Name: Molly Niedens Content Area: Science Grade: 8

Differentiation Strategy: Tiered Activities

Tiering is a process of adjusting the measure of difficulty of a task, assignment or
question to match the learners current readiness level. Tiered activities are beneficial to
classrooms with various ability levels. The teacher uses varied levels of activities to
ensure that students explore content at a level that is appropriately challenging and
promotes growth. When teachers tier assignments, they make slight adjustments within
the same lesson to meet the needs of students and align with the behavioral objective.
Students are pre-assessed and begin learning from their ability level. This strategy helps
students avoid work that is anxiety producing (too hard) or boredom producing (too
easy). Instead, this strategy promotes success and therefore motivates students.

There are many ways to tier assignments. Tiered assignments can be adjusted in the
following ways:
Level of complexity
Amount of structure
Materials provided
Time
Level of independence
Pacing of the assignment
Number of steps required for completion
Form of expression or product

Assignments, homework, laboratory experiments and writing assignments are all
teaching tools that can be tiered. In my academic classes three tiers would be needed.
In my PreAP classes, two tiers should be sufficient but possibly three depending on
student readiness. I plan to use tiered activities to build understanding of previous
learned concepts based on readiness level.
Purpose/Focus of Lesson (the big idea): The purpose of the tiered assignment is for
advanced learners to further explore their knowledge of the periodic table and
struggling learners have for remediation.
Instruction Grouping:
Individual
Whole Group
Small Group
Peer Partners
Homogeneous
Heterogeneous

What will be differentiated:
Content
Process
Product
Learner Elements Involved:
Readiness
Interest
Learning Profile
As a result of this lesson what you hope your students will:

Students will Know: how read a periodic table.

Students will Understand: how the number of subatomic particles changes based on the
location on the periodic table.

Students will be able to: write a story using chemical equations, create their own
periodic table, and identify mystery elements.
Pre-assessment: Students will take a quiz the class period prior to the tiering activity.
Based on quiz scores, students will be give a specific tiered assignment.
Resources/References:
Video Clip from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/15815
Carol Ann Tomlinson How to Differentiate Instruction in a Mixed-Ability
Classroom Page 101