Professional Documents
Culture Documents
to undertake for the related lesson, and allows them to display their
progress or mastery of a concept through a medium they are more
confident in and have a better understanding of. Effectively it allows
students to choose how they will learn a concept and how they will
display this learning (Reinken, 2012). It also adds a large amount of
variety to the learning experience of the students, which is
important when attempting to instill the intrinsic drive to learn
within students. The choice board pictured above has activities
separated via a system that mirrors Gardners theory of multiple
intelligences (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2013), which acknowledges eight
separate intelligences that a human can possess, and has also
added computer intelligence to accommodate technologically skilled
learners.
This activity type can be related back to Standard 5.1 of the AITSL
Graduate Standards for Professional Practice, which states
Demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including
formal, diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess
student learning. (AITSL, 2014) This is because it can be used be
used to facilitate either a formative or summative assessment. Prior
to creating a choice board, a teacher would first conduct a
diagnostic assessment on the topic to assess the base
understanding the students possess, the results of which would
direct their selection of the nature, difficulty and timing of activities.
The differentiated activities that can be undertaken using this
resource also allow a multi-faceted and accommodating approach to
assessing student learning. In my current prac classroom it would be
more appropriate for me to differentiate the activities in a choice
board based on difficulty level rather than the concept of multiple
intelligences, as there are three children in my class with significant
reading and learning difficulties and one child with Autism Spectrum
Disorder.
explain the working for a small portion of the problem, which meant
students who had not done it correctly were not singled out and had
a chance to listen, observe the work of their peers and change their
solutions accordingly. After this activity was complete the students
returned to their desks to complete work from their course book,
while the teacher wrote anecdotal notes on certain students
performance.
Mini-whiteboards are very effective differentiated teaching tool for a
number of reasons. They encourage consistent student engagement
and contribution, and they are erasable which can help to overcome
confidence issues some students may have with their handwriting or
fine motor skills (Dodge, 2009). Mini-whiteboards also provide an
instant informal formative assessment when the students hold their
work up to show the teacher, as the teacher can tell which students
are grasping new knowledge, which students are not quite
understanding concepts, and how they should adjust their current
lesson to best accommodate this information (Dodge, 2009).
Feedback is also instantaneous and easily understood when using
these boards as teachers can verbally correct students as soon as
they see their work or can demonstrate for them on their
whiteboard. This activity aligns with AITSL Graduate Standards 5.1,
5.2 and 5.4 (AITSL, 2014). This is because it is a reliable and easily
facilitated method of informal formative assessment, it allows the
possibility of timely and relevant feedback that can be instantly
applied, and allows teachers to use the information they are being
presented with on the students whiteboards to direct the remainder
of their current lesson and future lessons.