Assessment And Differentiation - Essay Example

By differentiating assessment, educators open up opportunities for students to show their developing skills and knowledge in ways in which they might be more "assured" or which might challenge them further. This is true for both lower-level and higher-level learners. Educators are capable of planning the most appropriate activities, as well as assessments, in order to meet student needs (Colorado, 2007). Through centering on adapting assessments to match students’ strengths and needs, teachers can open doors for students to be victorious.

Such a change is essential for students who might otherwise not be capable of demonstrating mastery with traditional or normal assessments. Such exceptional students might be English language learners (ELLs). This paper will come up with a lesson plan for English language learners and how they can be effectively assessed by their educators. Teacher Preparation English language learners (ELLs), in content-area courses, have a double challenge meaning that they are expected to learn content and language at the same time (Colorado, 2007).

ELLs struggle in content-area lessons such as literature, math, social studies and science because they have not gained the language, literacy skills, or background knowledge essential to master new content knowledge. One way to dealing with this challenge is by effective lesson planning. Relying on their different levels of English proficiency and literacy, ELLs will gain from the skills, which a well-designed lesson can tackle. Effective lessons comprise of building background knowledge, guided practice, explicit instruction and modeling, peer practice and assessment of content learned (Colorado, 2007).

Student-teacher interactions along with peer interactions are significant for learning. Owing to the diversity in the background and experience that ELLs bring to the classroom, it is necessary to prepare lessons that deal with a broad range of needs. This wide sweep will also benefit all students in a classroom whether English language learners or not (Hall, 2008). Lesson Components Building Background Knowledge Successful lesson planning requires a couple of steps from initial preparation to the ultimate review of material (Tonya, 2005).

Once teachers get started, they should modify their survey to ensure their lesson or standard objectives are eliminating unimportant information, which does not meet its objectives. ELL teachers should also choose key vocabularies to pre-teach their ELLs and develop assessments to examine the content they taught. As teachers prepare their lessons, they should determine what background knowledge students require so as to master the material (Tonya, 2005). Educators might find that their English language learners’ background knowledge differs substantially from one student to another.

It is also essential not to consider that ELLs' background knowledge is same as that of other learners, who were raised in this nation. With an aim of building background knowledge to ELLs, educators could try creating interests in the subjects they teach through pictures. They could utter the name of the object as many times as possible, in order for ELLs to grasp the name. Educators should also build text-specific knowledge through offering students or ELLs with information from the text beforehand, mainly when the text is conceptually tough to understand. For