Self-assessment - Students grading own tests

So at my school this week, we are doing enrollment conferences during two evenings and my department decided we will also assess this week.

Low-and-behold, I don't have a lot of free time to grade the "Snapshots" (tests) for my students.

We have them organized in 3-4 areas: listening, reading, writing, & speaking (sometimes we don't assess).

For my classes today, in addition to a sharing a romantic song, and having normal conversation, I thought students could actually grade their own work.

Since I've already been having them grade their own quizzes (exit slips), the idea is already in their heads that this is nothing new.

What I am trying today though (and tomorrow since I'm on a block), is students will clear their desks (including writing utensils).  I will pass back their snapshots, and a helper will pass out pens.  They must only take a blue pen if they didn't write in blue ink and a green pen otherwise.

Then we slowly go over the sections and make sure.  Since we use a 4.0 scale for Standards Based Grading, we talk about a 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0 and 0.0 looks like.  And we go over. I tell them to circle things that maybe aren't right.  At the end, I have them score a section before we move on and allow them to ask questions.  For example, a student first block didn't write any of his translations from the listening section into past tense.  So I asked the class.  They decided it would be a 3.75 because it was really close to being perfect, but not quite there.  Great discussion.

Then we discussed the Reading the same way.

For the writing section, we decided how they could be successful on the writing section and they came up with a basic guide.  After we came up with that, I offered them 5:00 to add to their writing or edit it to push themselves to try for better if they saw they could improve.

At the end, they wrote a 1 on the bottom of their paper on what they can start doing so their next snapshot can be higher (if possible).

I thought it opened up class for good conversation in first block and look forward to the rest of the blocks.  While more English was needed than I would like, I really hope it will help my kids see how they can be more successful each time.

I think I will continue to do this as best as I can.

But I told my wife my plan last night and she thought I was crazy.

For me, it's just like giving the students jobs in class, let's give them more responsibility little by little since it is their learning.  Why should I be the one wearing so many hats?

Please let me know if you've done something similar or any ideas you might have.

TPRS Year 4 - Hard changes

This year, I am at a new school after last year seeming like a fairly strong year for my CI teaching.  I saw a lot of growth in my friend and I collaborating (in our different schools) between creating curriculum for our Spanish 1-2 classes.

This year here are all of the new things I have had to find a way to live/work with:

1. Other teachers in my department - Good to have others to collaborate with, when you can be like-minded.  Also neat that two of the teachers in my department (out of 3) have decided to do more storytelling and Comprehensible Input after seeing gains in their Spanish 1 classes they hadn't seen before!  Yay for their success!
2. Block Scheduling - this one has been one of the hardest.  How does one go from seeing students every day (50 minutes) to seeing them every other day (90 minutes)?  It's still something I am wrapping my brain around.  Sadly, the retention doesn't seem as high.  Probably because I am not effectively teaching during the block.
3. Standards-Based-Grading - Not a bad idea.  I was probably moving towards this in my philosophy.  Still, something I have been forced to dabble with before I might have been ready.
4. New relationships - going to a new school forces you to build relationships all over again  with students, faculty, & staff. That itself makes it harder to teach and to work with others.
5. Common assessments - having others dictate what and when I assess is a big adjustment.
6. PAT - I've been trying Preferred Activity Time this year and need to tweak it next year
7. FVR - I've been letting my students read children's books at the beginning of class, also might need to tweak that next year
8. Pairs/groupwork - I have been encouraged by some to do more with pairs/group work.  I prefer input, but I must appease those above me.

And there is probably more.  But while I find things I want to do, I remind myself that next year, I can start afresh and do better.  I want to implement a more strict policy with cellphones, eye-contact, heads down, etc (a la JGr (on Ben Slavic's PLC))

Sufficed to say, I've been getting down lately.  After doing some assessments, I've been dissapointed with myself after some students' performance.  Why do I blame myself though?  Why do we as teachers take so much flak for everything?  Sometimes there are kids who refuse to be reached no matter what I do.  Why must I feel like a failure?  Can't the responsibility at some point lie somewhere else?  I can't be a scapegoat anymore...

On a positive note, here's an email I got today from a student in one of my classes:

I just wanted to thank you for all you have taught me. I feel like it is easier than i expected and that I enjoy it. I have even been starting to speak a little at home to teach my family. This has had a significant influence on me and i wanted to let you know i appreciate it. 

TPRS year 4 - assessments last year

In a previous post on my reflection over Year 3 with TPRS, Jennifer basically wanted to know what I did in terms of assessments for my kids.

I would guess this is as a result of trends in challenging our traditional grading model of percentages. 

At my new school, we will be using Standards-Based grading, which I think has the potential for being a much better snapshot of gauging where the students is at as far as our proficiency goals for the year.  We will be giving grades for their knowledge the of the subject matter instead of participation points and points for "compliance". 

I like this idea because if we can get kids to love learning just because learning is so wonderful, then that's a wonderful paradigm shift for schools.

However, it takes a lot of "buy in" from administrators, teachers, students and parents.

I'm excited about this shift in my assessment of my students and have been reading up on it through Ben Slavic's PLC blog and some other TPRS teacher blogs.

But I digress.

However, last year, I was working heavily on going through the readers.  We had a lot of daily quizzes (to check understanding of material each day because every day is important).  Really though, I can tell a student's progress because all the quizzes were in Spanish so they had to be able to understand what their peers wrote on the quiz to be able to get even half of the points.

At some point, there might not have been a language problem, but they missed a slight detail because they zoned out.  I gave enough quizzes though that this was easily noticed if they normally missed a detail, that was most likely from a slightly lower level of understanding than others.

I also constantly assess them in the TPRS part of class and the CI part of class.  Their eye contact is a big deal.  Also, their answering questions.  I would also choose to circle with students sometimes who didn't seem to be getting it, just to bring them into the attention in case I was losing them.  This was more of a formative assessment though.

In Spanish 1, I gave two pretty big assessments; one after each leveled reader.  

A friend and I wrote the tests and had multiple sections to the tests.

In the Pirates test, I even opted for a section where they saw animated powerpoint slides of things that happened in the book, and they wrote as much as they could about them in Spanish.  Those were actually awesome and I was proud of my kids.

Now. With that said, I would be more than happy to send anyone my tests and things I have created.

What I should have done though was a few speaking assessments where they tell me a story (based on a 4 frame storyline, or a retell of a story).  I should have done more timed writes.  I really should have done a lot of things to give the kids more opportunities to show me their level.

But hey, I can work on those things this next year because I will need to prove what I am doing is really awesome for the students and they absorb the language like sponges when it's taught a certain way!