Formative Assessment Jump-Starts a Middle Grades Differentiation Initiative

Abstract

The faculty of Cloverdale Middle School (pseudonym), a mid-sized rural school in the southeast, seemed to be stalled in their progress at the beginning of the third year of a five-year district-wide staff development initiative on differentiated instruction. Teachers had received an intensive two-day overview of differentiation. They had worked on writing learning goals to highlight what students should know, understand, and be able to do at the end of each lesson. They had participated in numerous workshops focusing on various strategies for differentiation, such as tiered lessons, RAFT writing (Santa, 1988), and choice menus. These efforts had yielded some success, and teachers demonstrated professional growth through their increased attempts to differentiate cumulative projects according to student interest by regularly providing their classes with product options. In terms of adjustments to daily instruction, however, most faculty members remained reticent to change. It seemed daunting—even impossible—to regularly accommodate the wide range of readiness needs exhibited by their diverse student body. Some faculty members believed that weaving differentiation into daily lesson plans was simply not a realistic possibility because they feared pigeonholing students, were confused about how to incorporate additional scaffolding and challenges, and were frustrated with the ever-present pressures of time constraints. This article describes efforts to alleviate the tension that had developed around the term readiness differentiation (Tomlinson, 2003) and to reinvigorate a