Data and Assessment
Although the use of data and assessment to support differentiation makes clear logical sense, I must confess that when I began this program I wasn’t aware of its importance or power when used in a deliberate and thorough way. Use of data and formative assessments in the classroom, I have found, comprise perhaps the most important strategy for differentiation, as it can provide a teacher with a much clearer understanding of the students as individuals, thus allowing the teacher to ensure that they are crafting differentiated lessons and classroom conditions that connect to individual student needs and learning styles. This belief is reinforced by Tomlinson (2001) who says that differentiated instruction is, among other things, “rooted in assessment,” stating that what teachers learn about students “…becomes a catalyst for crafting instruction in ways that help each student make the most of his potential and talents.”[i]
Below, I discuss some of the ways in which I have seen data and assessment used to effectively drive differentiation in the classroom. I am placing this as the first of my three categorical strategies in this portfolio because I believe that the other two (construction and facilitation) are both contingent upon good data in order to be successful. In many ways, in fact, these strategies are fundamentally intertwined, and thus there will be some overlap here – this section will touch on some elements of construction and facilitation that will be expanded upon in greater depth later.
Below, I discuss some of the ways in which I have seen data and assessment used to effectively drive differentiation in the classroom. I am placing this as the first of my three categorical strategies in this portfolio because I believe that the other two (construction and facilitation) are both contingent upon good data in order to be successful. In many ways, in fact, these strategies are fundamentally intertwined, and thus there will be some overlap here – this section will touch on some elements of construction and facilitation that will be expanded upon in greater depth later.
Figure 1: Using Data and Assessment for Differentiation
One of the key ways in which data can be useful for driving differentiation is through rigorous assessment of student skills and understandings. Where “assessment for differentiation” can build upon other forms of assessment is by casting a wide net: rather than targeting assessment to a specific metric, a teacher seeking to use data to differentiate instruction should try to use assessment to gather data on an extremely wide variety of student understandings and skills, in order to build the sort of thorough learner profiles discussed in the Introduction and Context section. In the kindergarten class where I have student taught for the spring semester, I have seen this in several forms, but the most powerful has been with regards to reading assessments. In our classroom, assessment goes far beyond determining the level of texts which students are prepared to read independently and instructionally. Rather, reading assessments in our classroom seek to create individual portraits of student reading proficiencies and challenges on a wide variety of metrics.
The most important tool for this that we use is a spreadsheet, of which each student has a copy in a specially designated folder behind their chair (see Appendix for both the spreadsheet and an example of how it could be filled in for a particular student). The spreadsheet breaks down each reading “level” into the particular skills students are expected to be working on at that particular level. Thus, a student who is reading books at a level “B” is expected to be working on skills such as “Notices and interprets detail in pictures,” “Uses word-by-word matching to check reading,” and “Begins to self-monitor, noticing mismatches in meaning or language;” a student who is reading at level “E,” meanwhile, has a different list, including things like “Demonstrates awareness of punctuation by pausing, phrasing, and reading with inflection,” “Recognizes many words quickly and automatically,” and “Remembers details and uses them to clarify meaning.”[ii]
The most important tool for this that we use is a spreadsheet, of which each student has a copy in a specially designated folder behind their chair (see Appendix for both the spreadsheet and an example of how it could be filled in for a particular student). The spreadsheet breaks down each reading “level” into the particular skills students are expected to be working on at that particular level. Thus, a student who is reading books at a level “B” is expected to be working on skills such as “Notices and interprets detail in pictures,” “Uses word-by-word matching to check reading,” and “Begins to self-monitor, noticing mismatches in meaning or language;” a student who is reading at level “E,” meanwhile, has a different list, including things like “Demonstrates awareness of punctuation by pausing, phrasing, and reading with inflection,” “Recognizes many words quickly and automatically,” and “Remembers details and uses them to clarify meaning.”[ii]
Although this is obviously a form of differentiation in itself (since it has teachers observing different practices from different students), I mention it here to present the way that the form is used to generate data. Every day, the teacher (or teachers, including myself) reads with a selected group of students while the whole class is doing a reading workshop; for each student the teacher reads with, she uses the spreadsheet to identify and record one behavior (if possible) that the student is demonstrating that they have not previously shown as clearly. Additionally, the folder that contains the spreadsheet also has another table which gives space for the teacher to add additional thoughts on things that the student is doing well and things the student needs to work on. Taken together, this data produces an extremely detailed and individualized portrait of each student as a reader, which can inform how the teacher works with the student in both formal and informal ways. On the formal side, for instance, she might use these data to identify the need for a small reading group focused on a specific topic, and to select the students who could most benefit from this instruction (this will be further discussed in the section on flexible grouping in the Construction section). On the informal side, she might use these data to determine in which ways it would be most valuable to “push” the student during conferences and other literacy activities.
