Assessing our children

ASSESSING CHILDREN IN A ESL CLASSROOM

Let's us now consider how to assess children, our group in this 10 weeks program:

I consider with great decision that a test should not be high anxiety to our students. They have to fee that it is part of their process in learning English. In fact, a teacher can do it without saying they are being assessed under the good conditions of an assessment. However, the ones that need to have a probe of their development are their parents. It is good that they took small tests because it can also boost their motivation and effort in the learning process. I agree with the next paragraph, taken from Assessment of Young Learners: 

"Traditional classroom testing procedures can cause children a great deal of anxiety that affects their language learning as well as their self-image (Smith 1996).

Therefore, children need to learn and be evaluated in an anxiety-reduced, if

not anxiety-free, environment. This can be achieved if children perceive

assessment as an integral component of the learning/teaching process rather

than an independent process whose purpose is to pass judgment on their abilities in relation to their classmates".

The type of assessment that we chose will determine how the students will react to them. I like the idea of observing them while they are being assessed. I also was thinking on creating a holistic rubric for the class. In that rubric I will cover the categories that I want them to develop or manage. Then, in the practices that we did in the course I have to observe them and manage myself to obtain their results in the rubric. 

I also think of  incorporting alternatives ways of assessment, like group work and giving them work where I can observe their performance. 

Since they are not quiet familiar with English tests, I feel like assessing them in small quizzes. They can be adapted for them. 

It is important to know that the traditional classroom assessment can be integrated as I mentioned above with alternative assessments.

 It is important to take into account that "A final characteristic of alternative assessment techniques for young learners is that they are performance-based, requiring students to perform authentic tasks using oral and/or written communication skills. These

techniques can include traditional classroom activities, such as giving oral reports and writing essays, but they may also involve nontraditional tasks, such as cooperative group work and problem solving. Teachers score the task performances holistically (Shohamy 1995; Wiggins 1989)". 

I consider that kids not only enjoy working in group work, but they also are learning from one another and this experience gives them a great experience and motivation in a practice stage or in assessments. We have to be open minded, because considering how their cognitive level is we have to take advantage of it and integrate that potential into a great assessments. 

To make the assessment and the students understand what are the advantages alternative assessment brings and what this is, I like this definition taken from the website http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/tannen01.html: "Alternative assessment refers to procedures and techniques which can be used within the context of instruction and can be easily incorporated into the daily activities of the school or classroom" (Hamayan, 1995, p. 213). It is particularly useful with English as a second language students because it employs strategies that ask students to show what they can do. In contrast to traditional testing, "students are evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they are able to recall and reproduce" (Huerta- Macias, 1995, p. 9).  

 

I would like to say that students nowadays need to be assessed according to their level, I mean we cannot assess students that are beginners like an intermediate. To make this clear, according to  Krashen and Terrell (1983) and adapted by Olsen (1992), they depict four stages of language development. "Many techniques of alternative assessment were developed in line with the taxonomy of student response types identified by Krashen and Terrell (1983) and adapted by Olsen (1992), which suggests that there are four stages of language development in FL/SL learners. The first stage is  preproduction, in which learners have a silent period and their performance indicators are mostly kinesthetic in nature. During instruction and assessment, teachers may ask students to point, act out, choose, mark, gesture, and follow instructions. The second stage is early speech, in which

performance indicators are kinesthetic responses and one- or two-word utterances. During instruction and assessment, teachers ask students to name, number, list, and group words or phrases. The third stage is speech emergence, in which the performance indicators are one and two-word utterances, plus phrases and simple sentences. During instruction and assessment, students are asked to describe, define, recall, retell, summarize, compare, and contrast. The fourth stage is fluency emergence, in which performance indicators are words, phrases, and complete sentences. Students are asked to justify, create, give opinions, debate, defend, analyze, and evaluate (Krashen and Terrell 1983). If I am not wrong, the students that we are teaching are in the second stage. The details above have recognize primaly that students' needs are important to consider since we are going to demand from them certain level of complexity and we cannot ask them something superior to their cognitive level, just one level up where they are in. 

One of the example that I would use to assess them is the use of pictorial assessment: 

As we see, this type of assessment is short and contain pictures to be labeled and some cloze. I also think that a typical test must cover what is being taught, if not children will fail and the assessment is not valid. The problem for me is that our country is so traditional-oriented  that we do not think of anything else can work. As Shabaan states "It is clear that a small assessment need to be given so that we can measure how much they have learned and to see what topics need to be reviewed or reinforced. In most academic settings, it is necessary to test students, sometimes even young ones, in the traditional way with paper-and-pencil tests (e.g., truefalse, matching, multiple choice, and cloze). One major argument for using alternative techniques with young learners, however, is that official or standardized proficiency examinations usually cannot adequately determine their performance levels. Alternative assessment techniques present a dynamic rather than static picture of their linguistic development". 

