Kindergarten Pre-Assessment for Differentiation
The classroom of twenty-two children has assembled to their tables after an introduction to the teacher. Ms. Russell goes over the rules for the entire class.
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Some students repeat the rules but there are two English Language Learners (ELL) who do not repeat the teacher. Ms. Russell suspects they may need help with English but has a classroom pre-assessment planned for the first day. The Pre-Assessment will help Ms. Russell group students into groups that the students will benefit the most from. Some students missed preschool and some can read and do simple addition and subtraction problems.
Pre-Assessment for the whole class
Ms. Russell has ten years of experience working with Kindergarten and First Grade students. She has a simple one-sheet Kindergarten assessment that she uses for grouping learning teams. Some students will be able to complete the form after some instruction but most of the students will complete the form as students participate in a craft activity. She will go around the room and her teacher's aid will help complete within one hour.
The pre-assessment took one hour and fifteen minutes with two teachers. Ms. Russell will analyze the data she receives from the worksheets to form work groups or teams.
She has a spreadsheet that she created for grouping the classroom into teams according to this pre-assessment. The teams will change as students master skills or need to focus on skills.
Five of the twenty-two students knew all or most of the answers on the worksheet. This is Group 1.
Twelve of the students knew most of the questions but need to need to develop higher order thinking skills.
This is Group 2.
Five students were not able to answer many of the questions and two are English Language Learners (ELL) who will benefit from concentration on reading, language, and vocabulary.
This is Group 3.
All three groups will be present for the STEM science teacher and art. Group 3 will break away to the Reading table with either Ms. Russel or the student teacher. Phonics, group reading and some use of the students' family language. Both of the ELL students are from Spanish speaking families. Ms. Russell knows some Spanish and is able to compare some Spanish and English words to introduce English vocabulary. As part of a lesson plan, she will introduce some Spanish words, culture, and art to the classroom.
Once the teams are formed she will develop lesson plans with differentiated instructions for the class. The lesson plans are designed to exceed the Kindergarten standards and incorporate various strategies for learning.
Group 1 will take a second assessment using a flip book and contains more complex questions. The assessment involves using counters, small blocks or figures for the student to count. Some students may read and others have strong phonetic skills to begin reading. The assessment will contain some first-grade content, it should be harder than the most students can achieve to analyze the student's knowledge. This group will be challenged by the STEM teacher who will create individualized science and math work using the computer and science lab.
Group 2 will take a second assessment to analyze each student's learning style. An eclectic combination of learning media and tools will be used within this large group. There are two tables if they need to break into sub-groups on occasion for differentiated instruction or to vary the learning method for part of the group. High expectations will be set here with goals set for the highest learning experience as well as high test scores. This group will be challenged to create, imagine, invent, solve riddles to strengthen their problem-solving skills. They will have extra science and math time during group 1 Computer Reseach and Group 3 ELL and Reading.
Group 3 will take a reading, math and language assessment. Intense reading and vocabulary time will be available to scaffold the knowledge the students already have. Differentiated instructions and tests will be used with this group. The theme with this group will be to keep it fun and positive. All students in this group will work on science and math together with lesson plans from the STEM teacher. Ms. Russell will try to keep this group one step ahead and expect high performance.
Dialy assignments will be due from each student and all will be learning the same lesson. Since this is the beginning of the school year Ms. Russell will be very busy with checklists, daily assessments, writing and presenting the differentiated instructions. There are several times during the day when the whole class transitions together for recess, lunch, classroom reading, physical activity, and art.
This is a Mind Map that explains as well as some videos with references within the chart.
How to teach Kids | from a Prague kindergarten, part 1 | English for Children
Some of the strategies in the videos I would use for each of the three groups. The gentleman in the video for group three ELL group was especially enthusiastic about a very large class. I would not wind the students up as he did for an entire class but the idea of keeping it enjoyable resonates with me (WATSENGLISH, 2013)
The Kindergarten Screening video was especially helpful for me. This type of screening is inexpensive, highly effective and pin-points exactly what the student knows (Sheahan, 2014)
I especially enjoyed the video I placed on the Group 2 Mind Map.
What happens when Classrooms meet Higher Order Thinking
This was a TedX talk about higher-order thinking for all students, not just gifted ones. This was presented by Dylan Hyman (TedX Talks, 2015)
References:
Hyman, Dylan (2015) What happens when Classrooms meet Higher Order Thinking | Dylan Hyman | TEDxAmsterdamED,
Retrieved on August 8, 2018, from https://youtu.be/Ib2VOOtH6Qg
How to teach Kids | from a Prague kindergarten, part 1 | English for Children Retrieved on August 8, 2018, from https://youtu.be/NIk1-ck4c6Q
WATTSENGLISH (2013) Kindergarten Screening,
Retrieved on August 8, 2018, from https://youtu.be/Ib2VOOtH6Qg
