Pre-assessment and innovative differentiation strategy related to a different learning level of students
Today I will write about the importance of assessing students, while using differentiation related to each student’s learning on a good, medium or lower learning level.
For a long time I have been assessing our youngest learners at the International School of Stuttgart. This has been challenging sometimes: on the one hand we have a wide range of students that have no, hardly any, or some English knowledge (EAL learners = English as an Additional Language), and on the other hand a group of English native speakers. Therefore I will use pre-assessments that will also include the individual child’s language development.
Our team and I always need to find strategies how best to assess our students: for example, amongst 36 youngest learners in a mixed-age group of 3 to 4 and 4 to 5 years we/I differentiate according to their age and cognitive development while assessing them. Also, there will be differentiation according to their knowledge, individual learning level, special needs, and understanding. Children who just started school need another assessment than those who have been with us already for one year. For example, for some pre-assessment related to our Unit “The Natural World” I will individually ask which parts of a tree a child will remember or know. Our youngest learners who just started new at our school mostly have no idea how to describe a tree. The older children being with me for one year (even EAL students) already might differentiate and use vocabulary such as, branch, bark, etc. These students will be more challenged during the follow-up assessments as their learning level will raise: they will gain more knowledge about nature, the forest-area, the vocabulary related to the unit, etc. As a pre-assessment I will develop a quiz related to the Unit “The Natural World” that each child is able to play- related to their age, their language (if necessary for EAL students I might ask for some Mother tongue support), their learning disability and their cognitive development. Assessing on a one-to-one correspondence will give me a first impression what about each child’s learning level and knowledge. At the end of the unit the quiz will be assessed another time, to show what the child has learned during this period of time.
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I created a quiz for young learners. It is a game for Early Years and Kindergarten students that have no, only little or some more experience related to “The Natural World”. Teachers (and parents!) should help read on a one-to-one correspondence. I hope it will be accessible and the students will enjoy.
I created the following links to the “Lucidchart”platform, where I created a flowchart that shows differentiation of pre-assessments for young learners. I hope that one of these will show my flowchart.
I also got ideas from the following link related to- pre assessing students.