FL PDA Notes
Tiering
the process of adjusting the degree of difficulty of a question, task, or product to match a student's readiness or interest as related to the activity
Web 2.0
the term typically describing the second generation of the World Wide Web which provides users with more functionality and the ability to share and collaborate online
Summative (Outcome) Measures
typically administered near the end of the school year to give an overall perspective of the effectiveness of the instructional program.
Pegword Strategy
uses rhyming words to represent numbers or order. The rhyming words or "pegwords" provide visual images that can be associated with facts or events and can help students associate the events with the number that rhymes with the pegword. (mnemonic instruction strategy)
Strategic Instruction Model (SIM)
was developed at the University of Kansas; strategies provide content enhancement routines and specific learning strategies to help all learners achieve success in the classroom.
Acronyms
words whose individual letters can represent items in lists of information. An example of this is HOMES, which represents the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior (mnemonic strategy)
Metacognition
"thinking about thinking" or controlling one's own learning; Developing a plan of action, Maintaining/monitoring the plan, and Evaluating the plan
Summative Assessment (OF learning)
-is a means to determine a student's mastery of information, knowledge, skills, concepts, etc. after the unit or learning activity has been completed; -should parallel the formative assessments that were used during the learning process; -may determine an exit grade or score and can be tied to a final decision about a student; -should align precisely with what the teacher identified as most important for students to know, understand and be able to do; -may be a form of alternative assessment; doesn't always have to be a test.
Pre-Assessment
-is any method, strategy, or process used to determine a student's current level of readiness or interest in order to plan for appropriate instruction; -provides data and information that can determine learning options or levels for students in a differentiated classroom; -helps teachers understand the nature of learning differences in his/her students before planning instruction; -should determine what students already know, understand, and can do related to what the teacher has identified as most important; -allows students to demonstrate mastery or to show where remediation might be needed before instruction begins.
On-going (FORmative) Assessment (FOR learning)
-is the process of accumulating information about a student's progress to help make ongoing instructional decisions during a unit of work; -alerts the teacher early on about student misconceptions or lack of understanding about what is being studied; allows students to build on what they already know; -provides regular feedback to students; -provides evidence of progress in learning over time; -gives teachers information about what their students already know (or don't know) so they can adapt, modify, or extend the instructional activities and materials in which students are engaged. Teachers can use this information to make adjustments to their instruction as they teach and can differentiate instruction accordingly. It is assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning.
Differentiated Instruction/Intervention and UDL
All students receive high-quality, research-based instruction. Learning goals/targets are clearly defined and instruction is proactively differentiated, based on assessment, in order to create an optimal learning environment for each student. Aligned with the guidelines for differentiated instruction, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a curriculum-designed framework used to ensure that materials, methods, and assessments are usable by all students. Its principles include giving learners various ways to acquire information and demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do. It also emphasizes multiple means of engagement in order to provide an appropriate instructional challenge. Like the guidelines for differentiating instruction, the goal of UDL is for each student to have an equal opportunity to reach his or her potential. If students do not make appropriate progress, the Problem Solving Process and Response to Instruction/Intervention (PS-RtI) Framework recommends increasing the intensity of instruction offering specific, research-based interventions matched to student needs.
Screening Measures
Assessment tools designed to collect data for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of core instruction and identifying students needing more intensive interventions and support.
Mixed Readiness Groups
At times it is appropriate to have students at different levels of readiness work on tasks. Design the work so each student can contribute to the outcome.
Individual Instruction
At times, some students will need intense instruction and may be on levels that are so different from their peers that they need explicit and individual instruction in order to make appropriate progress.
Big Ideas
Big Ideas are concepts and principles that facilitate the most efficient and broadest acquisition of knowledge across a range of examples. Big Ideas are what all students should know, understand, and be able to do. More important information should be taught more thoroughly than less important information. Since students with disabilities often need to catch up with their peers and time is limited, big concepts should be the instructional anchors.
