what steps should teachers take to develop reliable assessments for bilingual and esl students
Seeing growth and improvement can be a huge motivator for ELL students.
But you can't see growth if yous don't measure it.
That's why no great class is complete without some style of assessing students.
Non only is it a fantastic way for both you and your students to see what they've learned, but yous can also use the results to help you plan futurity lessons.
However, don't rely solely on tests to appraise your students!
They're not always an accurate way to measure their skill levels. Instead, I have five alternative ways you tin appraise your ELL students, and examples of what each might wait like. But first, let's take a closer look at the effect with tests.
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Why Tests Aren't an Accurate Way to Measure Operation
One of the most common reasons why teachers shouldn't only use tests is because students may have examination anxiety. What tends to happen is that students are and so nervous when presented with a test that they don't do as well. Y'all and so aren't able to see what the educatee is actually capable of. For ELL students, they tin be extra nervous because not but do they have to think information they've learned, just they may take to decipher what the exam question is asking in the first identify.
Also, tests really only measure what students can memorize or retrieve, non necessarily what work they can produce. For case, if you requite a multiple choice test almost vocabulary they learned, information technology really but tests if they understand one pregnant of the word, and not necessarily whether they understand how to apply the same discussion in unlike contexts.
Another example would be oral skills. If students understand certain phrases you lot've taught them, they may not understand if another person outside the classroom says it, specially if that person has an accent.
If an ELL pupil is a little slower to read or decipher material (especially if they've had lots of support in their class), a time constraint on a test won't give them sufficient time to consummate the test. But because a pupil didn't terminate a test, doesn't mean they don't understand the material. You lot and then are left guessing as to whether or not your pupil actually understood what you were testing them on.
Then what are some ways to assessing English linguistic communication learners then, if tests are not the full answer?
five Ways to Assess English Language Learners Without Resorting to Tests
one. Rubrics and Performance Criteria
Using rubrics and operation criteria is a dandy manner to assess a variety of student work. It's usually based on linguistic communication proficiency and academic progression through work such as presentations, written assignments and reading activities. You can not only use these to grade your students, but to chart their growth over a set catamenia of time.
Both tools feature a list of criteria or standards that students know you're assessing. Rubrics show what is considered below level, at level and in a higher place level. A performance criteria can simply exist a checklist of what to assess for each educatee. With either of these cess tools, it's important to develop your own, every bit assessments are based on the teacher'due south judgment.
A tool like RubiStar is helpful, as it can bear witness you sample rubrics other teachers have developed, and anyone tin alter them for their own use. Some possible categories for rubrics include text features, fluency in reading, types of sentences written and neatness in writing.
When creating rubrics or performance criteria, brand sure that what you're assessing is clear and fair from the beginning. Too, don't assess also much at once, as it'll not only overwhelm you merely your students as well. If it helps, inquire other teachers how they created their rubrics, or simply have someone await over yours to see if it looks okay.
You lot can even take it a step further past bringingFluentU into the classroom.
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language lessons.
ii. Oral Presentations or Performances
Many students who have exam anxiety might become nervous because their reading or writing skills aren't very good. That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't proficient in oral skills.
Assessing oral presentations or performances typically include role-plays, interviews, oral reports and summarizing/paraphrasing pieces of text. When used on an ongoing ground, information technology's a great way to monitor a student's comprehension through a longer menstruum of time.
Here are some ideas to incorporate oral presentations or performances equally part of your assessments:
- Function-plays: Role-plays can be used to assess students individually or every bit a group. Some ideas include having students write a play and performing it or fifty-fifty having the students teach the instructor as part of a review grade.
- Interviews: This type of cess is very helpful if you have students that are early English language learners. To help test students on content noesis, endeavor to use a lot of visual cues. For example, accept students pick from a pile of pictures, and enquire questions to elicit responses from them. Yous tin can assess the student based on vocabulary used or comparison concepts.
- Describing/explaining/retelling/paraphrasing/summarizing texts: Instead of a written volume report or summary of a slice of text, you lot can accept your students retell the plot in front of the class or just to you. Other ideas can include request the students to selection a character in the book and tell a story from their point of view, or even to describe their favorite part of the text.
When assessing oral piece of work, information technology's helpful to utilize a checklist of things to expect for, such as pronunciation, volume, stride and content. Use the same checklist for the same types of oral presentations to meet the progression over time.
three. Non-verbal Assessments
For students who are shy or aren't as skillful in English, using non-exact assessments is a great way to see a student's academic progress. What you're looking for in this blazon of assessment is their understanding of vocabulary.
Examples include:
- Charades: Requite a student vocabulary words you've taught, and accept them act it out to encounter if they understand what the word or concept is. You could fifty-fifty have them summarize a text by miming it.
- Pictures: You can ask students to draw or collect pictures to show their knowledge on a topic. For example, if you're assessing a student on their knowledge of nouns, ask students to pick out pictures of nouns in a magazine. Pictures can also be used to appraise reading comprehension. Students can read a paragraph and then draw a film to evidence their understanding of the text. If the film is mostly accurate except for a few details, it could exist a vocabulary upshot.
4. Written Assessments
Written assessments are a nice way to encounter how students tin use their noesis of English over a wide variety of concepts. For example, you tin use assignments to run into just how well they understand a text, or even dissimilar forms of writing.
Some different ways to contain written assessments in your form include:
- Creative and structured writing assignments: Ask students to write a creative story, or even give them a writing prompt—where students read the beginning of a story and are asked to write the catastrophe.
- Editing writing: Give students a piece of text with grammatical mistakes and ask them to correct it, to exam their cognition of grammer.
- Reading response logs: Give students a list of questions, such as how practise they know a character is evil, or how would they change the catastrophe of a story. When students are finished reading a volume or article, have them write downwardly the answers to these questions. Make sure to only assess for content, and not spelling or grammar, unless you lot specify to your students that you're doing so.
- Content logs: Have students write down facts they learned near a text. Yous can besides have them write what parts they didn't sympathise. This is helpful for you to see if there are concepts y'all may need to reteach or review, particularly if a lot of students are dislocated about like parts of the same text.
With writing, don't assess too much at once. For a writing piece, you could appraise simply spelling, consummate sentences or unity in paragraphs. Build it upwardly to assess more than a few criteria one time you come across that your students have mastered what you have taught them.
v. Portfolios
Portfolios are powerful assessments and are used to gather diverse samples of student work to rails their development over a period of time. In order to maximize the potential of using a portfolio every bit an cess tool, y'all should regularly curate pupil piece of work to include in them, and have scheduled conferences with students well-nigh their work.
You should as well have a checklist of qualities that are important to showcase student achievement. Non only exercise you critique and assess the work, but so should the students. That mode, they're responsible for their learning and take more ownership of making certain they improve.
Cloth yous tin include in a portfolio can include the post-obit:
- performance criteria or rubrics
- recording of oral presentations
- tests
- writing samples, drafts and final copies
- book reports
- interview checklists
In order to best assess a educatee, yous should include more than one kind of student work in the portfolio. The work does not accept to be the best work they've done, rather a broad multifariousness is best. Based on your judgment, y'all can fifty-fifty ask students for their stance equally to what types of work they should include.
In a portfolio, you are looking for any type of improvement in their work. For example, if you lot keep a couple of a student's writing pieces, look to see if their judgement or paragraph structure gets amend. When looking at tests, see if their spelling tests, for instance, have gotten higher scores over time. If you detect that they continually lack in sure skills, this would be the fourth dimension to accost it. You can either give the student extra support in class or observe means for them to practice with extra work at dwelling house.
Tests aren't bad, simply they're not the only style to appraise student achievement. If you apply a wide variety of assessments, you lot'll be able to portray an authentic picture of your educatee's English abilities. In plough, you, your students and their parents will be able to see their progress, which can greatly motivate students!
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Source: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/assessing-english-language-learners/