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.

Response to Chris Cashman - part 3 - Assessment

Quick history lesson:
Chris Cashman asked me about TPRS and why I use it. I responded here.
Chris proposed a response asking about assessment here.
I responded in part 1 about why the grammar vids here.
Part 2 of my response dealt with learning vs acquisition as I understand it here. I have put Chris' text in blue so you know whose words belong to whom.

And here is part three on: Assessment

You’ll notice that I have taken a LONG time to write this response. I have tried so many times in my head to respond and also tried so many times to write a coherent response. And I keep coming up dry. But I know that you’re patiently waiting to have a dialogue about this. So here is my best effort. I admit you’ll probably see facets that you don’t agree with me and that is completely fine. You’re the master of your own classroom and I wouldn’t want to tell you what you HAVE to do. You have to come to that on your own.

I thought it was so important to address my issues with teaching before coming to TPRS and after implementing TPRS in this first post because until you understand my journey, you’ll have a hard time seeing how I have such a hard time with assessment.

Response to Chris Cashman - part 2 - Learning vs Acquisition

This is part two of my response to Chris Cashman's questions, which can be seen here. Part one of my response can be seen here. I have put Chris' text in blue so you know whose words belong to whom.

First of all, I’ll share some common points between how I teach and some of the methodology you brought up. But then, I’ll launch into a big gap that remains for me – a gap from what you shared, and the lack of response about it when I post about these things on other blogs, discussions with colleagues, and ACTFL Discussion Boards. Still coming up dry.

The thinking behind your grammar videos actually overlaps a bit with the pattern that I myself use to present grammatical structures – and vocab too, actually (I give vocabulary lists for four out of eight units in Spanish 3).  

Keep in mind that the grammar videos are there to help others learn Spanish. They are not necessarily made for my students. While some of my students use them, I would say that the majority does not. And considering the medium (online), it is very hard to replicate what goes on in my class with the internet since what I do is not lecture at all, but instead incredibly interactive and contingent upon my students to provide feedback, ideas, reactions, input, etc.  Meaning: we have conversations in the TL on a variety of topics.

Response to Chris Cashman - part 1 - Why the grammar videos?

Background info: Chris asked me a question and I responded here. He then asked me a question about how I assess on this post. Here is my response broken up into more manageable chunks. Chris' portion is in blue.

Chris,

Thank you for your kind words both about my blog entry and my videos. It means a lot that we are still able to dialogue about this considering that for some, a wall is quickly built that can never be crossed by either side when someone teaches differently.

I appreciate your taking the time to write such a well thought out response. It shows me how much you really care about what you are doing and I bet your students are incredibly thankful for you!

I’m going to be very honest from the get-go in this response that I don’t have many of the answers that you might seek. I appreciate your challenging me in those so that I might be able to further grow in those areas.

Chris Cashman's response #2 (posted with permission)

The other day, I responded to Chris Cashman's question posited to me on the Spanish Teachers in the U.S Facebook Group.  

A little bit of background, Chris and I have communicated over the years through Youtube about my video lessons, which are relatively grammar heavy.

After some reflection, Chris graciously responded but said it wouldn't fit in a comment on my blog due to length constraints. 

So with his permission I have posted it here for you to see. I will respond once I have organized my thoughts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Señor Jordan – Amazing blog entry that you posted the other day. I really appreciate the time you took to flesh out what you do. I specifically appreciated how you respond to the criticisms of TPRS head-on.

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 5 - Agentes Assessment

So I was looking at one of the assessments for the Spanish 1 book Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.  Let me be clear in that I felt quite rushed in the book this semester with block scheduling.  And I personally got tired of having an entire quarter revolve around the book and not have as much fun with storytelling.  But I think I know what to do to improve that next semester when we do the Piratas book.

The way that we assessed was in four areas: Reading, Writing, Listening, & Speaking*

TPRS Year 4 - Google Voice

I'm behind the times when it comes to technology in classes.  My thoughts are that technology is no replacement for good teaching.  However, if I can find a way to use the technology to further enhance my instruction.

Something my (new) department and I are trying out this year for our snap-shots/assessments for the students is Google Voice.  I have never used this before.  This is a result of students in my previous schools not being allowed to have their cellphones.  In this case, students are able to in my new school.

So instead of speaking out in the hallway today and scrambling to figure out where they were on a scale, I had them go out into the hallway and retell some of the information from class.

This was great because it gave me the ability to see how they were doing and I can continue to listen to it.

One students recorded 9:00 worth of speaking Spanish.  He was retelling information then decided to make up new things with other words.

Another student decided not to do it at all.  He called and hung up and came back into class.  I reminded him that this was to give me an idea of where he is in my class (snap-shot) which will be recorded in the grade book and that is a 0.0 (No Evidence of Learning).  He told me he would make it up on a different day.

I'm excited about the possibilities to keep these in the students portfolios.

I also liked it because I could deal with testing issues or questions instead of being between the classroom and the hallway listening to each individual student.

What are some ways you use technology to enhance your instruction?

TPRS year 3 - Piratas(book) - assessment and reflection

My Spanish 1 classes and I read through Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto by Mira Canion this last quarter for our final book of the year.

