Reflection

There was so much information in Tomlinson's Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom. It is amazing that the students needs, what the teacher needs to give the student, and how the curriculum fits those needs all connect to each other and work together to create a differentiated classroom. Tomlinson does such a great job at pointing out different ways to differentiate you class and why it is important to do that.
In my classroom, I am so excited to start up morning meetings and establish a classroom community where the students love and respect each other. It is so important to let students know that everyone learns differently and at different speeds. Also, that this doesn't make any students smarter or better than one another, but that it adds to their individuality and uniqueness. Students need to embrace their differences and find out how they learn best. Since learning is a process that will never end through their whole lives, it's best to find out early on how they like to learn and what interests them the most.
Differentiation is key to helping students reach their full potential. This is how you get your students to love coming to school and love learning new things. Being excited to learn and providing fresh new ways and information will keep your students interested and involved. No student should feel like they are not part of the class and or that they are holding the class back from anything. Each student is important and vital to the class running smoothly and going in a positive direction.
In my classroom, I would love to have my students work together to help each other learn. Teamwork is so important to their lives. Working together will help them create friendships and learn how to be a part of community. The essential part of school is to create responsible and educated citizens. That is done through teamwork and positive attitudes. When students can learn to find love and respect for their classmates, it opens up their minds and hearts to find love and respect for those in their community. I feel that this is the only way to truly teach students to not give into prejudice and racism. This is how we build positive, unique, caring, and bright human beings. Elementary education is where it all begins!

Effective Teaching

There are many things that make up an effective teacher. Teachers need to:

• Respect, listen to, show empathy, and help their students
• Students need to know you care. By listening to them and showing them in multiple ways that you are there for them will help build your relationship with them.
• Create warm and supportive classrooms
• This doesn't necessarily mean a decorative classroom, it is also about how you treat your students and your expectations of how they treat each other.
• Develop awareness of different cultures
• Your whole job is to expand your students knowledge, and that includes their knowledge of the world and other cultures. It is so important to bring in any cultures that your students may personally have experience with. This will help them feel like they are part of the class and give any other students an opportunity to learn more about them.
• Work and interact directly with students
• Students do need to learn independence and to do some things on their own, but teachers should also need to have a presence in the student's learning. Working with the students and doing projects with them shows the students that you are an active participant in the class as well.
• Be enthusiastic about learning
• Your attitude about a subject is easily passed onto the students. It is so important to believe in what you are teaching and be passionate about each thing you teach, even if you have to fake it. Being excited to teach something will get the students excited to learn it.
• Discuss the importance of reflection
• It is important to reflect on your work as a teacher. Notice what went well and what did not, and with each individual student. Also, teach your students the importance of reflection on their own work and teach them to always be improving on themselves.
• Establish classroom routines
• Students need to know how to act during different lessons and situations in the classroom. Setting up routines for them such as when to sharpen pencils and when they can ask to use the restroom will help to keep the classroom running smoothly and without too many interruptions. Students will also be able to be independent and not have to come to you every for every question.

R.A.F.T.

Role
Audience
Format
Topic

R.A.F.T. is a really unique idea to get students to think about things from many different perspectives. You can use R.A.F.T. activities for any subject area. How it works is you assign your students to write something (Format) such as a letter, a speech, a map, an interview, etc. and they write it from a specific point of view. The topic is also specified by the teacher as well as who the writing is directed to. You can differentiate it for interest, readiness, and learning profiles. For interest, you can change the type of format to be something the student would be more interested in. If you have a student who is more argumentative, you can gear the format, role, and audience to fit their personality. As well as if you have a student who is more passive and compromising, you can gear R.A.F.T. toward them. To vary it for readiness, you can assign different formats and have different requirements for your students who need their assignment lessened.
I love the idea of them being usable for each subject area. You can have them write a letter about being a semicolon to the students about how to use it correctly. For math, students could write a speech about being an equal sign to an inequality sign about how equal signs are better. The options are endless! I would love to use this to assess student understanding of different subjects. I think that this will be helpful to get students to think deeper and in different ways. 

ThinkDots

ThinkDots are to be used after a concept has been taught. They are great for reviewing or extending learning. ThinkDots are sets of cards that are hole punched in a corner and held together by a ring. Each card has one or more dots on it (1-6 like the dots on a die). On the back of the card, there is a question or a task for the students to answer or complete. These questions or tasks have to do with the concept or skill that they have been studying. These would be so easy to create and if laminated, could last many years. I think that students would love to have a variety of these to work with because they are so interactive and give fun options to show their learning.
By making various ThinkDot sets for the same concept or skill can differentiate for readiness very easily. For interest, there can be many different types of responses the cards have and can also have tasks that require partnerships or for students to work alone. There are so many ways to tweak this to work for your specific class. Once you get to know what interests your students and what levels they are at, it is easy to create cards you know they will want to do. It also can work for any subject area. I love that I could have a massive set of these ThinkDot cards for my classroom. They could be used as fast finishers or even as centers. Since you could just create these on index cards, the would be cheap, easy, and quick to make. The three things teachers are always looking for in their preparations.
Since these are to be used after the student has been working on the concept or skill, they are a great way to assess learning. I could set this up in my classroom for some subjects where they have to pass off three different ThinkDot cards before they can move onto the next lesson. That way, they can get some practice at the concept or skill and show me in different ways what they have learned and how they are thinking about that concept or skill. Using these in the classroom is such an easy way to differentiate the process for readiness, interest, and learning profiles. I really like how easy it is to mold it to exactly what your students need and in each subject. They are so versatile! 

