Pre-Assessment For Differentiation

In this unit, students will learn how to write a narrative story that includes all the story elements.  In order to know where students are, I gave a pre-assessment for them to choose a prompt that interests them then write a multi-paragraph narrative.  Students will then be graded on a rubric to see how well they did.  I created a pre-assessment on the website Socrative. This writing pre-assessment will be given at the beginning of the unit and graded using a narrative writing rubric.  Having my students take this pre-assessment allows me to get an accurate picture of what they know and are able to do in writing narratives.

Next, I used the data from the pre-assessment to create differentiated groups to plan instruction for the students according to their needs. The mind map below shows the innovative groupings.

The students who scored below level on the pre-assessment will work on building a strong foundation of narrative writing by working on all components of a narrative. They will work on writing a narrative through the writing process. They will learn how to plan a story by using a narrative outline. They'll learn how to write the first paragraph with an attention-grabbing hook sentence and a general time reference for the starting point of their stories. They'll also learn about the middle paragraphs, which include introducing characters, describing setting, telling the story chronologically, including descriptive adjectives, using sensory word images, and building suspense. They'll also learn to bring the story to an end in the conclusion paragraph. The students who are approaching proficiency will be grouped according to their specific need that was reflected in their pre-assessment. For example,some students from this group might work on conventions, sentence fluency, word choice, or  organization.  The students who were at or above proficiency level in their performance on the pre-assessment will be given writing opportunities to extend their learning. One way in which they’ll develop additional skills is to rewrite their stories from different character's points of view. Additionally, they’ll become better writers by working on writing more sophisticated descriptive language and sensory details. All students will be given opportunities to continue writing narratives in writing stations, during class assignments and for homework.  Ongoing writing assessments will be done and students' work will be graded with a writing rubric.   

This pre-assessment was effective in helping me to identify what students know, understand and are able to do in writing narratives. The results from the pre-assessments helped to differentiate the instruction so that students are getting what they really need to master the objective or move beyond mastery.