RESOURCES

* Assessment of Young Learners, Kassim Shabaan Vol 39 No 4, October - December 2001

*http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/tannen01.html 

Mercy and Ingrid: Food and Drinks

HELLO!

First of all, let me tell you that Mercy and I feel very happy about this class and we saw that our students achieved successfully the objectives that we set up in the planning. We are hoping that they feel the same and that in the future they continue learning as much as they want. 


I want you to see the materials we used:

1. Shakers
2. Thumbs up and down
3. Cards
4. Disposable plates
5. Puzzle
6. handmade food and drinks items
7. Cards for the shopping list, bags and the list of shopping.

 This was when we asked them along with us to sing the welcome song. They are singing and they begun to feel that it was time to start the class. After that they felt more comfortable with everyone and then I started the lesson. 

The warm up was used for reviewing the last topics they learned. We thought to focus on the numbers from one to twenty, days of the week and the actions verbs from the previous class. 

They were called by the name and they picked up one card from the secret box. They had to tell me the number of the card and then they opened it and say whatever they found in the card. 
Because this class is only once a week, I thought that they were going to be able to say what the card had inside, but they had troubles. They are still learning them and that is good so that everyone saw that they need more reinforcement in those topics. It is good to think that every class should review at least one part of the target language. 

 I called Maritza to be the first one. And when she passed in front and delivered the answer,  the rest was able to copy what she did and when they were called they were familiar with the activity. 

As I said before, they are still having problems with days of the week, numbers. Especially with the pronunciation of them. The actions were a little bit easy to produce. 

One of the biggest challenges I had to overcome was to loose my fear of not delivereing the class as I had planned. As you see in the picture, I am using a puppet! 
Using it was difficult, but I enjoyed the moment. They were expectant as you see in the picture. I had prepared a short conversation of the puppet "Toti" and me. The rest of the dialog was improvised and I think ir worked out. :) 
Teacher Yanni told me to reherse my voice with the puppet and think about how can I manage the presentation of the topic with the puppet. Well, let me tell you that it was not easy to minimize my voice jejeje, I try to focused my own voice with the puppet's voice and there were moments where I felt that I mixed them. From that moment on, I felt very confident and happy because I felt that the children were very excited about the target language and they were remembering those words. 

I used thirteen words. These were presented with the puppet. The puppet helped me to present them and I just hold the card for the students and they repeat after me or the puppet. 
They were paying attention and like to see how much words they were learning. The funny moment arrived when I showed them the "soda" image. some say that students said "coki" jejejej, and everyone laught! Children are so creative at making up words!

I wanted to showed and practice the target language with the puppet. Teacher Yanni explained to me that one way to do it is to use the puppet and point each card. I had also to make error correction and as you saw in the class, they were error corrected inmediately and with more drilling they were capable of saying the word. 

In the next activity, the children were introduced to "good for you" and "bad for you". I also made use of the thumbs up and down to explain these to words. At the beginning they seemed confused, but I modeled the first item of "donut" and they started to know what they were supposed to do. As they saw how the first one did the task, the rest were willing to try out. 

I also asked them: Is water good or bad for you? they answered using their thumbs up or down. I was glad that they used them, because the next practices were also using these two tools. 

They were very excited about participating!

As they grabbed and pulled  the food item out, I asked them the questions and finally we covered all the food. 

Mercy was the teacher in the practice stage. What I considered Mercy achieved in her part, is that these children understood what food were good and bad. 

Another thing that I wanted to highlight is that since the previous activity had the children energetic, the next one was to put that energy in a hands-on activity. I mean, they had to put that energy into the puzzle and they did calm down. 
The puzzle pieces were designed so that they can be challenged. If the puzzle was easy to put back, they were like "this is too easy for us". They were in pairs. Another thing that Mercy did was to put the youngest children with someone older. 

 What I perceived from this stage of practice is that they were able to work in trios and pairs. Since they are still egocentric in some cases, they do not like to share what they are doing with someone else. So, what I conclude is that they can learn to do so if you teach them how to do it. 
It is not easy to prepare them not to be selfish, but in the case of most of the this group, I saw that the pair was working toguether. I did not anticipate that they were going to share, but I was glad. 
Then, the next thing that I noticed is that the oldest children resolved very quickly the puzzle and they started to talk or move. 
I think Mercy was immersed in other pairs and it was a moment where she was not really paying attention to them. However, they were not doing a big mess or interrumpting the class so much. What I did is to approached them is told them to be quiet. The pair of children that finished the task, called teacher Mercy and presented the puzzle. She asked them some questions and that was it. 

