Casey Ward
Assessing English Language
Learner's Content Knowledge
in Middle School Classrooms
-Pappamihiel & Mihai
For this week's Blog Post I have decided to switch it up a bit and do a question/response scenario. I will be taking the five main questions for teachers that are "seeking to make their classroom tests and quizzes more valid" (Pappamihiel & Mihai, 2006) for ELL students. These questions are:
Question 4: Have I Incorporated True Accommodations to Level the Playing Field for my ELLs?
Assessing English Language
Learner's Content Knowledge
in Middle School Classrooms
-Pappamihiel & Mihai
For this week's Blog Post I have decided to switch it up a bit and do a question/response scenario. I will be taking the five main questions for teachers that are "seeking to make their classroom tests and quizzes more valid" (Pappamihiel & Mihai, 2006) for ELL students. These questions are:
- Do I know my students' English language proficiencies?
- Have I designed a test that mirrors classroom objectives, strategies, and activities?
- Have I made use of all relevant and available visuals and graphics?
- Have I incorporated true accommodations to level the playing field for my ELLs?
- Have I created a clear scoring rubric that will allow me to provide culturally sensitive and useful feedback?
Before I go into answering these questions I would like you to take a look at what an ELL assessment classroom looks like. This video is just a clip that could give us an idea.
ELL Assessments In the Classroom
Question 1: Do I know my students' English proficiency level?
Response: To know a students' ability to for grammatically correct sentences in English can sometimes be difficult. After reading the article, it became clear that English proficiency is not limited to only grammatical competence, but also can be sociolinguistic, strategic, and of discourse content. How can we as teachers communicate with each other to focus on each student and understand their proficiency?
Question 2: Have I designed a test that mirrors classroom objectives, strategies, and activities?
Response: "A clear statement of objectives is necessary for any assessment of students achievement (Genessee & Upshur, 1996). With this statement said, it is clear that teachers should have a set objective to follow when creating their classroom activities. What I took from the reading is that each of the tests that follow these activities should be adapted to the ELLs and their objective. Do we believe that working with other teachers to create these tests would make it easier or harder on ourselves as ELL educators?
Question 3: Have I made use of all relevant and available visuals and graphics?
Response: In the video above, you can see how the teacher uses body language to assess her ELL students' understandings. She uses a smart board as another visual and graphics to help her students understand more. Lastly, she is able to assess them through their writing on dry-erase boards when discussing drawing a conclusion about a passage. What other visuals and graphics can you think of that would help ELLs with assessment in the classroom?
Question 4: Have I Incorporated True Accommodations to Level the Playing Field for my ELLs?
Response: The article gives some ideas of accommodations in an ELL classroom such as: bilingual dictionaries, extended time, alternative setting, simplification in directions, test modifications, etc... What other sorts of accommodations could be useful to ELL students in a classroom setting?
Question 5: Have I created a clear scoring rubric that will allow me to provide culturally sensitive and useful feedback?
Response: "It does little good to spend time providing feedback that will be either misunderstood or disregarded by an ELL student who does not understand the cultural context of that feedback (Pappamihiel & Mihai, 2006)." I believe that creating a rubric that students will understand and know what is expected of them will be a huge help for completing work. This will only help teachers assess in the long run. How might we set up a rubric that is culturally relevant to ELL students? Any examples?
IN BLUE are some of the questions I would like all of you to think about and respond to. Please feel free to comment on any of the other content throughout the blog as well. Thanks!
I am going to address your last question. I had a similar thought before I began this class. I think Dr.Taylor said it great. Rubrics should be based mostly off of their thoughts and the content of the assignment. When it comes to grammar and spelling, that is not as important. She mentioned that she has students verbally give their assignment sometimes. I loved that idea. I think we also did this when we were making the rubric for our narrative assignment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mary Beth, thoughts and content are far more important than grammar and spelling. I have been using Duolingo since reading your post and I think especially for newer English learners some of our grammatical differences could be tough to learn and put into writing. In Spanish adjectives and adverbs usually go after the noun, unless expressing emotion, which is so backwards compared to how my brain thinks. I can't get a handle on what is male and what is female, and conjugations are soooo confusing! I can only imagine how these children must feel about the English language and our crazy rules. I think more teachers need to embrace the mistakes as a natural part of the learning process instead constantly correcting. That has been one of the biggest "oh" moments for me in this class because I absolutely with good intentions used to correct kids and make them repeat me in proper standard English.
