NMS is committed to mastering the instructional strategy of differentiation. Differentiation tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction (Tomlinson, 2000). Today's schools must accommodate students from different ethnic groups, language groups, cultures, family situations, and social and economic situations, with different interests and purposes for learning, and different abilities and styles of learning. In the face of all this diversity, schools can no longer operate as if one curriculum and way of teaching will fit most of the students. Instead, students can pursue a common set of curricular goals or learning standards, accomplishing them in different ways and sometimes to different degrees of mastery (National Institute for Urban School Improvement, Education Development Center, Inc, 2000). is no recipe for differentiation. Rather, it is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that values the individual and can be translated into classroom practice in many ways. Still, the following broad principles and characteristics will be established at NMS in order to provide a defensible differentiated classroom: make sure each student gets access to knowledge, skills, and information, individually tailored learning, use collaborative teaching arrangements, collaborate with families, agencies, and other community members, hold high expectations for student success, and build inclusive communities (National Institute for Urban School Improvement, Education Development Center, Inc, 2000). Academic Writing Rationale/Text Structures A major factor in NMS’s success is their commitment to writing every day in every class. Writing, particularly writing to inform, noted the U.S. Department of Education (2003), is “one of five top instructional practices for reducing achievement gap” (as cited in Thompson & Thompson, 2009). Furthermore, use writing as a tool for learning, and they write for a “Students variety of purposes and audiences…They understand and articulate how authors use a variety of
NMS is committed to mastering the instructional strategy of differentiation. Differentiation tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction (Tomlinson, 2000). Today's schools must accommodate students from different ethnic groups, language groups, cultures, family situations, and social and economic situations, with different interests and purposes for learning, and different abilities and styles of learning. In the face of all this diversity, schools can no longer operate as if one curriculum and way of teaching will fit most of the students. Instead, students can pursue a common set of curricular goals or learning standards, accomplishing them in different ways and sometimes to different degrees of mastery (National Institute for Urban School Improvement, Education Development Center, Inc, 2000). is no recipe for differentiation. Rather, it is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that values the individual and can be translated into classroom practice in many ways. Still, the following broad principles and characteristics will be established at NMS in order to provide a defensible differentiated classroom: make sure each student gets access to knowledge, skills, and information, individually tailored learning, use collaborative teaching arrangements, collaborate with families, agencies, and other community members, hold high expectations for student success, and build inclusive communities (National Institute for Urban School Improvement, Education Development Center, Inc, 2000). Academic Writing Rationale/Text Structures A major factor in NMS’s success is their commitment to writing every day in every class. Writing, particularly writing to inform, noted the U.S. Department of Education (2003), is “one of five top instructional practices for reducing achievement gap” (as cited in Thompson & Thompson, 2009). Furthermore, “Students use writing as a tool for learning, and they write for a variety of purposes and audiences…They understand and articulate how authors use a variety of
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