Planning

=Planning for Differentiation=

//"My gifted students will think harder, not do more work." Bertie Kingore//
[|DifferentiationCentral] is a site devoted to differentiation and reviewed by Carol Ann Tomlinson. There are downloadable lesson plans including examples of tiered lessons, learning contracts, and RAFT strategies. The differentiated [|lesson plan] template and the [|tiered lesson] plan template, are useful templates to guide your planning and do not take much time to complete.



B loom's Taxonomy
[|Bloom's Taxonomy] is important to keep in mind when planning instruction, creating rubrics, having class discussions, and planning literature circles. Your most able students should be using these higher order thinking skills when learning and creating products.

[|Bloom's Bakery animation] This animation will further define Bloom's Taxonomy and give you lists of verbs that will help you determine the level of question or activity you are creating.

Authentic Assessment
Assessing multiple types of projects in a differentiated lesson can seem overwhelming. A rubric is an effective way to assess student work on these projects. If students receive a rubric prior to the project, it will guide them through the process and make it clear what you expect of their final product. When their work is complete, students can evaluate their own work using the rubric. When you evaluate the work using the rubric students will get a clear picture of what was strong about their product and what needed to be improved. Rubrics do not have to be time consuming to make. If you use the web site, [|Rubistar], you can create your own customized rubric quickly and easily.

[[image:51ppNVhpAZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg width="120" height="120" align="right"]]Multiple Intelligences
//Multiple Intelligences: The Complete MI Book// is a wonderful resource for incorporating various intelligences into your daily teaching. There are activities that are ready to be used in the classroom and can be adapted for different ages and are cross-disciplinary. There are also easy to follow step-by-step directions to help you create your own MI lesson. We have two of these books in our building for teachers to borrow. Online you can learn more about [|Multiple Intelligences] or take a **survey** to determine your strongest intelligence.

Teaching Without Nonsense: Activities and Techniques for Effective Gifted Instruction
These are [|handouts] from Bertie Kingore's presentation at the AGATE Conference this year. Of special interest are the **Analysis Grids** which emphasize higher order thinking skills and can be used with any subject area. For example, a student could use this grid to analyze polygons. There would be a list of the polygons on the left and different qualities going across the top, like closed figure, angles are equal, parallel sides, symmetrical. Students would fill in the grid with an A for Always, S for Sometimes, and N for Never. The **I Am** template can be used at the beginning of the year to get to know your students, when students are doing biography research, or for characters in an Open Court story.