DeleteMaryBeth and Amanda, I appreciate both of your responses. MaryBeth, I believe that students should definitely be a part of SOME creation for the rubrics in their classrooms. This way they have a sense of what is expected of them when completing their assignments.
DeleteAmanda, I also used to constantly correct students until I was told not to. My aunt who is a kindergarten teacher told me to let it be, because it absolutely is part of the natural learning process.
I want to talk about question three, Have I made use of all the relevant and available visuals and graphics? When I did my observation the teacher had a pull-out math group for third grade. The students were learning the rules for the order of operations. The teacher was using a smart board but what caught my attention was the fact that she color coated the steps (parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction) to match the example she had on the board. So parentheses would be in green, exponents would be in orange, multiplication and division would be in blue and addition and subtraction would be in red. Color coating was a very simple thing to do but it helped the students know what to do first in the problem. When the would solve problems the teacher would around and if someone got something mixed up she would say things like "does red come before green?" meaning does addition or subtraction come before parentheses. From what I saw, color coating really helped the students grasp the concept and excel with order of operations and so I think it is a good visual for ELLs.
ReplyDeleteI like the color coding idea! It reminds me of a fellow student teacher when I was going to the T2T program. When lecturing, he changed the font color on the notes for the most important points. Everything else worked around that point and would help further students knowledge but if students could only remember one thing, it was the point in red. This is a great idea for visual learners!
DeleteTorri and Rebeccah, I also believe that color coding is wonderful for helping students organize information in their minds. Visual learners, as you mentioned Rebeccah, need certain modifications such as the example you have given. I was a visual learner and these types of practices would have helped me immensely.
DeleteGood post Casey!
ReplyDeleteI watched the video and it was definitely a great watch. I will say the strategies that they use at the school are what I currently do in my classroom with my Third graders: pre-test, teach, post-test, re-teach. I was able to identify with this video because I also have emergent bilinguals in my classroom and I have found that this way of teaching is especially useful when trying to see what your students already know versus what they have learned. I also used this strategy last year when I taught First grade and it was useful also.
For question number 5, "Have I created a clear scoring rubric that will allow me to provide culturally sensitive and useful feedback?" I wanted to answer this question because through this course, I have learned that it is beneficial to have a student-created rubric. This way students are able to voice their own opinion about how they should be scored. I understand that in certain situations a teacher-created rubric is necessary. In that case, culturally sensitive and useful feedback is extremely necessary.
Aleshia, I would like to talk to you more, even in person, about the curriculum you have set for your ELL students. Do you meet with other teachers to plan? I also appreciate you letting us know that this not only works with 3rd graders but 1st grade as well. Any teacher would know that these two grades are extremely different in terms of learning and curriculum.
DeleteExpectations are very different with ELLs at the University Level, particularly in a class that focuses on writing. Patterns of error emerge in the writing, and they are addressed when they impede the readability of the text or they interfere with the intended meaning of the writer. These errors are typically late order concerns, however, and are not addressed in the writing process until each student has received feedback on content. Overall assessments in writing classrooms focus on the critical thinking ability of the student and not on grammar concerns. In that respect, it does not sound very different than the focus of assessments in K-12.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of allowing students to create the rubric. It creates clear expectations and makes students accountable for their own learning.
I agree! Allowing the students to create the rubric is very smart because it is clear and there are no surprises. I really enjoyed that we did this in our class for the narrative because it wasn't confusing at all and I knew exactly what needed to be put into my narrative in order to get my full points.
