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Readiness Pre-Assessment

This module is part of a Classroom Assessment series developed by the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Educators and others may use or adapt. If modified, please attribute and re-title.

Version 1.0 | Updated May 30, 2020| Developed By:�Carla Evans & Jeri Thompson

This work is licensed under a �Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

International License.

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Introductions

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Carla M. Evans

cevans@nciea.org

@CarlaMEvans

Jeri Thompson

jthompson@nciea.org

Suggested citation for this learning module: Evans, C. M. & Thompson, J. (2020). Classroom Assessment Learning Modules: Readiness Pre-Assessment. Dover, NH: National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. Retrieved from www.nciea.org/classroom-assessment-learning-modules

I started out my career as a classroom teacher who knew very little about assessment. I’m passionate about supporting educators’ assessment literacy because I believe it has the power to shape teaching and learning in positive ways for all students.

Throughout my career, as an educator, building and district administrator, and as a Senior Associate at the Center for Assessment, I have known the need for assessments to plan instruction, support student needs, and to determine the strengths and needs of programs. Understanding the information gained from assessments is integral to instruction and student success.

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The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Inc. (The Center for Assessment) is a Dover, NH based not-for-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation. Founded in September 1998, the Center’s mission is to improve the educational achievement of students by promoting improved practices in educational assessment and accountability.

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www.nciea.org/classroom-assessment-learning-modules

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At the end of this module, you should be able to:

Describe what a readiness pre-assessment is and why it is important,
Explain characteristics of high-quality readiness pre-assessments,
Create a readiness pre-assessment for a unit of instruction using tools and resources provided, and
Explain how to interpret readiness pre-assessment data as a starting point to differentiate instruction.

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Module Outline

Readiness Pre-Assessment: Definition & Rationale
Characteristics of High-Quality Readiness Pre-Assessments
How to Design and Interpret a Readiness Pre-Assessment Using the Provided Tool
Practice Exercises
Wrap-Up & Module Survey

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Readiness Pre-Assessment: Definition & Rationale

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Warm Up Questions

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What do you think are the purposes of pre-assessment?

What do you think are the benefits and limitations of pre-assessments?

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Hockett, J. A., & Doubet, K. J. (2013). Turning on the lights: What pre-assessments can do. Educational Leadership , 71 (4), 50–54.

No student—regardless of background or experience—approaches a concept, topic, or skill “empty.”

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What is Readiness Pre-Assessment?

How can readiness pre-assessment support student learning?

To identify student strengths and needs to make better instructional decisions.
To determine flexible grouping patterns.

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Readiness pre-assessment is a way to gather evidence about students’ pre-requisite knowledge, skills, and understandings needed to access the concepts in the next unit of instruction.

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Pre-Requisite Knowledge, Skills & Understandings

Using an end-of-year test at the beginning of the year tells a lot about what students do not know and little about what they do know.
For example, if I gave an end-of-year physics test to incoming physics students, what information would I gain except that they know very little physics.
But, if I really want a readiness pre-assessment, I would pre-assess them on the pre-requisite knowledge, skills, and understandings relevant for a particular unit of instruction in physics.

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But Only If the Readiness Pre-Assessment Provides Useful Instructional Information…

Teacher Vignette:

Last year, Ms. Harley’s attempt to pre-assess her students before a unit on WW II left her frustrated. For efficiency, she used a multiple-choice format focused on key dates, figures, and events of the conflict. The results were unsurprising—few students answered any of the questions correctly, and most students either did not have or could not readily recall such detailed background knowledge. Ms. Harley was at loss as to the purpose of the pre-assessment for designing instruction that would meet her students’ needs. She went ahead and taught the unit as usual.

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Hockett, J. A., & Doubet, K. J. (2013). Turning on the lights: What pre-assessments can do. Educational Leadership , 71 (4), 50–54.

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Discussion Question

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What type of unit goals and learning theory would you guess undergird Ms. Harley’s pre-assessment? Explain.

Discrete knowledge and isolated skills
Application and understanding

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Connection to Learning Theory

Pre-assessments (as well as other types of assessment) reflect the undergirding learning theory in the classroom assessment system.
For example, if the learning environment is focused on teaching discrete knowledge and isolated skills, the assessments used to gather evidence of students’ pre-requisite knowledge and skills will focus on atomized bits rather than conceptual understanding.
All of these learning modules assume a modern conceptualization of how people learn—whether constructivism, cognitivism, or socio-cultural.