The next activity was to put the food and drinks items in the correct face of the disposable plate. Mercy prepared the plate so that the children work in both 
sides. 


As you see, they were very concentrated and liked to paste the items. Much importantly, they got the meaning of bad food and good food. 
Something that Mercy did was to model how the activity was supposed to be done. 
This was very important to do because if not children were to paste whatever they like in the incorrect sides of the disposable plate. When they finished, they recognize the two questions: Is pizza good for you? They said: "No, bad for you!!".

They work very hard and showed it to teacher Mercy. At the end, they all answered the questions that Mercy asked them. 
What she should have questioned also was for the whole group the same questions with different items in the disposable plate, so that everyone say it out loud. 

Mercy regroup the children for the next activity. As you see, boys do not like to be with girls! When this happens, as teachers we have to tell them that we want them to colaborate. It is important not to negotiate with them, because if not next time they will do the same with us. Mercy managed it great. She decided the four groups and they were saying no, no, no with girls no! but Mercy forced them :D 

 The four groups were given four different list in which, they first had to fill in. The items that were in the list contained two or three missing words. 
Each group were filling in with some help of teacher Mercy. They spent more than five minutes because it was that easy, we wanted them to be challeged!!!

My case of study, Imelda, was immersed in each activity showing that she was so capable of contributing to each group activity. Since she is the youngest one, she does not feel left out, on the contrary, she feel part of them. As you see, they are waiting for some help! 
After completing the shopping list, they were standing in lines. As Mercy explained how to do the next step, they were ready to look for the items in the next side of the room. 
As you might imagine they run, quiet fast to shop! Shoppaholic!

It took a while to complete the four items in each group, but they did it nicely! 
 the task was not done yet. Teacher  Mercy had to check at least one bag, so she took one to see what they had collected. 

They were so interested in this part of the lesson that they approached instantly next to teacher Mercy! They wanted to know how the groups did. Teacher Mercy picked one list and one bag from one of the teams. She was taking out the cards, asking questions and checking the list. 

I really liked how she manage this last stage. She wanted to measure if they knew the vocabulay and how much they had learned up to that point. 

What I learned from this last class is to fall every negative barrier from my mind. They were the ones that fight over me all the time. I overachieved most of those thoughts. I  liked to present the topic this time, I felt confident and cannot wait to practice more the facts and ideas that were taught in this subject. 

This is our planning:

