Assessment-based Individualized Learning
Assessment-based Individualize Learning
Every educational movement needs a catchy new acronym. ABIL will have to do for mine: Assessment-based Individualized Learning. Simply put, it’s the supplemental instruction students need to help them catch up while they keep up with grade-level instruction. It’s a realistic approach, developed by a teacher without miraculous class management skills and without perfectly behaved students.
What It’s Not
- ABIL is nothing new. Teachers have been doing it forever.
- It’s not about creating individual educational plans for every student.
- It’s not a replacement for rigorous Standards-based, grade-level instruction.
- It’s not funky differentiated instruction.
- It’s not one teaching methodology: small groups, lit circles, writers workshop, learning centers, literacy centers (stations), etc.
- Impossible or unmanageable.
What It Is
- Foundational content, concepts, and skills that every student needs to access rigorous Standards-based, grade-level instruction.
- Reliable and valid diagnostic assessments to determine individual student mastery and deficits in those prerequisites. Assessments which are comprehensive and teachable−not random samples.
- Curriculum which directly corresponds to each assessment item with progress monitoring matrices to ensure student mastery and is conducive to concurrent instruction in grade-level Standards.
- The key ingredient of RtI (Response to Intervention) besides quality, accessible grade-level instruction.
- What SPED, ELL, and ELD students need most.
- How you would want your own child taught with rigorous grade-level instruction and individualized learning to remediate any relative weaknesses.
The author of this article, Mark Pennington, is a teacher-publisher of English-language arts and reading intervention programs. Mark provides ELA and reading assessments and curricular resources to implement Assessment-based Individualized Learning. Want to check out the curriculum, designed to help all learners with rigorous, standards-aligned grade-level instruction and concurrent remedial learning? Click here. to view these grammar, mechanics, reading, spelling, writing, and vocabulary resources. Want to download the assessments, answers, and recording matrices described above for your students? Feel free to download each and thanks for checking out my ABIL instructional resources at Pennington Publishing.
Get the The Pets Fluency Assessment FREE Resource:
Get the Vowel Sounds Phonics Assessment with Audio File and Matrix FREE Resource:
Get the Consonant Sounds Phonics Assessment, Audio File, and Recording Matrix FREE Resource:
Get the Diagnostic Grammar and Usage Assessment with Recording Matrix FREE Resource:
Get the Diagnostic Mechanics Assessment with Recording Matrix FREE Resource:
Get the Diagnostic Spelling Assessment, Mastery Matrix, and Sample Lessons FREE Resource:
Grammar/Mechanics, Literacy Centers, Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary