A Word About Assessment
Assessing early learning mirrors assessment in other grades. Planning assessments in Kindergarten involves:
- Clarifying the outcomes and understanding the success criteria.
- Choosing appropriate learning experiences.
- Preparing tools to track student progress.
- Being prepared to adjust instruction and assessment for students needing support.
Formative assessment includes teacher, peer, and self-feedback. Implementing peer feedback and self-reflection with four and five year olds may surprise some teachers, but it’s effective. Spending time teaching students how to give constructive feedback is crucial for success.
Before students engage in independent and creative play, teachers may consider offering brief two to three minute lessons on the knowledge and discrete skills outlined in the curriculum’s KUSPs. These small chunks of background information are important and should be formatively assessed. Formative assessment informs the teacher about their next steps for instruction and informs the students about their next steps for learning.
There are three things to remember:
- Only the learning outcome is summatively assessed!
- Each learning outcome should be summatively assessed in three different ways (observations, conversations, and products).
- The most recent achievement result from each method is the only result that counts. In other words, don’t penalize students for their first attempts at learning.
Teachers can use various tools to gather evidence of success criteria. Some suggestions are:
- Checklists and frequency charts to record evidence of learning from observations.
- Anecdotal notes to record evidence of learning from conversations.
- Rubrics to record evidence of learning from student-generated products.
Assessment Examples for the
New Curriculum
Mathematics
Assessing the Organizing Idea of Number
Students play traditional board games that include counting backwards and forwards.
Set up a store where students can go shopping. Write up number price tags, and students pay in the same number of tokens (solve problems by counting, describe quantity related to purpose).
Create opportunities for students to subitize quantities to five when shopping.
Set up a number booth that showcases a new number to investigate (play with). Activities can include collecting items (like rocks or popsicle sticks) to represent the numeral, a quantity.
Set up comparative language station or play area. Students play games that require them to use words like “more” “less”, “enough” “not enough”, etc.
To access the MATH curriculum go to: https://curriculum.learnalberta.ca/curriculum/en/c/matk?s=MAT
English Language Arts
Assessing the Organizing Idea of Text Forms and Structures
Set up realistic play areas where students engage in imaginative play, pretending to be the characters in real life, like a crosswalk patrol person or a librarian.
Prompt students to use words like “character”, “beginning”, “middle”, and “end” in the play centers.
Students can make signs like “Stop” or “Library” to represent information and ideas from a variety of real messages.
Using puppets, students can act out a song or a poem, connecting between the words in the poem and the actions of their puppets. For example, they can explore the ideas and feelings represented in the story of Cinderella (Dias & Lorencz, 2005) and the Mouse Work Song. (https://youtu.be/N2B5hzGeCWY?si=fw0jYgwRFi311oT8)
Physical Education and Wellness
Assessing the Organizing Idea: Character Development
Drawing Prompts: Provide children with drawing prompts such as “Draw your favourite animal” or “Create a picture of your dream house”. These can help students to identify their personal characteristics.
Set up an Emotions Play area: Students can use props like play dough, finger paints, masks, and signs with words on them to tell the story of a time when…
Puppet Show: Provide short audio stories that include a variety of feelings and emotions. Provide props that can go with each story. Students can take turns acting out the stories.
Drama Corner: Ask students to use toys to act out situations where people might experience certain emotions like anger (car mat, with a traffic jam), happiness (candy shop), disappointment (figurines playing mini soccer game), or fear (build a haunted house out of blocks).
Board Games: Provide a selection of board games that focus on feelings and emotions. Examples of board games:
- Social Skills Board Games Junior Learning, available at Scholastic
- Emotions Board Game (Free Download)
- Make your own version of the “Heads Up” game to include emotions and feelings Link to the App Here.
Science
Assessing the Organizing Idea: Earth Systems
Lead students on a treasure hunt to discover both man-made and natural objects in their surroundings.
While students are in class, the gym, or outside, inquire if they can name five things they see, four things they hear, three things they touch, and two things they smell.
Create play zones resembling environments such as sandy beaches, ocean voyages on a boat, or forest camping. Encourage students to share their favourite areas and recount past experiences from similar settings.
Create a zone for a wild plant and animal hospital. Observe students’ behaviour and language as they interact with the wildlife and flora.
Lead students outdoors to gather seasonal artifacts. They can collect these items in a small container like a shoe box. Then, they can draw, paint, photograph, or record a short video of their collection. Repeat this process for each season and discuss the differences between artifacts from different seasons.
Invite a local Elder to visit and engage in a discussion with students about their personal connections with nature. Encourage both the Elder and the students to provide input on the indoor and outdoor play areas they wish to re-create to represent real natural areas they’ve visited before.
To access the SCIENCE Curriculum go to: https://curriculum.learnalberta.ca/curriculum/en/c/scik?s=SCI
Formative Assessment Strategies and Tools
Formative Assessment Tools for Individual Students
Below are individual formative assessment tools that students use by themselves, with a peer feedback coach (their classmate), or their older “buddy” student. Click on one image below to launch a Google slide deck that has all four tools PLUS more tools on it!
Examples of Whole Class Assessment Tools
Thumbs up = “I get it!” or “I can do it!”
It can be useful to hang an anchor chart for the students to refer to when they forget what each sign means.
- Thumbs down = “I don’t get it!” or “I need help!”
- Thumb to the side = “I kind of get it.” or “I could use some more practice.”
Coloured Cups
Give your students either coloured cups or cards on a key ring. Students can use the cups during whole class discussions or when they’re learning at a station.
- Red = “Stop, I need help.”
- Green = “Keep going, I understand.”
- Yellow = “I’m a little confused.”
Emoji Cards
These cards work the same way as Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, and Coloured Cup strategies.
Mini Whiteboards
Give each student a small whiteboard and a marker. Ask students to draw or write their answers and then hold up their whiteboard.
Hit the Target
Hang a laminated poster of a target on the wall. The target should have two or three labelled rings, indicating three levels of achievement. Ask students to self-assess how well they understand the lesson so far by putting a sticky note with their name on the area that represents their learning.
AAC Authentic Performance Tasks
Click the image to jump to our New Curriculum Performance Task Collection
