You're wasting your time

What to expect:

5 min read

This week we examine the role of pre-assessment in the classroom. Does it actually matter? Here’s what you’ll learn in the next 5 minutes:

• Tech Talk: Save some time with this pre-assessment app for every grade

• Surplus Scoop: Students on strike until their favorite teacher returns.

• Brainy Bits: Turns out pre-assessments don’t matter, but actually, they do

Tech Talk

Endless pre-assessments at your fingertips

The Problem:

Pre-assessing your students before starting a new unit can be a mystery, especially if you’re not as familiar with them. Heck, even if you’ve known your students for the past 4 grades, it can still be a very time consuming part of teaching for what might feel like ‘just’ review work. 

This pain is felt by your students too. Keeping your high-performing students engaged with work they’ve already covered may bore them. This can lead to distracted students, which can derail any classroom management plan quite quickly. Is there an engaging, time-saving way to actually pre-assess your students in a way that’s useful?

The Solution:

Well what if there was a virtual suite of customizable content that has already been premade to your country’s curriculum standards from K right through to 12? Enter this week’s edtech, IXL. With over 150 billion (yes, that’s billion with a b) assessment questions used by more than 15 million students worldwide, IXL makes a great case for valuable pre-assessments. 

After narrowing down your focus by selecting the country, grade, and curriculum strand needed, IXL provides a suite of actually well written pre-assessment questions that you can use to help gage where your learners are at. The questions aren’t just worksheet problems either - they are interactive, nearly gamified problems for your students to complete and receive instant feedback on.

Teachers can also receive the feedback results, saving you even more time from marking and giving you a proper overview of a student’s progress before beginning the new topic/unit.

How about YOUR classroom:

Although most grades and courses are present, some key ones are missing, especially in the later grades. Also, it can get very expensive very quickly. Pricing is a bit secretive, but from what we can find expect at least a few hundred dollars per class. We get the impression that full schools are their preference, and for this type of set up, that would be the most cost efficient.

Family-based plans are free however. This opens up a new avenue to recommend to your students to at least get pre-assessment practice at home, especially over a long school break/holiday. This would work much better than the typical worksheet style booklets.

Even without paying, you can access many of the questions (and there is a free trial for teachers). However, if data collection is the goal of your pre-assessment, then start lobbying your admin now to purchase a license.😅 

Is pre-assessment a time consuming challenge for you? Hit reply and let us know your best strategy for tackling it!

Surplus Scoop

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• This teacher asked her 8th Grade students to insult her - the answers were as rude as you think.

• Would your students do this? These elementary students refused to show up to school until their teacher was reinstated.

• Anti-cheating hats - the hilarious way to prevent academic dishonesty.

Brainy Bits

Pre or post?

The Study:

Pre-assessment is key, right? But what is the actual impact? Does pre-assessment actually lead to higher rates of success?

If a teacher provides a pre-assessment before a test, for example, will that student actually perform better on it? Latimer et al. (2019) aimed to find this out.

This study took in 285 post-secondary students and divided them into three categories - a group that only has the lesson material, a group that has the lesson material and a pre-test, and a group that has the lesson material and a post-test. Each was followed with a summary assessment weeks later. Results were tracked and compared to see who scored the highest.

Please note, that even though this is a post-secondary study, learning is learning, and these results apply to us K-12’ers as well.

The Results:

Researchers broke down the results by question type to get further into the data. The group that scored the highest was surprisingly the group that only had no pre-assessment. What’s even more interesting, the largest gap in results came from questions that students were already familiar with (i.e. review work). This shows that, at least for these students, pre-assessments based on review actually led to worse academic performance.

The group with the lowest score was the one that received just the lesson material. So this may show us that assessments in general (i.e. practice) does matter for long term retention.

These results bring up a valid argument though - what is the value of pre-assessment at all if it doesn’t lead to better academic success? Is it worth your time and effort?

How about YOUR classroom:

Yes, of course pre-assessment is still worth it. The presence of a pre-assessment may not guarantee a better end result - but that isn’t the focus of pre-assessment.

Pre-assessment is not for the students - it’s for the teachers. By using pre-assessments, teachers are better guided on how to approach new topics with their learners.

If the goal was just to increase final grades, we should be looking at the lesson material itself, not the pre-work. 

You know your students best, but don’t be afraid of pre-assessment. Structure it with this goal in mind; not to help your students succeed, but to better help you teach the curriculum.

Tell your friends about us!

Interested in growing with us? Want us to feature your tech tool, resource, or research? Hit reply to start a conversation.

Like what you’ve seen? Forward us to your friends and colleagues so y’all have something to talk about next week. 😎

Have an idea for some classroom tech, strategies, or research that you think is valuable for the community? Respond to this email and let us know.

References

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

IXL Learning. (2024). IXL is personalized learning. Retrieved from https://www.ixl.com/

Brainy Bits:

Latimier A, Riegert A, Peyre H, Ly ST, Casati R, Ramus F. Does pre-testing promote better retention than post-testing? NPJ Sci Learn. 2019 Sep 24;4:15. doi: 10.1038/s41539-019-0053-1. PMID: 31583117; PMCID: PMC6760123.