M5 U3 Activity 2: Diagnostic Assessments for Differentiation
Project Description
Overview A pre-assessment of student knowledge and skills helps teachers know students’ prior knowledge about a topic. In many cases, you are likely to find that some students already understand a topic or concept at a high level. Other students have some knowledge about the topic/concept, but not a very deep understanding of it. Other students will have limited knowledge or hold misconceptions about it. With this information you can begin to figure out how you keep the high achievers engaged with the topic to increase their depth and breadth of understanding. At the same time, you need to be creating strategies to help students with limited knowledge develop it while students in the middle are also helped to expand their knowledge. Performance outcomes
Candidates will analyze how diagnostic and summative assessments can be used for differentiating instruction and informing teaching practice.
What will you do?
In the virtual classroom, discuss how pre assessments and summative assessments align and how they can be created utilizing backward design. Allow the following questions to guide your discussion:
What is the purpose of pre-assessment?
Why is it important that the information on your pre-assessment align with the information on your summative assessment?
How can you utilize backward design to create appropriate instruction based on what your summative assessment is measuring?
How will you use the information from your pre-assessment to inform your instruction and grouping strategies in the classroom?
Reflect upon how you can align pre-assessment and summative assessment in your grade/subject area as well as how the data that you gather from your pre-assessment can inform your instruction and grouping practices in the classroom. Analyze the importance of utilizing the data from your pre-assessment to drive your instruction and the impact that this practice will have on your students.
Report Requirements
Cohort discussion on aligning pre-assessment with summative assessments
Reflection on Data Driven Instruction
Notes You will be doing a deep dive into backward design in Module 6.
(The above information was cited from the TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate Program)
My Work
When we talk about diagnostic assessment in school, we refer to the types of assessments that are used in order to know more about our students' abilities as early as possible so we can make decisions about what they need to do to improve, as well as how we as teachers can best accommodate their learning. It should help lead us to differentiate our instruction and pick appropriate strategies.
Having previously worked as the coordinator of a Chinese language program, I decided to give all students a diagnostic before they joined the Chinese class at the beginning of the school year to discover students’ prior knowledge and their level of knowledge. Using the data gathered from this assessment, all Chinese teachers worked together to plan and design a suitable Chinese curriculum and teaching materials to match each level’s needs. Afterward, the students were placed into an appropriate class based on their perceived level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced).
Before the Chinese class started, teachers could use the diagnostic assessment to gain students’ attention and make them more curious about the topics we were going to learn. For example, some questions made real-world connections to course material. Moreover, it helped us to answer the following questions:
What do the students already know about this topic?
What misunderstandings do students have that need to be addressed?
How can new content be modified to suit the learners’ needs and interests?
How best can students be grouped?
Diagnostic assessments are also helpful tools in monitoring student progress throughout the term, as they provide us with a benchmark that we can compare with later assessments and use them to find out how well students are progressing.
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