Assessment Appointments

What ours look like

The big kids—first through fifth grades—start school on Monday. Kindergarten starts two days later. The reason for this is because kindergarten teachers take two days to meet and assess students before school actually starts. Many schools do something like this and often the purpose is to divide incoming students into two or three classrooms with equal abilities.

At our school, we do things a bit differently. First, the other kindergarten teacher and I take a look at all the names of kindergartners who have registered. We take turns choosing students, thinking about families that we know and have worked with in the past (or who have requested one or the other of us); separating the same or similar names; dividing boys and girls evenly; and trying our best to make both classrooms equally diverse. We have usually collaborated with the special education teachers and are aware of students with IEPs and which classrooms they should go into. In other words, we create our classes before meeting and assessing students and we rarely move students around after that process happens. We want students to get a chance to meet their teacher before school actually starts just as much as we want to meet them.

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We schedule two students every half hour. Parents complete a few forms while my aide (Miss Lori) and I work with the students and get to know them a little. I assess students on letter names/sounds and writing; Miss Lori assesses them on math skills. We are not required by the district to administer any specific assessments nor submit any beginning-of the-year-assessment scores (except, of course, DIBELS, but the testing window for that begins the following week).

I collect minimal data at these appointments. I mostly want a starting point for the number of letter names and sounds that students know as well as how high they can count. For the most part, none of this information is going to change the instruction a student receives for the first six weeks of school anyway. I want all students participating in the same lessons and activities—in order to establish the same solid foundation—whether they come in knowing zero letter names or are already reading.

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These are the forms I have ready for parents:

Much of this information is available to me online, but it’s handy to have it in a file as well and it sticks with me better if I see it in this format.

I try to get all parents to join our class Facebook group before they leave their assessment appointment so that I can start communicating with them via this method right away. Posting this for you reminds me that I was maybe going to do a post about having a class Facebook group. Let me know if anyone is interested in that.

You may have no need for a form like this, but I wanted to let you know that I do obtain permission from parents for their children to appear on my blog.

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I also provide this to help the first day go more smoothly for everyone:

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This is what I use to assess students in ELA. I do the blue sheet before the letter ID sheet as it has easier questions to ease them into feeling comfortable with me. Also, the first sheet will give me an indication on how many letter names they might know (for example, they may name the letters as they try to write their name for me).

When it is time for the student to try and write their name, I hold the pencil out in a neutral position and watch to see with which hand they use to take hold of it. I make a note of their dominant hand and try to have in the back of my mind, right from the get go, which one or two students are left-handed. This will help me ensure that every student is always writing with their dominant hand. As you know, many five-year-olds still switch back and forth and sometimes need reminders which hand is their pencil hand.

I also take notes on their pencil grasp. If they already use a three-finger tripod grasp, I write “good.” Other things I jot down are “four-finger grasp,” “fist,” “holding the pencil at the top,” “sticking thumb out,” etc. Later, I will make a chart where I group students according to their pencil grasp. I start working right away on improving and establishing proper pencil grasps. I can never get all of my students to use the correct grasp, but I keep trying throughout the year.

With the letter ID sheet, I usually start with X and then O. I do not show them letter cards; I just point to the letters on the sheet. If they know these letters, I’ll try the first letter in their name and then hop around to other letters in their name. If they do well with those, I then go across in a line and see what other letters they can name. If a student only knows a few letter names, I skip the letter sound section. I always record the date (month/year) at the bottom and the number of letter names and sounds the student can identify. This is my starting point with each child. At the end of each month, starting in September, I test all students on letter names and sounds and record the data on this sheet. I use this information, primarily, to determine who will get interventions (prevention) from me for the next upcoming month. I usually choose the lowest eight students as this is the maximum amount of students I can work with one-on-one each day.

When I come across a student who knows the majority of letter names and sounds, I write a few high frequency words on the back of the sheet to see if they know any words. This year, a student instantly read all four words I wrote. So I wrote another four words, more challenging. He read those, struggling with just one. I gave him an easy sentence to try next, which he read just fine, and then a more challenging sentence, which he struggled with just a bit. So, I know I have a reader coming in, but, like I said, I will treat him the same as all the others because he deserves the same solid literacy foundation.

Miss Lori uses this form—I believe it comes from our math program—and some number cards and counting bears:

Miss Lori assessing an incoming student on her math skills.

Last, I take a picture of each student. I will put these on our class Facebook group so everyone can start to get to know the kids’ faces and names. And from here, we are ready to start another year of kindergarten!

I am loving the portrait mode on my iPhone 11 Pro. It blurs the background, meaning that I don’t have to constantly search for a clean background in my classroom (always impossible to find).