Book touts open questions as a strategy for differentiating instruction. As I read, I'm not convinced at the manageability, but I think...

that they might be very effective in a blog....Students still get social reinforcement and "conversation is more controlled."

blogging idea not in book...that part was my idea.

example of "open question" from book: Create a sentence that uses the following words and numbers. Other words and numbers may be used: ..

40, percent, most, 80.

I like the question, but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how to make it a formative activity targeting a specific objective.

It's the managability that is so difficult for me. I'd love to be able to meet with each student but I'd need to have only two minutes a

(whoops misspelled manageability) child...and then do the same with reading and spelling? I need to figure this all out

The other piece the book claims needs to be in place is "parallel tasks". I haven't gotten to the discussion about them yet, ...

but from what I can tell early on, it's basically giving other kids stuff they can manage independently so you can spend time with...

individual students on more challenging tasks.

The other big piece seems to be discussion after open questions. I thought blogging would combine discussion piece.

Forum might even be better than blog.

It's putting together folders for each group or child that would be so time consuming for an el teacher. We'd have to do it for three

different subjects each day. Doesn't this seem to you that the trend is back to 'grouping' so that you can individualize the classes?

That's the continuing problem. Those raising the expectations work independently of those cutting funding for teachers.

expections continue to rise as resources diminish.

but if we grouped then individualization would be easier to do. Sometimes I think it was a good idea to do that. The ones who needed to

progress faster or read harder novels could while the others could spend more time on basic math or read books at their level

I was doing a workshop in a school in NYC years ago where each third grade teacher took a different leveled novel and the kids went to

whichever room they needed to for instruction. They were all reading novels, but at their levels. And teaching math was much easier

It's odd that tchrs are (in many ways) expected to individualize in a way that's completely unnoticeable.

There's a mixed message in the idea of "differentiating is good but tracking in any way is bad"

to me, targeted grouping (done carefully, with approp motivation) is effective at times.