Assessing
our kids..
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The test of a good teacher is not how many
questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many
questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.
-Alice
Wellington Rollins
Inspiring
students to ask questions becomes more meaningful than asking them questions.
This is due to the fact that asking tricky questions that even teachers may
find difficult to answer means that
students are going further in their analysis of the class, it means that they
got really interested in the lesson and that are anxious to know more.
Now, after this brief reflection; let’s discuss
about something that has not been yet considered throughout this course which
is the fact of assessing children. Thus, this entry will talk a little a bit
about how to assess kids.
We have been struggling with the fact of
teaching kids, the creation of lessons, and the development of techniques that
can guarantee a successful achievement of the lessons’ objectives; however, how
do we assess kids???How do we appraise all the knowledge that we have already
taught?? Do we use multiple choice, and true/false exams??? . We all know that
assessment is as important as the teaching itself; without assessments, we as
teachers cannot know whether a particular topic was really acquired by the
students. Thus, it is important to develop good assessment tasks, taking into
account many essential factors such as, the stage of language development
(English proficiency) in which the EFL /ESL learner is, the types of student
responses, and the use of traditional or alternative ways of assessment
according to the children’s needs.
First, it is necessary
to identify the stage of language development in which our kids are, so that we
can match it with the moist suitable student respond. According to Krashen and
Terrell(1983) and adapted by Olsen (1992) there are four stages of language
development which are: preproduction, in which learners have a silent period
and their performance indicators are mostly kinesthetic in nature; the second
stage is early speech, in which performance indicators are kinesthetic
responses and one- or two-word utterances. The third stage is speech emergence,
in which the performance indicators are one and two-word utterances, plus
phrases and simple sentences. Finally, the fourth stage is fluency emergence,
in which performance indicators are words, phrases, and complete sentences (Krashen
and Terrell 1983). Then, after finding out the children’s English proficiency
level, this one can be matched with one of the three student responses identified
by Brown and Hudson (1998). These three types of responses consist on,
selected-response (true-false, matching, multiple choice), constructed response
(fill-in, short answer, performance), and personal-response (conferences,
portfolios, self and peer assessment). Students that are in preproduction or
early speech proficiency levels should begin with the use of personal response.
As students' proficiency levels increase, teachers can move gradually into
constructed response assessment and later into selected response assessment.
Once we have
chosen the type of student response most feasible to the English level of our
kids; we are ready to move on to the final step which is deciding the approach;
being these, traditional or alternative techniques we will use that best matches
with this kind of student response already selected. If we read carefully about
the types of student responses presented above; we can clearly see that some of
them take traditional ways of assessing while some others take alternative
techniques. This is because at the beginning of a child’s English learning,
traditional techniques can be scaring and not that meaningful as alternative
tasks such as portfolios and kinesthetic activities are. This does not mean
that traditional tasks must be forgotten, but rather; both approaches can be
used at certain points of children’s learning process. For example, some
children at preproduction or early speech proficiency levels should begin with
the use of personal response, and this type of response compiles tasks such as,
pointing something out, acting out, choosing something, marking, gesturing, and
following instructions that are part of alternative assessments. Nevertheless, students with a more advance level can
perfectly take the selected-response type which consists of true-false,
matching, multiple choice questions and the like that belong to traditional
ways of assessment. This why it is important to match the children’s English
proficiency with the corresponding type of response and the most appropriate
techniques for that type of response that the students can handle.
In the particular case of the English project that we
have, there are many things to take into account when designing assessment
techniques. One of these things is the fact that not all the children can read
or write. There are around four to five students in the classroom that still
have problems with their reading and writing; thus, traditional ways of
assessments such as, quizzes and exams would not be workable, neither writing
assignments. However, alternative assessments would work better in the process
of appraising these kids’ acquisition of the classes. Let’s see what kind of these alternative
assessment tasks can be appropriate for our kids.
First, considering that our kids are either in the
preproduction or early speech level of English proficiency, the most suitable type
of student response to use with them would be personal response. Thus, some tasks
that belong to these English levels are kinesthetic activities that require either
just a pointing out or acting out of something and one or two-word responses.
Here
are some of the activities I would use to assess the students of our English
project.
ü
Pictorial Products. To elicit
content knowledge without requiring students to speak or write, teachers can
ask students to produce and manipulate drawings, dioramas, models, graphs, and
charts. Thus, in this case, I would
present my students with a chart in which they will have some categories such
as, FAMILY MEMBERS, DAYS OF THE WEEK, ITEMS CLOTHES, NOUNS OF ANIMALS, and
other topics that we have studied along the course. Then, I would give them
some pieces of paper with pictures labeled. MONDAY, CAT, SKIRT, and the like
with the intention that kids should paste every picture in the corresponding
category. This would be an individual work since I am trying to assess the children’s
level of acquisition of every topic covered in classes. Another idea using pictures could be giving a
shift of paper and asking kids to color with a specific color the items mentioned by the teacher, for
example: color with yellow the things that are under the table, then, color with red the things that are on the
table, and so on.
ü Physical demonstration (point,
gesture, act out, thumbs up/down). The teacher can call students one by one and
ask them different things related to the topics that are under evaluation
and tell them to show their thumbs up if the information is correct and down if
the information is incorrect. The use of pictures can be crucial if students
still need visual aids to identify what they are being asked For example: the
teacher can show a picture of a pair of glasses and tell to the kid is this a
hat? The kid must show his thumbs down. And so on until asking the necessary
questions.
ü Give them a box. Students can be
asked to put something in, on, under, behind, etc.
ü Listening activity: students can be
presented some set of pictures in pairs, and they have to mark the one that the
teacher mentions; for example: one dog and one snake; the teacher says “snake”
and the students should mark the snake.
To
sum up, it is necessary to think and study your group of students before
creating assessment tasks; thus, the activities mentioned above have been
designed thinking about the weakness and strengths of the kids that belong to
our English project.
References:
v
“Assessment of Young learners” by Kassim Shaaban. Forum Lebanon 2001.
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