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.

TPRS year 2 - Student made quizzes

I met with my principal this morning as we discussed my two evaluations from last semester.  He commented how impressed he has been with me as a Spanish teacher: both in the rapport with the students I have acquired in a short time as well as the Spanish abilities he has noticed with students.  I would assume that students didn’t speak it as much before (except the Native / Heritage speakers which make up about 40% of the school). Thanks to the sneaky teaching of TPRS, they are acquiring the language without realizing it. J

While we were talking, I mentioned something that has been a breath of fresh air as well as a great addition to my teaching this semester.  Over Christmas I bought BenSlavic’s TPRS DVD set for only $35, which I thought was a really nice deal after reading both of his books last year.  It really helped flesh out some of the concepts he talked about in his books.

I noticed that Ben has his students write 8 question quizzes in one of his classes to have an assessment at the end of class.  So students are not required/expected to write anything during class.  They are expected to watch, listen, and answer (as well as act when necessary). 

The idea of students making the end of class quizzes for me though is… GENIUS.  So I tried it out during these weeks and students actually do a great job.  They get to listen to the story all of class and then write out 8 questions (either that I have said or of their own creation).  Then at the end of class, someone passes out little pieces of scrap paper I have (thanks to extra worksheet copies and such) and they take the sí/no quiz.  Some of the questions have been awesome!

The best part, all I have to do is grade AND I have a record of what we have been talking about for future games in which I want the students’ stories as the driving force for the game.  (For example, see my caramba game for my eighth graders last year.)

I think this is a winning idea for the following reasons:

• I am often tired at the end of class and in the last five minutes, I can’t think of five questions, much less eight.
• Using eight questions is good since quizzes/tests are 50% of their grade. This offers a good buffer for their grade in case they miss one or two every once in awhile.
•  Students who make the quizzes must pay more attention to how I am asking questions (since Spanish is different with no usage of Do(es) / Did at the beginning of questions, it’s good to make them conscious of how to write questions in Spanish by listening to me.
•  Students get ownership of something in class that affects the rest of the class
•  It seems to build their confidence
•  the quiz writer has to pay more attention than otherwise
•  it establishes a routine for Spanish class unlike any other; in the last 8 minutes, someone passes out the sheets of paper and we take the quiz, go over the answers and have 2-3 minutes at the end
•   I am able to praise students for awesome questions

Additional notes

• it’s funny how students almost always have a question (in Jr high) about if the teacher is a loser: ¿El profesor es un loser?  to which the answer in class is “Sí.”  (I model that I would rather that they make fun of me than each other in class.)
•  students almost always volunteer for this surprisingly
•  they still have to take their quiz after writing it, but shouldn’t they get an easy A?
•  If no one volunteers, I have each name on a popsicle stick for each class and I just draw that name. Once they go, their popsicle stick cannot be drawn until everyone’s name has been drawn.
•  if a question is poorly worded (and 20%-30% or more miss it, I throw the question out / offer it as extra credit)

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.