Pre-assessment and Differentiated Teaching Strategies

Students that are entering my 9th or 10th grade World History class will be presented early on with a pre-assessment that will help me identify the collective class knowledge level, students with strengths that need to be challenged, and students that may need supplemental support to help them meet the class requirements. Students will be divided into three tiers: those that answered 90% of assessment answers correctly, those that were in the 50% range, and those and performed poorly. By tiering students, I will be able to ensure that everyone is being given materials in resources that are both challenging and realistically obtainable.

Students that fall into the highest tier will be given additional resources meant to challenge their existing understanding of the subject material. The priority for these students is to ensure that they are consistently challenged and engaged in course. It can be easy to identify that a student is doing well, reprioritize their needs, and forget that they need a constant influx of challenging information and activities to maintain their engagement level in the class. The last thing that I want is a student to under-perform because they became bored with the activities and instruction that I am provided. These students are also prime candidates to take leadership positions in heterogenous grouping exercises. They will be able to reinforce their own knowledge as the help their peers learn.

Students whose pre-assessment results place them in the secondary tier will be given activities and assignments that reinforce their existing knowledge, and allow them to continue to develop the skills critical to passing the class. These students will be given additional resources that re-define the high level concepts of the unit and further solidify a holistic understanding of the subject.

Those students that fall into the tertiary tier will receive activities designed for intensive course-correction. They will review the extremely high-level concepts, making sure that the basics are understood before being introduced to material that builds skills for which they aren’t yet prepared. These students will also participate in heterogenous groups and be given the opportunities provided by peer collaboration and learning.

A visualization of this compartmentalization can be found here.