Nowadays, much of the focus of teacher training and development is
on differentiation, providing each student in a class with different
learning experiences based on their individual needs. This focus is
based on several things. First of all, students may come from different
back-grounds, such as countries, cultures, sub-cultures, etc. Second,
students have different baseline abilities. Some students have special
needs, some students are learning English while they learn everything
else, some students have innate talent and are already ahead of other
students. Even within the same culture and the same group, every student
is an individual with different experiences, learning styles, and
interests. All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion that the most
effective teaching will be teaching that is individualized for every
student.
Unfortunately, this just isn't
feasible in most classrooms. With the help of technology, learning is
becoming more and more personalized. But currently, this challenge is
addressed through differentiation. Teachers will provide different
learning experiences to different groups of students in their classes
based on similarities in a few students' needs versus the rest of the
class. Any teacher with some experience will quickly be able to tell
which students are ahead of the rest in a class and which students need
extra support, so this is the starting point of differentiation. But in
order for differentiation to be more effective, each unit of teaching
can begin with a pre-assessment. A pre-assessment is an assessment
before teaching that gives a teacher a clear idea of exactly where each
student is in relation to what they should learn during a unit.
Generally, a pre-assessment will not contribute to the students' grades.
Not only does a pre-assessment help with differentiation, but it also
gives an idea of where the class as a whole is relative to the teaching
goals of a unit.
The most important part of a
pre-assessment, in my opinion, is prerequisite skills. These are skills
and knowledge that students should have coming into a unit. It's
basically assumed that most students will not know most of the core
content of a unit before going through the unit (although some of course
will), but if they don't know the prerequisite skills, that's a warning
sign that they might struggle during the unit. I made a unit plan for teaching about circles in a geometry course where the prerequisite skills are the following:
They need to know how to do proofs, what are the relationships between postulates and theorems. They need to understand congruence and similarity. They need to understand coordinate planes and how to use them.
So in a pre-assessment for teaching this
unit, these skills would be the first thing to assess for. Secondarily, I
would want to assess for ability to accomplish the unit objectives.
These objectives include "Students understand terms about circles, such as tangent, secant, chord, radius, diameter," "
Students understand and can use the properties of tangents. For example, using a tangent property to find the length of a tangent segment to a circle,"
and others. These objectives cover a lot of material and information,
so it is unnecessary to fully assess on the objectives in the
pre-assessment, but it's good to get information about the students
basic knowledge, like vocabulary, and a little bit about whether they
can already do more difficult tasks related to these objectives.
My fellow TeachNow cohort members have compiled a list of pre-assessment strategies in this wiki page.
These include things like pre-quizzes, KWL charts, graffiti (a.k.a.
mind-maps), and other techniques. I will probably use a combination of
different pre-assessment techniques during my teaching. For example, for
the above-mentioned unit on circles, I would start with KWL chart (or
perhaps the extended KWHL chart--"know," "want to know," "how to learn
it," "what have I learned"). Then I would have a pre-quiz. A KWHL chart
is more for students. They will identify for themselves where they are
and what else they need (or want) to know. The pre-quiz is more for me
as the teacher. As mentioned, I would assess for prerequisite skills,
basic knowledge, and some parts of more advanced knowledge. I've made a
pre-quiz for that unit, which you can find here.
After
pre-assessment, I will have data on the different levels of readiness
for the material in the unit. This can guide differentiated teaching
during the unit. One example of how this can be done is shown in the
article Differentiation: It Starts with Pre-Assessment
by Emily Pendergrass. She describes a science class in which students
are divided into task groups for the day based on a pre-quiz at the
beginning of class. As a high school teacher, I feel this strategy
wouldn't be as useful to me, because high school students are highly
sensitive to perceived unfairness, whether it is there or not. Another
strategy is described below.
My cohort members also made a great flow-chart of how pre-assessment can lead to teaching and progress-monitoring
during and entire unit. For dividing students into groups, I would go
with pairs, which is a natural grouping based on the fact that students
generally sit in pairs anyway. For most of the time, I will have
students in heterogeneous groupings, to allow stronger students to help
weaker students through the unit, but for some activities, I may switch
to homogeneous groupings. I will also have differentiated homework,
which will give the weaker students extra work and help in the areas
that they struggle in. Throughout the unit, progress will be monitored
through in-class problems, homework, exit tickets, self- and
peer-assessments. For example, on an exit ticket, students will be
asked, "How well do you understand the material from today's lesson?" so
they can evaluate themselves. Likewise, in-class problems will
sometimes be done individually followed by pair discussion so peers can
give each other feedback. Other times, the pair will do it together to
practice collaboration.
Advanced students
will be given chances to do challenging problems during homework and
also to do projects where they extend their knowledge individually. A
report or presentation on the history or and idea, or the way it can be
applied in other fields, are examples of these projects.
A
differentiated classroom with individualized instruction for every
student is the ideal. A pre-assessment followed by differentiated
instruction and progress monitoring is a way to move toward that ideal.
It will also help teachers and students be on the same page and work
together more effectively.
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REFERENCES:
TeachNow February 2018 Cohort 3. Pre-Assessment for Differentiation.
Retrieved from
http://218cohort3.pbworks.com/w/page/126881315/Pre-Assessment%20for%20Differentiation
TeachNow February 2018 Cohort 3. Pre-Assessment to Groupings.
https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/edit/417b3a04-9916-48f2-85c0-dc3ad1db08b4/0?shared=true&
Pendergrass, E. (2013, December). Differentiation: It Starts with
Pre-Assessment. Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/dec13/vol71/num04/Differentiation@_It_Starts_with_Pre-Assessment.aspx
