student variety by requiring students to choose one assessment from each row or each column.

            Some may wonder about the use of this for different readiness levels. With this approach, each row would represent assessments for each of three readiness levels of students. Teachers may (understandably!) feel uncomfortable telling a student, “You need to do the three assessments on the middle row because that row matches your ability.” But, I think you can do this without needing to directly say something like this to your students. It’s been my experience that, with choice of assignments, most students will gravitate to the one that best matches their readiness level. You just need to be on the lookout for students who choose an assessment that is way beyond their readiness level, because they may get frustrated and give up. (But be cautious about this – if a student is choosing something that stretches them, this is not always a bad thing. Just monitor it, and jump in if the student is drowning! Let them know they can abandon ship in this case, and choose a different assessment from the board). You also need to be on the lookout for students who are choosing assessments that are at a lower readiness level than they are capable of. You can recommend/require that these particular students choose from one of the other rows on the board in order to challenge themselves.

            Using this strategy can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it. It can be used before, during, or after a unit of instruction for diagnostic, formative, or summative assessment purposes. Teach in my district, want to give it a try, but aren’t sure how? You know where to find me!