Mrs. Brown would likely benefit from taking an inventory of her students by analyzing data from state tests, classroom tests, learning styles and intelligence inventories, and through classroom observations. Once she has collected and analyzed this information, she will be more able to determine what types of differentiation would meet the needs of her students.

I feel that some things she can do, depending on the topic, use and or create note cards For example, if they are working on nouns, students can have a set of cards with nouns on each one. The teacher could read the sentence and hold up the noun that goes in the blank.

Mrs. Brown can try to incorporate student choice into assessments by allowing them to choose between two different methods of assessment. Mrs. Brown can differentiate assessment by issuing pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. Multiple forms of each of these assessments can be found by searching google or even sites such as Pinterest or teacherspayteachers.com. Some examples I find useful are K-W-L charts, small group discussions, short constructed responses, and even whole group discussions.

There are many ways that Mrs. Brown can effectively and successfully differentiate assessments for her students. One example would be providing the students with choices to demonstrate their knowledge and mastery of the standards. This can be achieved through the use of a choice board, in which the choices will appeal to the different learning styles the learners may possess. Each activity on the choice board will be worth a specific amount of points and the students will be able to choose different activities to meet the point expectation. Different choices to demonstrate knowledge would be creating song, creating a PowerPoint presentation, making a model, writing an essay or report, or performing a skit or short play.

I recently watched a video about differentiating assessments. Like many mentioned in previous posts, student interest is always a great way to start. One skill or concept can be assessed on many ways, and the means of measurement can be seen in many ways. The teacher shown is this video uses levels of understanding (various means of measurement) and student interest to assess student knowledge. Please see the link: http://www.teachertube.com/video/challenge-by-choice-in-math-tiered-performan-1658

Choice boards are a great solution for differentiation. For example, in my music classes, I often allow students to even select a choice for their assessments. This allows for a sense of value and responsibility because the control is placed into the hands of the child. Students may choose a written activity, a performance-based activity, or a discussion assignment in small groups.

I would suggest assessing students in various ways such as offering authentic assessments. Projects allow for students to display their knowledge of the content in a way that best fits them. Don't always think that assessing has to be done with pen and paper.

Mrs. Brown could implement an assessment that is tiered. This allows students to choose what they do to earn points on the assessment. Each item will be work a particular amount of points depending on difficulty. The students would attempt at least one of the items in each of the categories. I use this type of assessment quite often in my classroom, and I have noticed that students enjoy it, and I have less of my students to leave answers blank.