Problem Solving Process
Critical to making the instructional adjustments needed for continual improvement.
Curriculum-Based Measurement
Curriculum-based measurement is a systematic procedure for data collection and decision-making. A goal is identified and instruction implemented to improve student performance. The teacher takes a sample of the student's performance. Weekly performance data is graphed and used by the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction. (informal assessment of learning)
Exit Cards
Exit cards or "tickets out the door" are used as a pre- or post-assessment to gather information on student readiness levels, interests, and/or learning profiles. At the end of a lesson or class period, the teacher gives students index cards or asks student to use a half sheet of paper. The teacher asks the students to respond to a prompt on their index cards and turn them in as they leave (exit) the classroom or transition to another subject. The teacher reviews student responses and uses them to form groups or plan lessons. (informal assessment of learning)
Strategic Integration
For new information to be understood and applied, it should be carefully combined with things the learner already knows and understands. The teacher needs to make the critical connections. The goal of strategic integration is the combination of what the student knows with what the student is learning so that the relationship between the two things is clear and results in new knowledge.
Diagnostic Measures
Formal or informal assessment tools that measure skill strengths and weaknesses, identify skills in need of improvement, and assist in determining why a problem is occurring.
Formal Assessment Process
Frequent and systematic data-collection is used by individual teachers and the problem-solving teams to evaluate, implement, and adjust instruction and intervention as needed.
Response Cards
In using response cards, each student is given a card and responds to a teacher question or prompt by writing a response or pointing to an appropriate answer. On a cue given by the teacher, all students hold up their card for the teacher to monitor each student's response. Response cards can increase active participation and on-task behavior. They give the teacher an opportunity to provide immediate feedback. A response card activity does not require cards; it can done using individual wipe-off boards or individual chalkboards, or cards can be made by students or be preprinted. (informal assessment of learning)
Explicit Instruction (video examples)
Instruction can be made more explicit and systematic through the use of conspicuous strategies, scaffolding, precise integration of new skills with old skills, priming or supplying background knowledge, and providing a carefully planned review of key concepts and skills.
Progress Monitoring Measures
Ongoing assessment conducted for the purposes of guiding instruction, monitoring student progress, and evaluating instruction/intervention effectiveness.
Formative Measures
Ongoing assessment embedded within effective teaching to guide instructional decisions.
Primed Background Knowledge
Priming background knowledge readies the learner for successful performance. Accessing students' background information is critical for students with disabilities because it is not uncommon for them to have memory deficits. Priming—using a "hook," reminder, or prompt—can alert the learner to retrieve information.
Judicious Review
Review should be sufficient to enable a student to perform a task fluently. Review should be distributed over time. Review should be cumulative, and the information should be applied and generalized. Review should be varied. Review opportunities must be frequent to ensure automaticity of the skill or knowledge. They must also be brief, yet repeated over time to ensure that the skill or knowledge is sustained. Review should be judicious, not haphazard.
Mediated Scaffolding
Scaffolding is varied according to learner needs or experience, goals of instruction, and the complexity of the task. Support is temporary and is removed gradually according to learner proficiency.
Problem Solving Process and Response to Instruction/Intervention (PS-RtI) Framework
School teams engage in a collaborative problem-solving process that involves the systematic use of assessment information for instructional decision making.
Learning Contracts
Some students have difficulty with organizational skills. A learning contract can provide those students with an important structure to support their success. Four parts: skill component, content component, timeline, agreement.
Cross Age Tutoring
Students from other grade levels or other ability levels can provide one-to-one opportunities to practice.
Peer Tutoring
Students must be taught the necessary prerequisite social skills and expectations for this type of grouping to be productive. They should be paired by skill level as closely as possible.
teacher directed small groups
Teachers can use assessment results to work with small groups of children on specific objectives.
Multi-Tiered Framework
This system is depicted as a three-tiered framework that uses increasingly more intense instruction and interventions matched to student need.