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See paper: “The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture”

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Re-Entry Fall 2020 & Beyond

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Focusing on the first few units allows teachers to move to grade-level expectations right away and not remediate for weeks or months. Targeting assessments on the knowledge and skills necessary for success in the first unit or two is more manageable than trying to figure out all the prior knowledge and skills students will need for the entire year. More importantly, testing students early in the year on skills they might need for units to be taught in February, for example, assumes that teachers will spend from August through February teaching students the curriculum without having the students learn any of these precursor skills or knowledge. This is clearly a nonsensical assumption. Good teachers will be shoring up important knowledge and skills along the way, so the results from a beginning of the year assessment will be obsolete after schools have been in session for a few weeks and months.

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Characteristics of High-Quality Readiness Pre-Assessments

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Characteristics of Strong Readiness Pre-Assessments

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Align to and cohere with an underlying theory or model of learning (application and understanding vs. discrete knowledge and isolated skills).

A strong readiness pre-assessment reveals significant differences in the pre-requisite knowledge, skills, or conceptual understandings of students.

A readiness pre-assessment does not need to be long or complicated to achieve this goal, but it does need to be thoughtfully designed to produce information with predictable instructional implications.

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Assumes High-Quality Unit of Instruction

Understanding by Design is a framework for thoughtfully designing units of instruction.
Known as “Backward Design” because teachers don’t start with the learning activities.
Instead, teachers start with specifying what they want students to know and be able to do by the end of the unit (big ideas, enduring understandings) and then work backwards to design the assessments and learning activities.
Resources to learn more:

10-minute Youtube video by Grant Wiggins
Introductory Chapter of Understanding by Design
Overview of Understanding by Design
Jay McTighe’s Website Resources Page

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Backward Design Approach + 1

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Design, administer, and interpret readiness pre-assessment

What are the big ideas and important understandings students should retain?

How will I know if students have achieved the desired results?

What will need to be taught, to whom, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals and readiness pre-assessment results?

Figure taken from: Bowen, Ryan S., (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/

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Example: WW II Unit

Think back to Ms. Harley.
In what ways does this readiness pre-assessment differ from her original pre-assessment (slide 12)?
Can you deduce the learning targets?
Are the learning targets focused on discrete knowledge and isolated skills, or application and understanding?
Which questions do you think you’d leave off or adapt, if any? Why?

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Hockett, J. A., & Doubet, K. J. (2013). Turning on the lights: What pre-assessments can do. Educational Leadership , 71 (4), 50–54.

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Our thoughts about the readiness pre-assessment:

Q1: conflict is a critical aspect of understanding history; represents pre-cursor knowledge of content and ability to use evidence to support their answers.
Q2-4: provides insight into what students already know about WW II; could also be post-assessment questions; represents background knowledge.
Q5: eliminate this question; if the objective is to examine the extent to which students can read/interpret primary text and use evidence to support their answers, then they need content they are familiar with; does not have predictable instructional implications to determine what may be hindering students’ ability to respond.

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Four Fundamentals of Useful Readiness Pre-Assessment

Capture students’ reasoning (make student thinking visible) through a few open response questions tied to important goals of the unit and crucial pre-cursor knowledge, skills, and understandings.

Multiple-choice and true/false items do not usually lend themselves well to readiness pre-assessment unless students are prompted to explain, defend, or justify their choices.
Using a selected response end-of-chapter test or pre-assessment from a pre-packaged program or textbook typically is also not helpful.

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Four Fundamentals of Useful Readiness Pre-Assessment

Are accessible to all students—various entry points to see what students do indeed know.

This could mean that if writing is not what you are instructing and assessing, a student struggling to write their ideas could verbally tell them to you or another adult (for example).

Readiness pre-assessment questions should be limited to those that have predictable instructional implications.

Seek to discover what students DO know instead of seeking to confirm what they DON’T know (e.g., use of open-ended questions).

Should be administered shortly before the unit is taught so that the readiness pre-assessment provides the most up-to-date information about students’ strengths and needs.

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How to Design & Interpret a Readiness Pre-Assessment Using the Provided Tool

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Readiness Pre-Assessment Process

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Clearly articulate the goals of the instructional unit—what all students should know, understand, and be able to do connected to the big ideas and enduring understandings of the content area.

Design a few key questions aligned with the goals of the instructional unit that gathers evidence about important student pre-requisite knowledge, skills, and understandings.

