Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

Chapter five discusses the importance of tiering assessments as well as the process it involves. The teacher is instructed to focus upon the students’ readiness level, and work from there. For this process, interest and learning styles are disregarded as a student’s ability to learn a topic is the primary concern here. The teacher should start where the students need to be and work with them in an effort to enable future growth. While it may seem logical to begin students at a level below par, it is far more difficult to build the confidence of students if the learning is done in such a way. Instead, the teacher should work to break apart the varying levels of the information, and then list even the most miniscule of problems to assist students in working through the process. In doing this, students are put into the mindset that they can succeed, and they will be able to take this skill away and use it in the future. If students have problems with this form of tiering, there are many aspects which can be altered to meet their needs. At the same time, it is possible to increase the level of difficulty by adding more to the assigned task. The most effective method of tiering occurs when teachers constantly increase difficulty and decrease the level of tiering, until the student is capable of completing the task without alteration.