Beginning-of-Year ELD Diagnostic Assessment

What you receive

• One printable PDF, 18 pages, letter size, black-and-white friendly.
• Student packet covering grammar, reading, writing, and speaking.
• Answer keys for the grammar and reading sections.
• A student score sheet and a class profile sheet for recording results.
• Grouping recommendations you can use once the class profile is filled in.

Who it is written for

Grades 6–12 ELD, ESL, and sheltered-content classrooms. The packet is written for ELD proficiency levels 1–4 — newcomers through long-term English learners — with the earlier sections deliberately accessible so level 1 students can attempt something rather than stall on page one.

Approximate time

Plan on roughly 65–82 minutes of class time in total. Most teachers split it across two or three periods: grammar and reading on day one, writing on day two, and the speaking interviews during independent work over the following days.

Domains and skills assessed

• Grammar: present simple, present continuous, past tense, future forms, pronouns, and question formation.
• Reading: one narrative passage and one informational passage with vocabulary, main idea, and inference questions.
• Writing: a narrative prompt with a planning organizer and a student self-check list.
• Speaking: a short set of interview questions with a teacher observation checklist.

Preparation

Print one packet per student. The grammar, reading, and writing sections are independent work and need no setup beyond the packet and a pencil. The speaking section is a one-to-one teacher interview, so plan a routine — silent reading, a station rotation, or a game — that keeps the rest of the class working while you talk with individual students.

What students produce

Written responses inside the packet, one short narrative writing sample, and spoken answers you record on the observation checklist. Nothing is submitted online and nothing is auto-scored — you score the packet using the answer keys.

What to do with the results

Transfer each student's section scores to the score sheet, then roll the class up on the class profile sheet. Use the pattern, not the percentage: sort students by the skill that is blocking them most, then pick the matching grammar sequence in the Grammar Spy curriculum arcs and the follow-up printables in the Resource Library. Re-run the same packet mid-year if you want a growth comparison.

Treat the results as one data point for instructional planning alongside your own observations and district assessments — not as a placement or reclassification instrument.