Description: The knowledge rating is a pre-reading strategy designed to evaluate students’ prior knowledge of a topic by having them rate how well they know the content vocabulary words. The instructor identifies terms needed to understand the concepts to be learned. This list of vocabulary words is then given to the students to rate how well they know each term. Using this strategy, students are elevated from the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomy, define, to the highest, evaluate.
Step-by-Step
- Introduce the strategy to students by explaining that this is designed to get them thinking about the text material to be covered, and that they will rate each term according to how well they know its meaning.
- Explain the rating scale. 1 = know it well enough to define it, 2 = think I know it, 3 = have heard or seen it, or 4 = no clue.
- Provide students with the words either on the overhead or on a reproduced sheet.
- After providing students with the words, pronounce the words so decoding problems are eliminated.
- Have students rate each word by placing a check in the appropriate column or writing the rating number beside each word.
- When students complete their ratings, teachers may collect the sheets and tally how many students knew each word. This indicates students’ prior knowledge of the topic both individually and collectively as a class.
- Instead of tallying the sheets, teachers may select to discuss the words with the class, asking them to share their prior knowledge of known terms and make predictions concerning the meaning of unknown terms.
This authentic assessment informs the teacher’s instruction by indicating how much pre-reading instruction will be necessary for critical reading as well as identifying words for explicit vocabulary instruction. It also allows the teacher to differentiate instruction based on a student’s need.