I am asking each of you to complete a project commensurate with your level of professional expertise. I want to guide your development of this project so that you expend the least amount of effort on trying to figure out whether it’s acceptable to me and the most amount of effort on its usefulness to you and its potential to increase the learning of all children in your care. The fundamental pre-requisite for your project is that it address the issue of differentiating in the most complex, doable manner. Minimally, my expectation is that you demonstrate the conceptual ability to plan for multiple groups doing different things simultaneously so that all children advance in their learning.

I’m asking that you think about your project in terms of its impact, degree of differentiation, articulation of how differentiation occurs, grounding differentiations in assessment data, complexity, and adhering to deadlines as you plan the project.

Basically, the project is a group of lessons organized around a given essential idea through which you demonstrate competence in designing differentiated instruction. I ask that your project take this form:

Overview: 1. Subject Matter, 2. Class Description, 3. Specific objectives of your design including intended use and how you are planning for differentiation, 4. Lesson Plans that demonstrate differentiation, 5. Assessments, and 6. Reflective Summary on development of the project (What worked for you, where were your specific challenges, several things you learned along the way about designing differentiated instruction.

Please have an idea for your project ready to be shared on Wednesday, July 20th, and an outline for the project ready to be shared on Friday, July 22nd.

Academic

1.Attend class and participate meaningfully. Phone or email Charlie if you are going to be absent or late on a given day. (20%)

2.Do daily assignments (20%)

3.Enter five comments over the ten days of the course. (20%)

4.Complete an individual differentiation project.

See Project Description in Assignment Area and Project Rubric in Rubric Area. (30%)

5.Take a risk – let us know when you do. (10%)

Social

1.Ask for help when you need it.

2.Give assistance when the need is called for.

3.Respect each other’s ideas – be there for one another.

4.Try on the idea that we are smarter together than any one person is individually.

5.Help clean up.