Objective of the lesson: By the end of this lesson, SWBAT recognize and differentiate the bad food from the good one.  In addition, they will be able to answer to these questions in the last practice: “Is (water) good for you/Is (candy) bad for you?” and say the correct answer “Yes, it is” and “No, it is not”.
Time	Stage	Procedure	Notes
5 15	Welcome Song Warm up	I will set up the song so the students can once again sing along with both teachers Children stand up in a semi-circle and I will give them the directions to follow. The students will be sitting down on the floor (semicircle). Teacher will have a secret box in which a card will be taken out. The box will contain for example: a t-shirt with the word “t-shirt” at the bottom of the card. A student will be called out to pass and to grab one card out of the box. Teacher will ask: Color of the item; quantity; spelling. The vocabulary included here will be: Days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) actions (swim, eat, and run, fly, climb and jump). Each of these images will have also a number from 11-20 for review.	Aim of the activity: To get the students sing. Also, in warm up, students will have the opportunity to review the previous vocabulary, days of the week, numbers from 11-20, actions.   Type of learner: A-K-V Interaction:teacher-students Materials: cards with the old vocabulary already learned. Responsible: Ingrid Girón
15	Presentation	Introduce the topic “Drinks and Food”using one puppet and a theater scenario to present the topic to the children. They will be sitting down on the floor. The puppet will show each vocabulary item using the items of the fruits, vegetables and the like made of carton.  The puppet will use these items to present them the vocabulary. After that, puppet will make the students to repeat after me the name of the vocabulary items. Finally, the puppet will ask them to repeat the word at least three times along with him. It will also introduce the “good” and “bad” so that students know that not all food is good for them. It will mark the difference. Teacher will stress the: Color and name of each vocabulary.	Aim of the activity: Encounter and remember target vocabulary. Type of learner: V-A - Interaction:  Teacher (puppet)- students Materials: puppet, cards with the pictures of the food and drinks. Responsible:  Ingrid Giron
15’’	Practice	Activity 1: First, students will sit down in front of the wall where they will have two big circles. These two circles are going to be empty. The two circles will have a sad and happy face inside. There will be 2 groups of 8 children. I will choose or order these two groups and they will have two boxes with them, each one for the two groups. What they will do is to make two lines. The kids that are in front of the line are first. They will introduce one hand and choose one item of a food or drink. They will show it to the rest of the group and teacher will ask:  What is this? And then when they have answered: Is soda good for you? Whether the item is healthy or unhealthy food or drink, that student will make use of the correct answer (Yes, it is; No, it is not). In order to avoid distractions or boredom from the rest that are waiting for a turn, I will use the two questions for them to respond as a group.	Aim of the activity: Students will learn to decide what type of food they have taken from the box. Moreover, they will answer whether the food is good or bad for them. Type of learner:V-A Interaction: Teacher- Students Materials:  handmade items of food and drinks, two circles on the wall, colorful box with the items of food in. Responsible: Ingrid Giron
15’’ 10-12’’		Activity 2: Ss sit in a circle will work in pairs. I will give each pair the pieces of a puzzle. Each pair will have a different puzzle (either a food or a drink item). When they finish, I will ask which is the item and if it is food or bad (one question to every member of the pairs). Activity 3: Ss will be seated in a circle. I will give each student a disposable plate divided in sections; I will also give them food and drink items, so each of them can select the good ones for pasting at the front of the plate, and the bad ones at the back. Once they finish pasting the items, I will go to each of them for checking the items by raising one of the plates in each student. For example, I raise Imelda’s plate, and I point to the items in it (one by one) and ask them “what is it?” (if it is better I can choose the S) and they say the items. I also ask them if those items are in the right side. It will be with just one of the two sides.	Aim of the activity: To use Ss’ cognitive skills and practice target language Type of learner: V, A, T Materials: pieces of puzzle, board, pictures with all food items in the puzzles, glue, colorful pages. Responsable: Mercy Márquez Aim of the activity: differentiate good and bad remembering target language. Type of learner: V,A, T Materials: disposable plates, glue, food and drink items Responsable: Mercy  Márquez
15’’		Activity 4:  Students will sit in a circle. I will give them a shopping list to every S. Every word in the list will have missing letters, so that Ss can complete the words before shopping. Once they have completed the words (I will be checking all Ss’ list while they work for making sure the words are well written), then I will make four groups of Ss. In front of them, there will be drinks and food items. There will be a leader in every group in order to check the list items, and the other three students will run to look for the items in the list for completing the shopping list (one item per student). Once they complete the list, they will show the list and the items to me. I will get out the items of every group (one group at a time), and all students will check with me if the list is completed. E.g.: if there is water in the list, I will get out any item and ask “Is this water?” and they will answer “Yes, it is” or “No, it is not” according to what they see. When they say “Yes, it is”, I will also ask them “Is water good/bad for you?” by showing them hands with thumbs up (good) or down (bad) so they have a clearer understanding of what they are being asked. Closure: We’ll set up the song so the students can once again sing along with both teachers.	Aim of the activity:To recognize food and drinks and internalize target language. Type of learner: Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile Materials: shopping list, food and drink items, thumbs up/down, two baskets for carrying the items,  Responsable: Mercy Márquez

My case of study

I liked how Imelda wanted to participate, even when the rest of the classmates think that she is too young or a baby, she is in the same level as the rest of the classmates. Maybe, she does things slowly because she is very focus and likes to do spend more time in the tasks. 

She is not able to read much in our mother tongue. This year was spent to start learning on that, so she is still practicing. In the picture, I helped her to deliver the answer. We have to learn that even when this program is only once a week, they are very aware of each activity, developing them with some difficulty. We have to think that they can learn as much as we expect and if they miss some topics, we do not have to assume that they learned it. We have to always review those topics as much as we can. 
Imelda showed to the teachers participation, willingness to learn and desire to be perceived out the rest. She is very introvertive, but she delivers answers whenever you ask her. She might seem to you not willing to be in the class, but this is not true. She uses other skills to be perceptive and attentive in the class. She is auditive and likes to use that skill to answer something. At her home, she is very attentive to every word the grown ups are saying and how they are saying them. 
She lives with much more grown up people and they treat her with caring and respect. Her mother and grandmother say that she is much more mature than other girls her age. It is true, she does not act or speaks like them. 


Annyeong!