A new-to-me teaching strategy which shows great potential is compacting the curriculum. It is a simple way to provide differentiation opportunities for all students. I read about compacting in Susan Winebrenner's Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom (pages 11-20); Carol Tomlinson's How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms (this link should take you right to the page 74 where she begins her discussion on compacting); and Tomlinson's The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (pages 91-92).Originally developed by Joseph Renzulli, compacting the curriculum is simply a process by which students pre-assess for content using the targeted post-assessment. Teachers can easily determine what students already know, what they don't know, and use this information to provide alternate independent learning enrichment opportunities for qualifying students to pursue while other students are learning the content. The teacher sets up contracts with the qualifying students. These contracts should be choice-driven on each student's behalf to encourage authentic learning. The beauty of this strategy is that all students, not just gifted, can participate in this kind of learning; and students who are already ahead of the class can also become become resident experts.
What this strategy demands of the teacher is solid content and assessment planning, as well as a good grasp on how to write contracts that don't bottom out. Winebrenner's book presents a "foolproof" plan for writing contracts (pages 21-35), of which the foolproof component lies in creating a timeline of activities/assessments which students on contracts must also follow.
More about curriculum compacting:
- Curriculum Compacting: A Necessity for Academic Advancement (Del Siegle)
- What is Curriculum Compacting? (Carolyn Coil)
- Unwrapping the Gifted: Curriculum Compacting (Tamara Fisher)
- Curriculum Compacting (Matthias Gigers)
- Curriculum Compacting (Metagifted Education Resource)
- ECS Handouts (Susan Winebrenner)
1 comment:
Differentiating learning in the classroom finally seems to have reached critical mass. Your post explains the process and is interesting.
As a teacher, raised in classrooms more closely associated with those so vividly portrayed in Ender's Game, I must say that the move towards differentiated instruction represents a see-change long anticipated by many students, parents and teachers.
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