Differentiating K-12 Assessments

In the first lesson, you'll find out how differentiating assessment means more than just increasing your students' end-of-year test scores. You'll start by looking at the four main principles behind differentiated assessment (DA). You'll get a taste of how DA works in a real classroom and see a powerful example of what this approach can do for students. You'll also receive some hands-on strategies for beginning to use DA in your own classroom. Your first step will be getting to know your students' multiple intelligences, learning styles, social and emotional factors, and personal interests, so you can meet them where they are and begin the process of increasing achievement.

In this lesson, you'll get an overview of the three different types of assessment: The pre-assessment will help you gauge what your students already know. The formative assessment is used to monitor and adjust instruction while you're teaching. Finally, you'll give a summative assessment (traditionally a quiz, test, or project) to summarize what your students have learned and assign grades. The lesson will also talk about ways to keep students who have already mastered the content engaged in learning through anchor activities.

In this lesson, you'll focus on the first principle of DA: identifying and sharing learning goals with students. You'll start by deconstructing content standards into student-friendly language to tell students what they need to know, understand, and do. This information goes into the KUD chart. You'll also investigate how the KUD chart becomes a checklist to differentiate instruction and a template for designing both pre- and summative assessments. Finally, the lesson will talk about how to share learning goals with students in ways that motivate them and make your expectations clear.

In this lesson, you'll look at the last three principles of DA: gathering evidence of understanding, adjusting instruction, and giving feedback to students. You'll start by seeing how you can use a versatile activity in different ways as a formative assessment and then explore how to use the information you gain from the assessment to adjust instruction. Specifically, you'll see examples of re-teaching in a different way and tiering instruction (adding more complex and less complex activities to accommodate students at different readiness levels). You'll also learn some tactics you can use to give students constructive, descriptive feedback.

Have you ever had a student who just didn't seem interested in learning? In this lesson, you'll look at assessment strategies you can use to motivate the unmotivated learners in your classroom. You'll see how something as simple as a remote control can increase attention because it speaks students' digital language. You'll also explore how you can use seating arrangements and open-ended questions to encourage students to participate in classroom discussions. Finally, you'll investigate how you can use the jigsaw strategy to support or challenge learners in the classroom.

A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.​

Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.​

Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.​