Report card time is approaching and grades are almost due! You know you have to complete lots of one-to-one assessments in your Kindergarten classroom in a short period of time. Giving one-to-one assessments is time-consuming and it can be hard to find the time to assess all of your students. Depending on how many grades you have to add, it can take between 5-15 minutes PER student. Plus, you have to find activities for the rest of your class to do while you are giving assessments. It took a few years, but I finally figured out how to get all of my assessments done, without the rest of my class going crazy. I'm going to share how to handle classroom management during one-to-one assessments in Kindergarten.
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The Problem: No classroom management during one-to-one assessments
If you have ever tried to give one-to-one assessments, you know that you will get interrupted A LOT. It's hard to find activities your students can do independently so you can work with your students. You want to be fair to each student and limit distractions. If you do not have an aide, then it is just going to be you in the classroom with 20+ students trying to fit all your assessments in.
There is also a limited number of students you can assess per day. Spreading the assessments over 2+ weeks seems like they are never-ending and you may feel like you are not actually ever teaching. So, I came up with a simple solution so you can get all your assessments done in a short period of time with limited distractions!
Choosing an Assessment Day
The first thing you are going to do is pick 1-2 days PER quarter to complete all your assessments. You are going to be doing one-to-one assessments all day long for these 2 days. While you are giving the assessments, your students will be doing an all-day mega-center rotation. It takes a lot of planning, but it will simplify the way you give assessments.
For these two days, you are going to skip all your whole group lessons. Instead, you are going to have an entire day of center rotations. I always did 2 sets of rotations, one in the morning for ELA and one in the afternoon for Math. You could also do an entire day devoted to ELA assessments, and an entire day of Math assessments. Just set up your centers like you normally would, except you will not be having a small group lesson at your teacher's table. Your job will be to call students one-by-one to complete all their assessments, while the rest are working on their centers. Your students will work on their center activity, switch when the time is up, and repeat this process all day. You will be calling students one at a time to sit down with you and complete your assessment.
Planning Centers for your Assessment Day
Now that you picked your day, we are going to plan your centers for the assessment day. I can't tell you how many activities you will need, it will depend on how much uninterrupted time you have. Usually, I did 15-minute center rotations, so I would need 4 per hour. If you have two hours in the morning, you will need 8 center activities for your students to rotate through. The good thing about this is that you can create smaller groups than normal for your center rotations. If you have 20 students in your class, each group will be about 2-3 students.
Be Smart with the Centers you Choose
This is the biggest tip for you if you plan on doing an assessment day. Be smart with the center activities you choose. I liked to use these rotations as a review for the very assessment I was giving. This means it should be a center they have done in the past and are able to do completely independently. Plus, it gave them a little extra review before they came to me for their actual one-to-one assessment. You also want the center activity to be one they can do with no end.
Worksheets are tough, because some students fly through these, while others take way too long. You don't want to worry about students needing an additional activity or students having additional work to complete later. My advice is to try and skip worksheet activities for these assessment days.
Some printable center activities I used were:
- Picture Sorts
- Roll and Read
- Matching Games
- Clip Cards
- Boom Cardsβ’
- Play Dough Mats
- Sentence Building Activity
Some educational games and activities that I used were:
You can also add in simple play centers, like legos or building blocks. Remember, you can have more than one of the same centers in your rotation, just with a different skill. These ideas are for ELA center rotations, but you can use similar ideas for Math center rotations!
Eliminating Distractions
Now that you have your center activities planned, here are a few tips for eliminating distractions and acing classroom management during one-to-one assessment time.
Adding in Brain Breaks
Doing centers all day is fun for kids, but it is still draining. Every hour or so, we would take a 10-minute brain break and stretch, play freeze dance, a quick walk outside, or a GoNoodle. This gave students a chance to breathe in between working on centers. Make sure you plan a few brain breaks throughout the day!
Ask 3, Then Me Sign
No matter how prepared and planned out you are, you will STILL have distractions. The one thing that always worked so well was this light-up sign. It said “Ask 3, Then Me” as a reminder for students to ask 3 friends in the class their questions. If none of them know the answer, then they can come up to my table. I have them just stand there quietly until I acknowledge them. Sometimes I will just put a finger up to signal that I need a minute then I can answer their question. This is something I use during my centers all year long, so by this time my students understand the concept. You can read a blog post all about how to stop interruptions during small group time here.
Are you going to try out an assessment day for your one-to-one assessments for your Kindergarten students? Did you pick up some easy ways to handle classroom management during one-to-one assessments? Let me know what you plan below!
