Friday, April 4, 2008
Tomlinson Quote
"Our first obligation is to ensure that standards-based teaching practice does not conflict with best teaching practice. Once those are aligned, differentiation—or attention to the diverse needs of learners—follows naturally."
In today's classrooms, it's obviously important to make sure you, as a teacher, meet the standards set by the state. But for many teachers, it's difficult to find the time to meet those standards while meeting your own objectives that you've set yourself. Because of this conundrum, many teachers today set aside their creative lessons and ideas, and instead plan their lessons to only meet the state standards.
This quote puts emphasis on what's important when planning out your lesson plans for the year. I think the article gives a great example of how teachers make sure the standards-based teaching practice doesn't conflict with the best teaching practice - before the school year begins, teachers get together and discuss ways to effectively teach their material. They come up with, what they believe to be the best teaching practices. Once this is established, they go over the standards-based teaching practices and find a way to work them into their "best" practices. This is a great way to come up with ideas on how to meet the state standards while not sacrificing the "best practice."
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4 comments:
I think that we all have the same opinion on the standards limiting the creativity of teachers. I do think that it is important that all the kids are learning the same information, but I also think that the standars should be more flexible. People can have different opinions on what is important in science or history, and what lessons should be skimmed over and what lessons should take months to address. I feel like that should be all up to the teacher, not the state. It is a double edge sword though because if we did leave it up to just the teachers, would some kids be ahead and others behind even in the same school? I don't think that there is one clear answer for this.
I think you had a great point,this is what differentiated instruction is all about.
Now, it is our job to learn to take the time to plan to implement it in our own instruction.
I think CAT puts the standards issue to bed with her article. Quality teachers are teaching STs how they want but are tying the information together for maximum impact. Reinforcing concepts from different disciplines is really working to make STs smarter and more apt to think through a problem using multiple disciplines to REASON through an answer.
I think the quote you chose is a good summary of the article.
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