Predict instructional implications for each readiness pre-assessment question.

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�Readiness Pre-Assessment Tool

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Clearly articulate the goals of the instructional unit—what all students should know, understand, and be able to do connected to the big ideas and enduring understandings of the content area.

Design a few key questions aligned with the goals of the instructional unit that gathers evidence about important pre-requisite student knowledge, skills, and understandings.

Predict instructional implications for each readiness pre- assessment question.

Click here to download Pre-Assessment Tool

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Example: Grade 5 Math Fractions Unit

If these are the goals of an instructional unit on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions—what type of pre-requisite knowledge, skills, and understandings would we expect for Grade 5 math students that have predictable instructional implications?

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For examples from other content areas/grade levels see slide 29.

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How do we answer that question?

1. Look back at prior year aligned content standards.

2. Discuss with a colleague what precursor concepts are crucial to student success in the upcoming unit of instruction.

3. Other…

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Readiness Pre-Assessment Examples

Grade 5 Math—Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying & Dividing Fractions
Middle School Science—Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
Grade 1 ELA—Characterization: Me and My Friends
Grade 7 Visual Arts—Examination of Historical and Cultural Aspects of Art

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NOTE: These readiness pre-assessment examples are based on one conceptualization of a unit design. If the unit was designed differently, there could be different readiness pre-assessment questions. In other words, there are multiple ways to gather pre-assessment data and it should be aligned to the enacted curriculum and instruction.

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Think-Pair-Share

Look back at the pre-requisite questions/activities from the different content area examples on the previous slide.
Discuss how each question/activity promotes the “fundamentals of useful readiness pre-assessment”:

Capture students’ reasoning (make student thinking visible)
Accessible to all
Discover what students do know and can do
Predictable instructional implications for this unit

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How to Get Instructional Information from Readiness Pre-Assessments

Read the student responses
Don’t mark them up, add feedback, or grade!
Sort the student work into piles (e.g., expected, partial, and limited) based on predictable instructional implications
Write out what you notice

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Add student names	Level of Pre-Requisite Knowledge and/or Skills	Strengths	Weaknesses
	Expected Understanding
	Partial Understanding
	Limited Understanding

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Practice Exercises

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Practice Exercises

Practice Exercise 1: Use the readiness pre-assessment tool to create a pre-assessment for an upcoming unit of instruction.

Start with the goals of the instructional unit.
Create pre-requisite questions/activities.
Predict instructional implications.

Practice Exercise 2: Examine student work from a readiness pre-assessment you created or administered and try your hand at sorting and determining strengths/needs (use the table on slide 31).

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Wrap-Up & Module Survey

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Concluding Thoughts

Consider working in grade-level, content area, or discipline-specific teams to develop readiness pre-assessments for main instructional units.
Try to find time to discuss student work and flexibly group students with colleagues (e.g., PLC time).
Remember that these readiness pre-assessments should not be “formal” testing events or scored/graded.
Readiness pre-assessments can also be informal as long as they are purposeful.

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Informal/Purposeful Ways to Collect Readiness Pre-Assessment Data

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Elementary Students	Listen to students as they turn-and-talk; record anecdotal notes
	Watch students at centers; use a checklist to look for pre-requisite knowledge and skills
	Ask students a question and watch how they solve/answer that problem on a whiteboard; use a checklist to collect data
	Read student journal responses; use a checklist or record anecdotal notes
Secondary Students	Give small groups of students a warm-up question and listen to responses; record anecdotal notes
Secondary Students	Read student responses to questions/prompts related to their pre-requisite knowledge, skills, or understandings from warm-ups or exit tickets; record anecdotal notes or use a checklist

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Cautions about Readiness Pre-Assessment

Readiness pre-assessment is a starting point, not a definitive sorting tool. Readiness pre-assessment cannot predict student growth over time, it cannot and should not be used as a measure to place students in learning groups for the duration of a unit. Readiness changes constantly as learning goals change, as students gain knowledge and skills, and as the teacher responds to patterns in student needs (Tomlinson, 2003).

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Teachers must regularly check-in during the unit to see how students’ learning is progressing, where students are stuck, and what supports students need to take the next step in learning using a formative assessment process (see Formative Assessment Module).

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Module Survey

No matter when you are completing this learning module, please take this short survey to help us improve the quality and usefulness of this module.

Thank you!

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