How I assess with exit quizzes

This blog post will be broken up into the following sections for quick reference:

1. My go-to classroom jobs 
2. How I might set up a story 
3. How I assess with the exit slips

Part 1: My go-to classroom jobs

I’ve learned to use classroom jobs over the years to enhance engagement from students, add a bit of buy-in for others and help class run more smoothly so I can… well… teach more effectively. I longer listes of things poorly and shorter lists of things well. I haven’t invented the idea of classroom jobs. They’ve been around for quite some time, and here are some of my essential ones each day:

Scribe: I generally have a classroom notebook for each class where a scribe will write down in Spanish what we have discussed.

Quiz writer: Depending on the class, there might be one student who is a faster processor who enjoys having control over the questions for the quiz. They will write them based on constraints outlined below for me so when I get to the end of class, I don’t have to think as hard.

Some ways to tweak this job are:

1. to draw straws or have random picker pick a student. 
2. Have them write on little slips of paper that you can scramble 
3. Have them write 10 and you choose the best 8 
4. Obviously there would be times I would have to change their questions if they weren’t well worded or if they weren’t good questions 
5. I would normally tell them to write most of the questions about the words on the board that we were practicing (if we were telling a story) 
6. Some might do comprehension quizzes in English. I’d rather do it in Spanish since it’s not really a “gotcha” type of thing. I have translations in English on the board. And if I have been going slow enough and repetitive enough, they’ll be fine and many won’t even look at that point. 
7. You could have a few kids each write a question to spread out the participation 
8. If I don’t get to the quiz at the end of class I might start with it as the warm up (but now multiple choice) and with the structures still up on the board.

Quiz alphabetizer: I also would have in some classes a student whose job would be to alphabetize the quizzes. This was great. Especially for grading and entering in grade book. Saved me so much time! And extra bonus if I had students check their own quizzes with a collection of colored pens I had before turning them in.

Quiz passer: Other job if the class was ok with it, was for a student to pass them back out once they were graded. It’s all about saving me time and getting them involved!

If you’re interested in using classroom jobs, I recently helped TPRS Books design some new handouts. Here is one on classroom jobs for FREE. Also be thinking about what are things that would make class run more smoothly if you didn’t have to deal with it and a student could handle it for you.

year 2 - TPRS week 2 - Principal observation & quizzing

So last week I had my principal come in on Tuesday during a class and we were still doing the introductory activity where you talk about the different things that students do and then I always try to make it silly as soon as possible because it's much more interesting when it's silly or fantastical.  It has been especially nice because I am teaching at a new school this year and I need to get to know students all over again.  So the first few weeks of class, it's a great activity with very little planning needed since my students have pictures on their desks of something they like to do and we talk about it.

So I can practice sports vocabulary, body parts, useful prepositions like "with", "for", "like","en" and much more.  At the same time, I can learn students names and something about them to help me with learning their names.

But I digress...  so my principal came in class and we'd been having class like this for a week already.  He comes in and witnesses TPRS for the first time.  Mind you, when I interviewed with him, I explained that I didn't have a textbook for my students to use and he thought that it must be either a classroom management nightmare or a genius idea.  The class went very well.  I gave a quiz afterwards and all the students got 3/3 except for one student who got 1/3.  I need to focus on her more in the future and point and go slower.

My principal had written a little note with the following:

Outstanding!  I truly enjoy seeing your enthusiasm for learning.  It is unbelievable how you can maintain your energy and keep students engaged over an extended period of time!

 On the faculty meeting on Friday, he also encouraged all the other teachers to stop by my classroom to see how I am teaching Spanish this year.  So, in short I think it went well!

Now my quiz was a little different than last year.  This summer I attended another workshop with Donna Tatum-Johns and noticed that she quizzed us over the structures.  So she covered the structures up after teaching and asked us what each of the 3 structures were.  So on my quiz, I did just that.  I said the Spanish term that we were practicing and had them write what it was in English.  Since we're just beginning that's ok.  I'm excited when we'll get to the point of much higher level language ability.

