Pre-Assessment for Differentiation

In this blog, I am sharing a differentiation and assessments for a unit about addition and subtraction for kindergarten. The target of the unit is “Students will be able to solve addition and subtraction problems using different strategies.” The common core standards (www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/K/OA/) for this unit are:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.OA.A.1 Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings1, sounds (e.g., claps), acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.OA.A.2 Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.

Kindergarten is a grade level where the students come from different educational backgrounds, some students come from Pre K programs and for others is the first time in a school. This background and other student’s experiences bring to the kindergarten classes a variety of academic levels. For this reason is important that teachers collect information about the students to differentiate the instruction. For this specific unit, the tool used to collect the initial screen about the knowledge of students in addition and subtraction is a pre-assessment.

The pre-assessment for this unit was created in Quizlet. The assessment contain 9 questions including different types of question (Written, matching, multiple choice, and true/false). The assessment is available in the following link:

https://quizlet.com/143029698/test?written=on&matching=on&mult_choice=on&tf=on&prompt-with=1&limit=10

Before started the instruction, all students took the pre-assessment. The information collected was:

• 5 students answered most, including the most difficult, of the pre-assessment questions correctly.
• 12 students have some knowledge about the topic as shown in their score, but need to develop higher order thinking skills.
• 5 students appear to have limited knowledge about the topic.

For each group, I have planned the following strategies and assessment to measure the process. The details of the strategies are in the following mind map: 

https://atlas.mindmup.com/jasolca/innovative_differentiation_strategies/index.html