Back to School Assessments

Happy Monday!

It’s the start of week 4 for me and it’s officially time to get down to business!  The honeymoon stage is over (long gone!), the students are completely comfortable in the classroom, and we are knee deep into the curriculum now!  (with a few procedures and routines on repeat!)

I really (like Really Really) am ready to get to know each student on a deeper level (academically!).

 I have started pulling my kiddos back one-on-one with me during specific times in the day and I’m slowly but surely learning who is sailing through with ease and who is riding the struggle bus!  (Can I get an AMEN?!)

When I assess my new kinders (prior to any district wide testing), I don’t use any formal or fancy assessment!  I just whipped up some simple (and student-friendly!) back to school assessments just to help me get the basics for my kiddos!   That pretty much includes (1) alphabet identification {capital and lowercase letters} (2) beginning sounds (3) Number Identification to 20 (4) color identification and (5) sight word recognition.

While I don’t expect my students to master all of these, it definitely gives me a baseline and shows me what I’m workin’ with!

Today was all about letter identification.   I created this simple form that includes all capital and lowercase letters (out of order!) as well as the same exact layout for the students in a colored version!

It looks something like this: