Pre Assessment for Differentiation

The unit that I would be introducing will be the common core standard RL2 CCR Determine Central Ideas of themes and text and summarize the key supporting details and ideas.  The pre assessment that I would use would be to determine if my students can identify the main characters, and setting of the story.  I would also pre assess to see if they understand the concept of beginning, middle and end of a story.

My objectives for this unit were: Students will know what/who are the main characters in the story
SWBAT identify the setting of a story.  SWBAT to successfully sequence events in order of the text.


Some students are intimidated by pre assessments and still view them as a test.  In my classroom I plan on creating a climate that it is ok not to know, its not ok not to try.  I used the Kahoot app for creating a pre-assessment.  They make fun games and I think this relaxes students and makes learning  fun. Plus it allows me to read the question for my students and it incorporates technology.  If technology allows they can play as individuals or as a team.

Here is the Pre-Assessment I created for Identifying elements of a story.

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/721d351c-f062-4cc1-aa33-3a3f6b086b45

This link requires you to log on with a smartphone or lap top to participate. If you want to play you will need to log on with a tablet or smartphone.  You would just go to kahoot.it and enter the pin number that shows up on the screen, enter a user name and begin.  If not I have screen shot the questions that I created.  They are 5 multiple choice questions.

The use of colors and shapes for the answer made this assessment fun and the background music is cute.

These five questions will determine in my class who understands the concept of main character, who understands what a setting is and if they understand sequencing.  The words for sequencing a story are beginning, middle and end.  Since this is a kindergarten class I don't expect everyone to be able to answer these questions.  For many of my students this may be their first time in class. This pre-assessment may not be enough to break my students into group initially.  It will just determined the depth of how I many need to teach the lessons.

  I will teach another whole  group lesson and through formative assessments of question and answer and maybe a formative/summative assessments, I will be able to place my students into groups based  on differentiate needs  from there.

Here is the link to my mind map on that outlines differentiating strategies: https://www.mindmeister.com/715823704/pre-assessment-and-differentiation-strategies-nafeesah-marcellus

Just in case their are some technical difficulties here is a screen shot of my mind map.

It is important to be able to use the data from the assessments and be able to differentiate my lessons so that all of my students will be able to grasp the knowledge needed.  Every child can learn its our jobs as teachers to find out how!