Pre-assessments and teaching

Background

I'm teaching G1 and thus far we have learned nouns and verbs, and we just started learning about adjectives. Nouns and (action) verbs have been covered thoroughly and reviewed in every second class. Based on recent formative assessments, virtually all students understand their use and how to differentiate them.

Framework

G1t comes with its own limitations and challenges. Any pre-assessment that requires writing is pretty much out immediately as any writing assignments take too long compared to the benefits they offer. As I've stated previously, with any writing assignment we have some slower students that require up to two minutes just to write their name, class and date.
Any pre-assessment that relies on reading is also of limited use since quite a few of my students can only read at level C (Lexile BR40L~160L) so that would lead to either many students asking for clarifications on a number of words, or going through the assessment sentence by sentence and translating (nearly) everything.
Another popular pre-assessment methods are the three card traffic light approach (Green for "got it", yellow for "not sure" and red for "don't understand") and raising one's hand for yes. I have tried both and neither give reliable results as students either follow the leader (students looking at what their more confident classmate is doing) or overestimating one's abilities (signalling understanding when they most likely do not).
Another serious problem is that with G1 I cannot leave them to their own devices as long as I finish assessing the test - it's too time-consuming and it's time I'd rather use for instruction or classwork.

Pre-assessment

For my purposes, then, I need a method of pre-assessment that
1. Doesn't take long to set up, preferably using something that students already have
2. Is not easy to mimic by looking at what others are doing/writing/showing
3. Is easy and quick to grade
For my purposes, either Plickers or Slido will do. These platforms allow virtually instantaneous grading and grouping of students. Using this, each student will get a card with a QR code on it.

Depending on how the student holds the card, it will register one of the four possible answers. The teacher holds up his device that records each student answer in real time. The teacher will go through a list of 15-20 words and for simplicity's sake the students just have to show whether the word in question is an adjective or not. For clarity, the words will be displayed on the smartboard at the same time. At the end the platform will immediately show me who got how many and I can make an informed decision on how to group my students. Based on my experience, the whole thing can be done in under three minutes, provided the students have already been handed their QR cards and they know to take them on the table.

Results

For the purposes of my exercise the results are as follows.

• There are 5 students who answered most, including the most difficult, of the pre-assessment questions correctly (Blue group)
• There are 12 students who have some knowledge about adjectives as shown in their score (Green group), but need to develop further
• There are 5 students who appear to have limited knowledge about the topic (Yellow group), of which 3 are struggling with language and are at different reading levels and 2 students who have little to no comprehension of the the topic (Red group) and need to be tested further for special needs

For the top 5 students for the next 5-8 minutes of the class I will have each assigned as a partner to one of the 5 who had most trouble with the content. Two will be paired with two of the students that are lost. The stronger students can (using Chinese) explain to their classmates what adjectives are, how they can be used and give them simple examples. The other three can (with the help of their stronger classmates) start doing their own work.

• I am very fortunate that in my class most of the students feel that being able to coach/teach their classmates is a sign of recognition and a perk to strive for.

Blue Group

The blue group members have 5-8 minutes to help the yellow group (we use digital timers) after which they have to return to their own group. They are given a number of flashcards with words only (without context it makes the exercise more challenging). Their task will be to divide the cards into three categories - nouns, verbs and adjectives (we have covered nouns and verbs throughout the semester). Once they finish, they have to go through the three piles one by one and check that all the members of the group are in agreement. If there's a word they cannot agree on, they're to put it separately and after finishing the three piles they're free to ask the teacher to render a decision. After they're finished with their work they're free to assist either the green or the yellow group as they see fit.

Green Group

For the green group I will have prepared different paragraphs according to their reading level (by and large, we have divided our class into four reading levels - C, D, F and H. There are actually a few students who are higher (one or two can read J) and one whose level is around A, but with the resources I have available now it isn't feasible to separate the students further. Reading their text they have to draw a box around the adjectives (In our class, we underline the verbs, circle the nouns and box the adjectives). Once they're finished with their text, they would need to look up another member of the group who has the same (level) text and compare that they have marked the same words. In case of disagreement, either the teacher or a member of the blue group can help them out.

Yellow group

Yellow group members will have been given color-coded flashcards with nouns (green) and adjectives (blue). Their task is to put them together so that the pairing makes sense. First of all, the pairs should be blue-green and not vice versa. Second, the pairing can not be nonsensical, e.g. hot ice cream or tall paper. This group will also have the teacher assisting them the most as this group is likely to need most hand-holding.

Exit Ticket

After the activity is finished we can either use Plickers one more time or have the green and yellow group members fill out prepared small papers listing the same words as in the beginning of class, and have them box all the adjectives. Such an approach should give a good overview of who learned how much and who still needs extra help.

• It is important to note that the activities described above do not absolutely have to be finished within one lesson. This can be a unit spread out over two lessons.