Classroom Community

Creating a classroom community is incredibly important in making your students feel safe and ready to learn. When your students trust each other, they can help to build each other up and learn from one another. I am truly passionate about setting up a classroom where the students are all fantastic friends and are never afraid to share what they think and know with each other. I wrote a paper for my differentiation class that I would like to share on here. It expresses how I want my classroom to be and what is important to me about classroom community.

Classroom Community Environment Key Assignment

            I’ve seen classes with amazing community and respect for each other and I’ve seen classes who truly lack the positive environment and community. I prefer my students to trust each other and me. I truly believe that having a healthy classroom community is the only way for students to create meaningful and deep understandings of the lessons taught to them.

            I observed a third grade class who participated in morning meetings. I would regularly hear the teacher tell her students, “I think that’s something the whole class would like to know. How about you bring it up in morning meeting?” I loved seeing the students’ reactions to this because their face lit up at the thought of their question being important enough for morning meeting.

            With my class, I am going to set up daily morning meetings. I want to include sharing from every student, every day. It is incredibly important to me that every student’s voice is heard. In one of the videos the teacher had the students pass around a beanbag and share one thing they did well yesterday. I love the positive message that goes with that and really makes the students think positively of themselves, even if it is just for that moment.

            I will also use my morning meetings to build teamwork among the class. I feel that this is a great time to push for that healthy classroom community. I know that the class will not run smoothly without participation from each student, but I want them to know that as well. I want this time to be fun and engaging, but at the same time educational. Morning meetings are a great time for review or even a hook into a new unit.

            Aside from morning meetings, I will also encourage a lot of group work and leadership opportunities. The desks will be arranged in groups and many of their rewards will rely on how well they can work as a team and encouraging each other to be the best they can.

            Each student needs to know that they are important to their peers and myself, and are needed in the classroom. I also want them to know that I hear their opinions and encourage their ideas to be shared. I will set aside a time during morning meeting for ideas from students or comments about past lessons for what they liked or what they wished was different. I will not tolerate negativity, but I would like to hear suggestions and why things went well or did not.

            My biggest desire for my classroom is that every student feels safe, comfortable, happy, and important. I think this is the first step in learning and gives students the confidence they need to succeed in school and in their social lives. Creating a classroom community takes time and effort, but the benefits that come from it are priceless.

Keeper of the Book

The idea of "Keeper of the Book" is that students will record in a binder the date, important knowledge, understandings, and skills that were discussed that day or even from just a specific lesson. This helps students who are absent look back at the information recorded to see what they missed. It is also a great tool for students to review. The book should be easily accessible by all students as they need it. This book puts a lot of responsibility on the students to look at the book and get caught up with the information they need.
I love that it is student ran. Students fill out the book, and it is the students' responsibility to look at the book when they need to. In my class, I would use this book as one of the class jobs that I assign my students to. Everyone would get a turn being the "Keeper of the Book" and they would know in advance when they are to be recording in it. There would have to be requirements that went with the book. I would want my students to be recording detailed notes and what we did together as a class.
It is so great that this is something to show the students that they get as much out of it as they put into it. This also builds great classroom community through them having to work together and rely on each other for the book to work. I would encourage them to do their best work in the book since it is for everyone, and not just themselves.
With my book, I would assign a different student every day to be "Keeper of the Book". I would also have them record in it multiple times a day. Such as, after a math, science, or literacy lesson, they would copy their notes into the book and record the homework assignment. This way, nothing would be skipped or forgotten.
I already had the intention of having my students use a daily planner to keep track of what was done that day and what homework they had, but I love the extra touch the book adds. Having the notes right there with the assignment listed and being available for all students really opens up a lot of opportunities for students to get reminders and refreshers on different assignments without having to stay after school with me.

Success is the Result of Effort

Some students breeze through school with minimal effort because they know that they will just pass. Others try as hard as they can, but never seem to do as well as those special students who do not try and still get better grades. It is hard to show these students that they are only getting out of school what they put into it. Those students who are striving, while they may still be behind, are improving and learning new skills. Those who do not put forth the effort and skate by, are gaining nothing new and are not improving themselves. Goal setting for each student is incredibly important. Every student deserves one years' growth in a years' time. It is up to the teacher to show the student that their efforts are worth it and their success comes directly from how much effort they put into it. In field, I had a student who was doing pretty well in school. Most things came naturally for this student. He was always the first one done with homework and it was always done correctly. At first, I beamed and was so incredibly proud of how much effort he put into school, but then I realized, he wasn't putting forth effort. This boy was incredibly smart and was not being challenged at all. I started giving him more challenging questions and asking him to explain his thinking more. At first he was resistant because he didn't want to do more work than he had to, but he warmed up to it once he realized that class didn't have to be boring for him and he could learn new things still. I also had another student in that same class who struggled at everything he did. He sat next to the boy who succeeded at everything and it was incredibly hard for him to see he didn't do as well. I began to work closer with him too. I told him every student in this class has different goals and the only thing that matters is how much effort he put into doing the best he could do. We began to set goals for his homework and I encouraged his input in our goal making. I wanted it to be challenging, but I also did not want him to get frustrated and give up, as he was prone to do. We made a little progress and his attitude was beginning to turn around. Just in time for me to leave, as it always seems to be. Showing students that they can be successful in school, no matter where they are at academically is so important for their continuous desire for learning and their self-confidence.