A. Consider Perspectives and Contexts

Step 3 provided an opportunity to consider general sources of evidence about using tiered instruction. Now you will need to think about what you learned in Step 3 in light of Emily’s and Michelle’s unique situations, whom you met in Step 1. To help you understand their contexts further, listen to their perspectives in Audio 7.2 and Audio 7.3.

Use the information from these perspectives to describe the unique contexts in which these dilemmas occur in Activity 7.16a.

Audio 7.2: Emily’s perspective (social emotional development)

A pre-k teacher shares her perspective on using a tiered approach in her classroom to address social emotional development (running time: 0 min., 39 sec.).

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Emily:

After learning more about tiered approaches for addressing children’s social-emotional development, I now realize that I am already using many of the practices such as creating classroom rules and helping children label their emotions that are recommended with this approach. And these are practices that benefit all of the children in my class. However, I also learned about several new practices for managing challenging behaviors that I can use with some children who need more support. I’m excited about trying out some of these practices in my classroom. I have to admit the idea of doing things such as developing a behavior support plan is new to me. I’d like to learn more about how all of these practices fit together and work.

Audio 7.3: Michelle’s perspective (academic learning)

A child care teacher shares her perspective on using a tiered approach in her classroom to address academic learning (running time: 0 min., 52 sec.).

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Michelle:

Making sure that I have a literacy-rich classroom has always been important to me, because I know how critical language and literacy skills are for young children to be successful in school. But I have struggled with how to make sure that I am meeting the needs of all of the children in my class regardless of their different learning levels. I’ve learned that a tiered approach can help me organize instruction by how intensive it needs to be—foundational instruction for all children and targeted interventions for some who need more supports to learn.  Also, I now have a better understanding of how formative assessment works, but I’m still not sure which assessments I should be using and how to use this information to make decisions for individual children.  I am excited about this new approach, and am ready to take some next steps. I plan to explore more with the other teachers and my program administrator about how to use formative assessment at our next team meeting.