Whole Class
This is most beneficial when the learning goals are appropriate for an entire mixed-level group of students. Use this when all the students in the class need to learn the same thing, in the same way, at the same time.
Collaborative Problem Solving
Used to match instructional resources to educational needs of students. The problem-solving team analyzes concerns, develops and implements appropriate instructions and interventions, monitors progress, and evaluates the outcomes.
Independent Small Groups
Well-designed learning centers, with specific learning goals for various learners, detailed instructions, and clear expectations can appropriately free the teacher to work directly with other small groups.
Blog
a Web page that provides a user the ability to create a public, personal journal or forum for sharing with others. Blogs typically reflect the personality of the blogger, or the author. Readers usually have the ability to respond or comment on a posting.
a free social messaging tool that helps people connect and network using brief text message updates; can be no more than 140 characters, and is often referred to as microblogging.
differentiating instruction
a proactive approach that responds to specific student assessment information regarding students' readiness, interests, and learning preferences. The goal is to provide a responsive and optimal learning environment to maximize achievement for all learners.
Mnemonic instruction
a strategy that provides a visual or verbal prompt for students who may have difficulty retaining information; In this way, students whose learning modalities are primarily visual or verbal are able to create a picture, word, rhyme, or sentence that is attached to an idea they already have
Conspicuous Strategies
a systematic sequence of teaching events and teacher actions that make explicit the steps in learning. They are made conspicuous by the use of visual maps or models, verbal directions, and full and clear explanations. Planned Purposeful Obvious Understandable To make a strategy conspicuous: describe the strategy, tell the purpose of the strategy, model the strategy and explain its use, provide adequate practice, monitor and provide feedback, promote student self-monitoring, encourage the use of the strategy.
Cornell Notes or Two-Column Notes
a systematic way of taking notes that allows students to organize their notes into smaller chunks of information and summarize each section
Graphic Organizers
a visual that depicts the relationships between facts, terms, or ideas within a learning task; It is one way to scaffold instruction to support students and structure student thinking.
Self-Questioning
allows students to mentally form questions, predict answers to the questions, search for the answers as they read, and paraphrase the answers as they find them. It provides the self-motivation and clarifying abilities students need to effectively engage in texts (questioning strategies)
Cooperative Learning
allows students to work in small, heterogeneous groups in order to seek a common goal
WebQuest
an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet.
Venn Diagrams
another type of graphic organizer, can help students describe and compare attributes and characteristics of things, people, places, events, or ideas
Keyword Strategy
based on linking new information to keywords that are already in memory. A teacher might teach a new vocabulary word by first identifying a keyword that sounds similar to the word being taught and can be easily represented by a picture. Then the teacher generates a picture that connects the word being taught with its definition. (mnemonic instruction strategy)
Reciprocal Teaching
built on four strategies good readers use to comprehend text: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing
guidelines of differentiated instruction and the principles of UDL
closely aligned and support Florida's Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS)
Learning Centers
collections of material and activities learners use to practice or extend skills; Teachers should adjust tasks based on a student's readiness, interest, or learning style. All learners should not be doing the same tasks. Students record their progress but teachers must monitor what students do and understand; need clear directions and procedures.
3 Key Areas of Differentiation
content, process, product
RSS - Really Simple Syndication
describes the syndication of Web content. It is a format for accessing regularly changing Web content without having to access individual sites. Content syndicated may include news feeds and stories, headlines, event listings, project updates, and updates from discussion forums.
Semantic Maps
graphic organizer that can assist students in identifying the attributes of a concept word or other vocabulary
Question-Answer Relationships
help students improve comprehension by teaching them how to think above and beyond the texts that they read. Students learn to identify and ask themselves "right there", "think and search", "author and you" and "on my own" questions. (questioning strategy)
Letter Strategy
involves the use of acronyms and acrostics (mnemonic instruction strategy)
Readiness
is a student's entry point into a particular concept or skill. It is not a synonym for ability but rather reflects what the student can do today in comparison to what the teacher is planning to teach today. The question is "How ready is the student for what I am teaching today?"
