Pre-assessment

n The goal of our pre-assessment was to gather data about what our group of
students already knew relative to time. The written assessment items included
difference of digital and analog clock, elapsed time, reading time using an analog
clock, and showing digital time on an analog clock. In the assessment we used a
variety of times to assess further knowledge to the hour, to the quarter, to fives,
and to the minute. We knew that we had a higher-level group so we went a little
further in our dynamic assessment by having them show us times on their own
analog clock, and also having them show us times using different terms like
quarter before, half past, and quarter after. Before Mauri and I administered
our pre-assessment, we played a get to know you game with a dice and it helped
us to get to know each student and gave us an idea of behavior of the students and
classroom management that we will need to use.
n Both the written assessment and dynamic assessment were administered
individually. Written assessment was a paper-pencil assessment and the dynamic
assessment was administered orally.

Reflection of Pre-assessment

We were impressed with how much the students knew, but only two of the students knew
everything on the pre-assessment. It helped us to know which areas to review and to
teach. We noticed on the pre-assessment that most children did not know the difference
between analog and digital clocks, struggled with the difference between the minute hand
and hour hand, and did not know elapsed time. Other than that, they knew a lot and we
decided to take it further and teach them quarter and half terms.
Because students were so similar in what they knew academically, there was not one
student that stood out from the pre-assessment that we would need to differentiate for.
The main thing that we had to plan for was managing their behavior. We knew that in our
lesson plans we would need something to constantly keep their attention and have
something for them to do or else we would lose them completely.

Unit of Instruction based on Pre-assessment

The big idea that we expected our students to learn is that telling time is essential in our
daily life. We taught to the standard: (3.MD.A.1) Tell and write time to the nearest
minute and measure time intervals in minutes. Solve word problems involving addition
and subtraction of time intervals in minutes, e.g., by representing a problem on a number
line diagram. Our first lesson was mostly a review of the difference between digital and
analog clocks and the hour hand and the minute hand. In the assessment, we found that
the students in our group mostly understood these concepts, but there were some students
who still struggled with them. Our second lesson was teaching about elapsed time. We
found in the assessment that a number of students did not understand this concept of
adding and subtracting time intervals. Our third lesson was teaching about hour to the
minute and the concept of quarter and half terms. Hour to the minute was something
we noticed that our students were not paying close attention to and missed often in both
the pre-assessment and the previous lessons. We taught them about quarter and half
terms because they exceeded our expectations in the assessment and we felt like we
needed to go further and challenge them. Our assessment helped us understand our
students knowledge of these concepts and drove our instruction.