DeleteHey Casey,
ReplyDeleteI first wanted to say you choose a really good video for this blog. It really ties into our readings and conversations in class. The teacher in the video made the comment in the video about assessments (informal and formal) being time consuming and sometimes it feels like she should be teaching, but she knows the assessments have value. I found that interesting because I think it would be hard as a teacher to make the time to do constant assessments while having so much to teach. However, this video makes it seem doable if strategically implemented into lessons. It was nice to see.
In regards to your question:
Do we believe that working with other teachers to create these tests would make it easier or harder on ourselves as ELL educators?
Overall, I would think it would be extremely helpful because teachers all have their own experiences and perspectives to share. I am curious to know what you think.
I also really enjoyed this video and how well rehearsed the teacher was to facilitate assessments in the classroom with such an easy flow. I feel like I would probably feel like I should be teaching rather than doing assessments, but at the same time, while I was watching her do the assessment, it was also somewhat of teaching them. Sitting down with the student and going through everything, even if repeating what the child may already know, is still teaching in my mind.
DeleteI feel as though it would be extremely beneficial to work with other teachers on the assessments for your students. Having multiple minds working on one project can only open up a variety of ideas to create strong assessments.
Hi, Casey! I want to address Question 2: Have I designed a test that mirrors classroom objectives, strategies, and activities?
ReplyDeleteThis is an area that I have been working to improve this year. A colleague of mine suggested creating my test first and then planning my unit around it. When she made the suggestion I thought d'uh! Of course! Starting with the test has helped ensure that I am spending the biggest proportion of class time on the topics that are tested most heavily. Our department has also tried to increase the number of stimulus based questions on our tests so I've changed up some of my instruction to try to increase their comfort level with this type of question.
I will say that even with all of this I struggle with testing. Our discussions and the Garcia book have really made it clear that even though my tests are well aligned with the content I am teaching, they are still not entirely equitable. I need to continue to update the questions to make sure that I am using vocabulary that is less academic and more equitable to all students. I need to do a better job of disentangling language from content. I need to do a better job of meeting my students accommodations. They often don't want to accept the accommodations. I need to provide things like sentence stems and modified questions. I like the idea of dynamic assessment and assessing students in their own language but feel like that is only possible in a dream world.
Garcia also pointed out the disparity in schooling between ELLs. Some ELLs speak their own language fluently but don't read or write well because of a lack of education (for various reasons). I'm not sure what the answer is and it is a little overwhelming but I do think I can continue to make small changes which will hopefully add up to a lot over time.
I appreciate you sharing this example with us. Having a first draft test and then getting feedback from others is something new to me. I like hearing about how you have recognized that you need to make your questions more equitable to the students. This is something I am interested to hear more about. I agree that disentangling language for certain students will be very effective and beneficial.
DeleteI really liked how you pointed out the different visuals that the teacher in the video used (body language, white boards, and smartboard). Often, I don't reflect enough about the different visuals that I use in a particular lesson. I wanted to focus on your third question for my response.
ReplyDeleteWhat other visuals and graphics can you think of that would help ELLs with assessment in the classroom?
I think there are numerous ways for students to use visuals to show what they know. I think Google is one of the great differentiation tools for educators to use. I have used slides, sheets, forms, and drawings to create various visual assessments for students to use. These are great because it teaches digital literacy as well which can be valued in any career field. I also don't think that you can go wrong with using other visuals the "old-fashioned" way. Having students hand draw certain concepts or creating a mind map like we did in class can also provide other ways to get students interested. Also, I think using the class white board or chalkboard can give students another means to show you and their classmates what they know.
Great post! I really enjoyed watching the video that you provided for us because it gave a great example of what the reading provided as well. I am going to answer this question,
ReplyDeleteDo we believe that working with other teachers to create these tests would make it easier or harder on ourselves as ELL educators?
I think that it would be great to work on tests and assignments with other teachers if everyone is on the same page about adapting them for ELL students. This way these students are getting the same accommodations in each class on each assignment. Plus, this is a great way for teachers to bounce ideas off of each other and learn from each other. These teachers could also have conversations with their ELL students in order to see what their student wants to help them achieve their academic goals.