A STRATEGY FOR DIFFERENTIATION
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To ensure that all students who put forth a sincere effort earned full credit for their work, I implemented the strategies described below.
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Since I had students use the forerunner of this book to self-teach most of the course's content, I established a simple grading strategy that enabled students to earn full credit each time they genuinely attempted to complete a lesson's review questions. On the day prior to grading the questions, I posted the correct answers in the room. Students were permitted (and encouraged) to compare their attempts with those that were posted - and to make needed corrections.
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As the year began, I provided students and parents with a written, detailed explanation of this teaching / grading strategy. The key aspects of this explanation were as follows:
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To: The Parents of Life Science Students
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While the fundamental focus of this course's labs, activities, and field trips is to support students in thinking scientifically, they will be exposed to a great deal of biological content - considerably more than they will be expected to memorize for a test. Students will be informed specifically what content they must have "in their heads" for each test.
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Young minds naturally absorb a great deal of information, particularly if it is presented in an interesting way. Exposure to content enables good thinkers to expand their thinking!
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The bulk of the content will be self-taught - via students' efforts to read the textbook's brief lessons and to thoughtfully complete each lesson's review questions.
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All students who make a genuine effort to complete these assignments will earn full credit for this work. Homework will account for a significant portion of the grade in this course - usually about 1/3 (with the other 2/3 equally divided between tests and projects).
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