EPC 2903 Teaching Practice Booklet

Task 1: Diagnostic Assessment Interview

• For this task, you will need to arrange to interview your MST at a time convenient to her.
The focus of this task is to understand:
- what diagnostic assessment has taken place this school year in your class,
- who developed the diagnostic assessment (teachers, school management, ADEC/MOE,
etc.),
- how the diagnostic assessment was carried out,
- what the purpose of that diagnostic assessment was/is, and
- what decisions the teacher made as a result of the diagnostic assessment.

• You need to prepare a minimum of 10 questions prior to the interview. You may add
additional questions during the interview based on your teachers responses, i.e. to clarify
answers or garner further information.

• You will need to record your teacher’s responses – use the strategy that works best for you.
If you are using a voice recording device, you MUST inform your MST.

• The interview must be typed and included in your Portfolio.

• You may develop your own questions specific to your context, however the following may
give you some ideas.

After the Task - Reflection

Reflect on the interview and the information gained about diagnostic assessment from your
MST. Consider how/why you would implement diagnostic assessment in a UAE primary
classroom in the future. Explain how this practice will affect student learning in a primary class.
EPC 2903 Teaching Practice Booklet

Example Interview Questions

1. What diagnostic assessment has taken place this semester?
They do an assessment at the beginning of each of the maths topic, it’s called a
cold task, and then after two to three weeks, after explaining a particular topic
they do the same assessment and it’s called the hot task.
2. When did this occur?
Before introducing the lesson and explain it they do a cold task to see what
prior knowledge does the students have, and after two to three weeks they do
the hot task which is the same assessment they did before teaching this lesson
to see the students’ progress.
3. What types of assessments were conducted? (written, oral, practical, etc.)
They’re all written, and for the math the teacher reads the question for them
because there are some words they can’t read it correctly. They ask oral
questions before a lesson which help them to decide which child can do what.
4. Who developed these assessments?
For the math assessment the teacher creates the questions, the math questions
with all the questions at the beginning of the year that is a standard test that
they use in the UK, it’s a company they pie to provide such tests for them.
5. Who conducted the assessments? (classroom teacher, Arabic teacher, classroom
assistant, etc.)
For the math, because they do them in small groups, both the teacher and
teaching assistant reads the question to the children.
6. Were the assessments completed by students individually?
Yes, the teacher and the teaching assistance will read the question to the group
for the math’s, but they will do it in individually also for the English she will
explain the activity and then they have to do it by themselves.
7. What information did you hope to get from the assessments?
The cold task helps them know what the child knows before they teach the
lesson, and it helps them to gage their planning, and the one they do it at the
end which is the hot task make progress in it, they also can see whether there is
gaps or one question that everybody gets wrong that shows them that they
hadn’t taught this particular part properly.
8. What decisions did you make based on the assessments?
It informs their planning, and they can see which children might need particular
help and with that they create targets based on the assessments
9. How did you group your students? (same/different academic levels, friendship
groups, similar interests, etc.)
For English and math they work in ability groups their levels are similar, for the
integrated studies they generally split on their house groups (Wentworth,
droughty and mix the student together to learn from one other.
10. Do the groups change for different learning subjects/topics?
Yes, the topic lessons that’s when she groups them into house groups but
math’s and English they generally at their ability groups
EPC 2903 Teaching Practice Booklet

After the Task - Reflection

Reflect on the interview and the information gained about diagnostic assessment from your
MST. Consider how/why you would implement diagnostic assessment in a UAE primary
classroom in the future. Explain how this practice will affect student learning in a primary class.

Diagnostic assessments are test that is used in schools to show what information does the student
have about a particular topic. (Tookoian, 2018)
After interviewing my MST, I found out the importance of the diagnostic assessment, because they
use two types of assessment, one is cold task which is before they explain the lesson, they give the
students the assessment and the students solve what they know and with that the teacher will know
what prior knowledge does the student have, after explaining the lesson that took about two to
three weeks they will do the same assessment that have the same question to see the student’s
progress and this assessment is called hot task.
I believe that Implementing diagnostic assessment in a UAE primary classroom will be beneficial
because it will help the teacher to know the student level and if there is any area the students lacks
at, so she will come up with ideas or techniques to help him overcome this gap.

References:

Tookoian, J. (2018, August 16). What is a diagnostic assessment? Retrieved

November 28, 2018, from https://edulastic.com/blog/diagnostic-assessment/