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!