Día - 152 - speaking of quizzes

So it's in my nature to want to know how my students are doing!  Sue me.. wait... don't really.

In my district we have these wonderfully useful days (notice the hint of sarcasm there) where we have professional development built into the school year and we have the first Wednesday as an early out and then stay until 3:30 doing professional development.  It might be nicer if there was an actual language program I could meet with and hone our skills together.  Instead, we might have a speaker talking about different things we have to do as educators in Missouri.  Before, it was all about the state testing.  Ay ay ay

------end tangent-----

 So we have these short days and I decided that since I only have 20-25 minutes with my students on those days, I should give a quick quiz.  Yeah.  I know, right?  I should have done this years ago.  Well at least earlier on in the year.  I give little pop quizzes on the stories where the students have to use the language to answer the questions.  However, I wanted to see how well they could do on identifying the structures and using them.

I had two parts.  The top was 20 or so structures we've been using a lot this year almost in every story and matching them to their English counterpart.  These were in the past tense, like our spoken stories.  The second part was a story we'd gone over before and I blanked out some of the words with a word bank  These were in the present like our written stories.  In all, there were 32 points.

Ever since grading them, I've wanted to kick myself.  I had students score as few as 7 and some score as high as 32.  But how were some of them capable of scoring 7?  The diversity of the grading helped me realize that I had been failing them in not assessing their understanding of the structures.

It's such a "DUH" moment too.  I assumed way too much from the quizzes that I had been giving.  Somehow, I figured out that there were some students really struggling with the information.  What is most frustrating is they weren't letting me know that they didn't understand!

What does this tell me?  More quizzes over structures and much more accountability with eye contact to students.

Día 7 - quizzing

TPR
As I was counting, we have covered over 50 terms in that time span.  Typically we are adding 9 words a day.  In doing so we have jumped to a fairly accurate comprehension of over 50 words.

Through TPR, I have added the commands: tócate [body part] (touch __), toca [object] (touch __), besa (kiss), abraza (hug), golpea (hit), baila (dance), llora (cry), come (eat), bebe (drink), grita (yell), siéntate (sit down), levántate (stand up), derrama (spill), camina (walk), corre (run), señala (point)  & huele (smell).

Each day we'll also learn body parts or classroom objects. 

At the end of each class, it is recommended that you have students close their eyes and perform the different actions.  This sends the message that students are expected to learn something in class that day.  You call out the different commands and watch students perform them.  If some students are still unable, you comment something like, " We still need to work on that one a little bit, but we'll work on it more tomorrow!"  This is to remind that students that they are all going to learn in class even though it might be a little harder for some.

Usually you call out the commands that you have taught the student that day, but I like to throw in some of the older ones as well that are easy for all the students to build their confidence.  That way even if they don't get a new one as easily, they can prove that they have learned something before.  I also make sure to use all the terms or as many of the old terms mixed with the new terms each day to help with binding.

The way I have accomplished this is by writing all of the commands in the sections from the different days we've gone over them to remind me when in front of the class to do certain actions.  The list is getting huge now though!  I might have to start printing it out.


Even though I assess my students every day, I decided that I should try to give a 10-20 point quiz once a week.  One TPRS teacher told me that she does not like to tell students when they will have a quiz or a test because it's better to assess them where they are at and you do not stress them out.  As far as they are concerned, it is a regular part of class.  You can tell them after the quiz that they just took a quiz.  At that point they should already have a good idea of what their grade was.

So in some of the classes I had them write the English translation of what I said.  Almost all of the students got a 100%.  One or two students got Bs.  This helps me realize that I still have to help build up those lower students.

In one of my other classes, I decided to do the quiz orally.  I just had the students close their eyes and perform the actions like any other end of class.  To keep track, if a student missed one, I would write their name next to the question.  This way I could keep track of the points for the gradebook.  They did incredibly well.  For TPR, I think this is the better way to quiz.

So far I am quite impressed with TPR in my class and am much more excited to start the TPRS portion of  the year in a week or two.