Using Pre-assessments to differentiate learning

The idea that everyone is on the same learning curve is a ludicrous notion.  Students come from many different backgrounds,  circumstances, and these students have different abilities, or challenges.  Some students are talented with a higher level of intelligence. Some students know certain content better than other.  Some students do not know English very well and thus will be behind.  Some students are average.  Some students have disabilities.  The teacher has to sort through all these notions and figure out the best way to teach these little sprouts.

One very important tool in the teaching toolkit is the pre-assessment.  This tool is used to figure out where students are.  This could be a simple quiz like ordeal, checklists, KWL charts, general class discussions, technologically enabled work using iPads, computers or mobile devices, or other task oriented activities to see where students are at.  Once the information is gathered,  the teacher needs to use the information to deliver the unit content and continually assess the students as they progress through the unit.  The following mind map shows an example of what a classroom could look like during a unit with students divided into four groups (although the last two groups are really the students that didn't score well and it is due to two reasons). 

Although the strategy gives examples of activities and ideas for assessments, the overall theme is as follows:  the advanced students are given tasks that further develop their knowledge on what is being taught through the use of technology.  The medium leveled students do a more hands on activity with some guidance so they can learn and strengthen their learning of the content being taught.  The lower leveled students have more guidance from the teacher through reading groups, discussions, and some technology use.  The teacher can also rotate the activities with some tweaking so as to aid all the students and give attention equally.  Finally, it is easy to keep track of how students are doing because the teacher will have selected activities that assess the students' knowledge like KWL charts, think ink pair share,  and prepped tests that can continually feed the data collection efforts.