Reconciable Differences?

Tomlinson, C. (2000). Reconcilable differences? Standards-Based teaching and differentiation. Educational Leadership, 58(1), 6-11.

This article highlights standards-based teaching and differentiation individually, and then how these two can be brought together to the benefit of teachers and students. An important point was the fact that curriculum or standards help teachers decide what they will teach, while differentiation helps teachers decide how they will teach these standards. It is tough, but also very important as teachers to find a way of not just "telling" our students about information. This is touched on in the article and I definitely feel that it does occur. I probably could even reflect on lessons in the past where I have done it. However, the article stresses how important it is for us to reach our students in multiple ways. This has been lost in the fact that standards are the same for all students.

From the positive cases section I learned a way to try to incorporate different types of instruction and grouping into math classes. I liked the idea that the teacher used. Furthermore, it is always tough to convince students how to study and I have begun to even teach that to a point in my classrooms. Forming these groups for instruction would help the students have groups to study with as well.

The grading practices questions could be really well used if teachers answered them honestly. They would be great reflection questions to use often. While it will be extremely tough to do, we must look at our grading and how it affects our classroom from both the perspective of the advanced learners and the struggling learners.