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Assessment Strategies

How do you assess your students' language ability in all language domains? How do you evaluate their language growth and needs? 

WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?

Standardized testing such as ACCESS
provides us with some information about our EL students, but in order to plan for daily instruction and build stronger learners’ profiles, educators need to use additional assessment methods to gather valuable language information and develop engaging and enduring learning of both language and content.

Zwiers (2011) reminds that we must come up with a wide range of ways to observe learning and language use in the classroom to gain insight into the language and thinking of our students and help them bridge their thinking and learning outside and inside the classroom. We must take a close look at what is happening in our classrooms when students are talking, writing, reading, and thinking about content.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

  • Whether or not you have ELLs in your classroom, our students are always improving their language skills. Why not try a formative assessment strategy that checks in on both language and content? Read more...

Pause to Ponder:

  1. What are the benefits of recording students' academic conversations?

  2. What are the benefits of storing student work digitally?

  3. How does Ms. Dearlove use the data she collects?

 

Watch video of 4th-grade teacher using a checklist to help students focus on their speaking and listening goals.

Pause to Ponder: How could you adapt this checklist for use in your own classroom?

LEARNING FROM YOUR PEERS:

When you are observing a lesson, think about these questions (adapted from WIDA Video Discussion Questions:

·       What best practices did you notice? How do these best practices support language and content learning? What ideas can you take into your classroom? 

·       How were language domains (reading, writing, speaking, listening) integrated into the lessons? Were these authentic uses of the domain? If so, what made them authentic?  If not, how could they be improved? 

·       What techniques did educators use to scaffold activities for different proficiency levels? 

·       What techniques were used to increase students’ interaction with the content and with each other? 

·       How might students’ language growth and/or content learning be assessed in these contexts?  

·       How did the teacher make the learning meaningful and relevant to students’ lives?   

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