Kindergarten - Assessment for Learning

Kindergarten teacher Carol Stephenson brings us back inside her classroom to share how she honors her students' work at the end of an inquiry-based exploration. Carol teaches at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, the lab school at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto).

At Conway Elementary School, a public school in Escondido, California, students and their families rotate through three stations in which kindergarteners are leaders of their own learning.

Kindergartner, Trinity, shares her academic progress, supported by evidence from her portfolio, with her parents and teacher, Jennifer Rocker, at Delaware Ridge Elementary School in Kansas City, KS.

Kindergarteners' goals will most likely need to be concrete, short-term, and related to their immediate interests. Here are a few ways to promote goal setting with children: Record a child’s goal on paper, then take a picture once the goal has been achieved. Ask the child to list the steps they took to achieve the goal. Share goals that you have created and update children as you meet those goals. Create a group goal and plan a celebration once the goal is reached. During the celebration, review the steps the children took to meet the goal...

Students tell their peers what they liked about the work.  Then, students ask a thoughtful question. This takes some modeling. Last, students give a positive suggestion to improve the work. 

This routine helps students to reflect on their thinking about a topic or issue and explore how and why that thinking has changed. It can be useful in consolidating new learning as students identify their new understandings, opinions, and beliefs. By examining and explaining how and why their thinking has changed, students are developing their reasoning abilities and recognizing causal relationships.

Ron Berger from EL Education demonstrates the transformational power of models, critique, and descriptive feedback to improve student work. Here he tells the story of Austin's Butterfly. First-grade students at Anser Charter School in Boise, ID, helped Austin take a scientific illustration of a butterfly through multiple drafts toward a high-quality final product.

Students use Seesaw to engage in creative expression while practicing foundational writing skills. 

With teacher support, students created and posted a “sticky note” of an '-at' word on a class Jamboard to share their thinking and add to a collective word list.

Giving kindergarten students the opportunity to share new learning with their community, allows them to see the real-world applications of becoming lifelong learners. Kindergarten students in this classroom first learned about the characteristics of different animals and created books, drawings, posters, and videos using Seesaw to share their ideas. They ended the unit with a learning showcase for their families.

Centering on one big grade-level question, "Who and what is important to you ?", kindergarten classes shared their learning process and their new thinking with their school community.