Abstract:

Meeting the requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, state and district mandates to improve student learning, teachers face increasing demands on their skills and time. Pre-service teachers need to be trained while in-service teachers need to be informed as how to meet these requirements without adding 12 hours to their daily workday. This 4-Tier method presents one approach to help teachers reach all their students.

Highly accomplished teachers meet the mathematics needs of their students intuitively. How can we help all teachers do this? The work of Deborah Lowenstein Ball and Linda Darling-Hammond has detailed the importance of teacher reflection on what teachers did that worked and why. This research examined teachers’ intuitive practices and arrived at a 4-Tier method for differentiating classroom instruction. Mathematics leaders need to help all their teachers reach this accomplished level which helps the school, district, and state improve student mathematics learning.

The 4-Tier method was developed through two years of collaboration between university faculty, teachers in the field, and groups of pre-service teachers. A mathematics educator developed the 4-Tier method and presented it to in-service teachers who used the method and identified missing elements. Pre-service teachers used it as a lesson plan requirement. Detailed conversations between mentors and pre-service teachers occurred focused on meeting the needs of all students; how to do that before teaching a lesson rather than remediating students post lesson presentation was the result.

The built-in link between differentiating lesson activities into 4-Tiers and differentiating the assessments is the link to help all teachers address students’ mathematics needs and standards requirements.

Keywords:

Lesson differentiation, mathematics instruction, professional development, pre-service teachers.