Although in the kindergarten classroom where I student teach, we do not formally require homework, the teacher sometimes shares with parents specific activities that they can be doing to help their children develop skills. These activities as differentiated directly in response to the data-driven portraits of students as learners that the teacher has been able to construct; and having the data to back these assignments up not only helps ensure that they are appropriately tailored, but also seems to help to explain and justify the activities to parents who might otherwise be uncertain or reluctant. For example, in this artifact posted in the appendix, I recorded notes from a parent meeting where, for each area of work identified by the teacher, she was able to present specific assessment results and data to justify the identification of need, and to provide specific activity plans and materials that the parent could connect to that need.
In addition to this formal gathering of assessment data, I believe there is also value in treating a much wider variety of student work and interactions as formative data. I have worked to incorporate this into my lesson plans in both classrooms where I have student taught. For instance, in my Term III Math lesson for 3rd grade, I built the lesson in a way that was designed to progress from more fundamental understandings of measurement to more complicated tasks; because of this, when students began struggling with tasks, I was able to identify precisely which understandings students needed additional work on. Likewise, during my full-classroom takeover in the kindergarten class where I student teach, I used student work (in this case, poetry) to identify areas for additional instruction (for example, distinguishing between writing poetic lines and writing prose sentences). This promoted differentiation because of the ways in which I was prepared to approach instruction differently depending on the data I saw: if many students were struggling with something, I would have made a full lesson out of it; but because I identified only a few students who were having this difficulty, I focused instead on supporting them through one-on-one conferences, while also drawing attention to the issue in whole-class instruction without constructing a whole lesson around it.
Good data, in my opinion, is what allows a teacher to effectively plan differentiation strategies as well as to continuously reevaluate and refine them. In the next section, I will discuss some of the strategies for incorporating differentiation into actual lesson Construction which I have observed as a student teacher.
Although in the kindergarten classroom where I student teach, we do not formally require homework, the teacher sometimes shares with parents specific activities that they can be doing to help their children develop skills. These activities as differentiated directly in response to the data-driven portraits of students as learners that the teacher has been able to construct; and having the data to back these assignments up not only helps ensure that they are appropriately tailored, but also seems to help to explain and justify the activities to parents who might otherwise be uncertain or reluctant. For example, in this artifact posted in the appendix, I recorded notes from a parent meeting where, for each area of work identified by the teacher, she was able to present specific assessment results and data to justify the identification of need, and to provide specific activity plans and materials that the parent could connect to that need.
In addition to this formal gathering of assessment data, I believe there is also value in treating a much wider variety of student work and interactions as formative data. I have worked to incorporate this into my lesson plans in both classrooms where I have student taught. For instance, in my Term III Math lesson for 3rd grade, I built the lesson in a way that was designed to progress from more fundamental understandings of measurement to more complicated tasks; because of this, when students began struggling with tasks, I was able to identify precisely which understandings students needed additional work on. Likewise, during my full-classroom takeover in the kindergarten class where I student teach, I used student work (in this case, poetry) to identify areas for additional instruction (for example, distinguishing between writing poetic lines and writing prose sentences). This promoted differentiation because of the ways in which I was prepared to approach instruction differently depending on the data I saw: if many students were struggling with something, I would have made a full lesson out of it; but because I identified only a few students who were having this difficulty, I focused instead on supporting them through one-on-one conferences, while also drawing attention to the issue in whole-class instruction without constructing a whole lesson around it.
Good data, in my opinion, is what allows a teacher to effectively plan differentiation strategies as well as to continuously reevaluate and refine them. In the next section, I will discuss some of the strategies for incorporating differentiation into actual lesson Construction which I have observed as a student teacher.
[i] Tomlinson, C.A. (2001). How To Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms. 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
[ii] The origin of this spreadsheet is actually unknown (as in, forgotten by the teacher who provided it to me), although it states “Format Adapted by Michelle Tett 9/2006.” The content of the spreadsheet, however, is taken directly from Fountas and Pinnell, and the language is used in Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. (1999) Matching Books to Readers: Using Leveled Books in Guided Reading, K-3. Heinemann.