Placing Students into Levels

Because it can be difficult to know what books to buy at which level without having met your students, one strategy is to have a dedicated assessment and registration night.  

Roughly two - three weeks before you plan to begin classes, invite students to come to your site for an evening where there is no "class" but can allow you to use all of your volunteers to register and place students.  Doing this in advance allows you to order only the books you need as opposed to guessing at student levels and number of students.  For churches with a limited budget, this is recommended. 

On the assessment and registration night, have a clear system where volunteers know exactly what role they are playing. 

• Welcome and registration:  Have a team directing students in and helping them fill out your registration form. You will need a lot of people to help with registration as the forms can be difficult for students. Registration is the best station for your bilingual volunteers if you have them. 

• Assessment: Keep your assessment team fairly small so as to have consistency in the assessment scoring. Have a private room or quiet area where you can take students for the assessment. 

• Hospitality:  It is crucial to have some activity for students while they wait for their turn to be assessed.  Consider offering a meal, snacks, and some low-language activity, like games or icebreakers. You can do conversation but keep in mind you will have low-level students who will be intimidated by conversation on the first night. Plan to have a lot of pictures or visual aids. 

Once the evening is over, group your students and assign teachers to levels. This will give you time to order the right number of student books and provide the teacher books to teachers so they can begin preparing the lesson.

Alternatively, you can simply hold class the same evening you assess everyone. The key for this strategy is to have your teacher prepare a first-night lesson plan that does not involve the book (see our teacher site for recommended first-night lessons). 

How to decide which level and how many classes you will have depends primarily on two factors: 1) how many teachers you have, and 2) how your students do on the placement test. 

First, determine the number of teachers you have, keeping in mind that two volunteers per class (one lead teacher and one assistant teacher) is the ideal situation.  Remind volunteers that flexibility is key, particularly at the start of a ministry, and you do not know for sure how many classes you will have or what roles you can guarantee them until students arrive. 

The next step is determining the results of your students on the placement assessment. Here are some tips: 

• List all of the scores in a spreadsheet along with what class level that puts them in to see where the majority of your students place. 

• Aim for class sizes of 5–15, where possible.  If more than 15 students at one level, split into two classes of the same level. If fewer than 5, consider moving to a different level. The exception to this small class size consideration is the literacy class, where having 2–3 students may be ideal to work in more of a tutoring style. 

• Class levels will never be perfect; there will always be mixed abilities in a class. 

• When in doubt, move students down a level.  Language learning benefits from repetition, so even if they have seen this material before, the repetition will help build fluency. 

• No placement assessment is perfect. Further, some students just tend to do poorly on tests. Tell teachers to keep an eye on students who seem far above or below their peers and consider moving them the first or second week of class. 

• Document your classes in the preferred data tracking method that you will use throughout the semester to check attendance of students and volunteers.