Learner preferences/profile
is influenced by the learning modalities or styles, intelligence preferences, gender, and culture. It is important to note that the learning style is not used as the basis for how to teach. The focus is not on selecting instructional techniques that are believed to complement a student's style of learning. Instead, learning style is just one part of the profile of the learner.
Interests
is what the student enjoys doing, thinking about, and learning about. Interest is a great motivator. By considering interest, a teacher can link what he or she is teaching to something the student finds interesting or relevant in order to increase student engagement.
Content (DL)
is what we teach, what we want students to learn, and the materials we select to give students access to what we want them to learn.
Story Maps
one of the many types of graphic organizers; templates that provide students a concrete framework for identifying the elements of narrative stories.
Classwide Peer Tutoring
one student explains the work to another student, asks the student to answer questions, and tells the student whether his or her answers are correct
trivial type of differentiation
one that may temporarily motivate students but will not likely improve learning in a significant way
universal design for learning (UDL)
proactive approach that designs flexible goals, methods, materials, and assessments by anticipating the full range of learner needs from the outset; The goal is to anticipate and eliminate unnecessary barriers to learning and instruction in order to increase student achievement.
highly effective teachers
provide a responsive, universally designed and differentiated environment using scientific, research-based instruction and evidence-based practices that are aligned to individual learning needs; Highly effective teachers make instructional decisions that are supported by information from reliable, valid, and instructionally relevant assessments.
Guided Notes
provide an outline or framework that lists main points of a verbal presentation (teacher lecture, video, student presentation, etc.), with blank spaces for students to complete during the presentation; require students to be actively engaged during the presentation and are likely to improve the organization, accuracy, and efficiency of students' note-taking
UDL Principle 2
provide multiple means of action and expression - the HOW of learning
UDL Principle 3
provide multiple means of engagement - the WHY of learning
UDL Principle 1
provide multiple means of representation - the WHAT of learning
Bloom's Taxonomy
provides a sequenced hierarchy of question types ranging from those with low levels of cognitive complexity, such as simple recall, to those involving higher-order thinking skills such as inference and evaluation (questioning strategy)
Computer Assisted Instruction
provides students with immediate feedback and does not allow students to continue to practice the wrong skills; captures students' attention because the programs are interactive and engaging due to animation, sound, and demonstrations; takes place at the students' pace and usually does not move ahead until they have mastered the skill; generally provide differentiated lessons.
Wikis
refers to a collaborative website which, based on the permissions set by the creator, allows others to add, modify, or delete content that has been uploaded or posted. Wikipedia is a well-known example.
Digital Content
refers to any electronic media—music, information, and images—that is available in an electronic, digital form and able to be distributed or downloaded online.
Product (DL)
refers to how a student shows what he or she knows at the end of an extended period of study. Differentiating the product refers to taking a unit test, creating a portfolio, or preparing a demonstration or performance to demonstrate that the student has learned the content.
Process (DL)
refers to the activities used to make sense of the content. The process helps students take charge of their learning.
3 Key Areas of UDL
representation, engagement, expression
Acrostics
sentences whose first letters represent information to be remembered—for example, you can use the acrostic "My very educated mother just served us nachos" to remember the eight planets and their order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (mnemonic strategy)
Cubing
students explore a topic from six perspectives
Social Networking
the expression used to describe a website that allows users to create public profiles and develop relationships with other people, groups, or organizations on the same site or network. Social networking sites are community based and often provide chat rooms and other forums for online discussion and sharing. Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr are well-known examples.
Cloud Computing
the general term referring to Internet storage services users are able to access any time from any computer with Internet access; and does not require a user to be in a specific place to gain access to it. Google Docs, which allows you to create and share your work online and access all your documents from anywhere, is an example.