Each week we would read a chapter (or two).  As needed we would do a spoken story that might practice some of the structures that we would later find in the chapter.  The driving force behind reading the books this year in class was to make sure that the students could find success.  While I could have chosen books that would have been much more challenging to them, I think it was crucial to make sure that the books were mostly comprehensible by the time we read them with maybe a few words or things that weren't.  I find this important because when I first started reading in Spanish, it was way too difficult in classes because my teachers had an inflated sense of "the students should know this by this point."  I was one of the better students and found reading way too difficult in Spanish 4.  As teachers we should be helping our kids to find success so they might find more fulfillment in the future.

In addition to pre-teaching the necessary structures and vocabulary, I also would create animated PowerPoints of certain scenes in the book while we were reading it.  I also created backgrounds and we would act out the chapters a day or so after reading them.  This was also to create an additional pass of the material, and to make sure students would be able to visualize some of the action in the book.

By the time we finished the book, I wanted to assess my kids.  The test that Joe and I came up with was a bit of a beast.  I think we jokingly referred to it as the "Kraken" at some point while writing it.  When my kids took it, although they told me it was reasonable and not necessarily difficult, it was simply longer than many could do within one class.

What I liked about it was we tried to incorporate many different types of questions on the test to make sure our students understood it.

In my favorite section, I made animated slides of scenes from the book and the students had to write a sentence or more explaining the scene in Spanish.  It was neat.  It also helped me see deficiencies in their acquisition of certain structures.

Another section was multiple choice of the basic plot points of the book (all in Spanish).  There was a section of quotes from the book from the main characters, true / false, and some short answer questions.

The neatest part about the whole test (and the previous test about the book Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso) was that the questions were in Spanish.  My students had to understand enough Spanish to be able to perform on the test and answer the questions.  Most kids did quite well!  Maybe two of all of my students did very poorly (60%).  There were many interruptions during this book though due to track, baseball, field trips, etc.

Reflection 
    The Good (went well)

• I thought the book was a success for the first year trying it
• I was able to do things in this book that I didn't do with the first one; my students responded more favorably to this one
• I was very proud of the test
• the fact that many of my students came to class and were ok with reading once/twice a week IN SPANISH was great
• the Hollywood days were some of the kids favorite days (they told me later)
• my kids were learning Spanish this year to be successful enough to be able to read most of the book
• I felt like I was more creative with this unit than I have been in awhile in my teaching; I was able to use many of my talents to make the book/characters more accessible to my students
• I had the Native Speakers and Heritage Speakers read the chapters while the class translated.  This was great since sometimes I have to ask my Native Speakers and Heritage speakers to not answer questions or count to 5 before answering in Spanish.  I think it helped them feel more useful and special!

    The Bad (needs improvement)

• the 10 week unit seemed a bit daunting at times.  I am not sure how some TPRS teachers can squeeze in 3-4 books a year.
• some kids didn't like how long the book took as a result of the 10 week unit
• I would like to do some pirate-based stuff in addition like I saw from a FLAM presentation this last fall (examples were in German though)
• didn't create a lot of opportunities for higher thinking questions
• I do a lot of comprehension checks/questions.  I don't do a lot of "what would you do"
• some kids hated the first pass (translation);
• could we break up in reading groups sometimes too

If you would like to see any of the activities I used for this unit, please let me know (jeremy(at)senorjordan.com)!

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)

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 128 - Quizzes

I don't think I've talked much about assessment yet this year.  The problem is I don't really know yet how to create a wonderful summative assessment tool.  I have so far decided to use formative assessments.  For those of you not familiar with the terms...

A summative assessment is basically the assessment we do that shows the students have learned from the unit, such as a test, a paper, or a presentation.  It's a big assessment.

A formative assessment is what we use along the way to track the students' progress so we can possibly help them before the summative assessment (test, paper, presentation).  These could be quizzes, worksheets, classwork, or anything that gives the teacher an idea of how the students are progressing with the material.

Well, I really like the formative assessments.  I am the foreign language department at my small rural school.  As a result, I haven't been too worried about creating massive tests for my students.  Instead, I have been giving 3-5 point quizzes constantly.  I try to do at least 2-3 a week when possible.  This is so I can constantly chart the students progress.  Another formative assessment in TPRS are the writing assignments for students to write in the language.  This has proven helpful to see how students are doing as well.

I like these assessments because they are realistic and as I chart my students' progress, I am able to go back and help on things that they aren't quite grasping yet.  The silly thing is that the quizzes I give are over the stories that we talk about in class.  As a result, the quizzes are so silly because our stories are often silly.  This also helps the students to succeed on the quizzes because they are able to remember more pointless information such as the names of silly characters or why they looked weird or what their problem was.  The best part though is that it's sneaky teaching because they think that the quiz is incredibly easy and forget for a moment that the whole thing is in Spanish.

I love when students tell me that a quiz was easy.  That means they were paying attention to the meaning (and not worrying about the language which is naturally being acquired).

I should do a few summative assessments though throughout the year.  I hope to worry more about that next year.  This year I might try and give a test over the main structures and some other vocabulary we've gone over to make sure they're getting it.  But the quizzes reflect the learning from the students and that's good enough for me to defend myself.

Día 19 - Lack of Enthusiasm

The neat thing about TPRS is that I can see my students really responding more to the material because it's all about teaching comprehensible input in a meaningful (albeit silly) context.

Nevertheless, students will still have "off days."  It's frustrating for me because I need my students to help pump me up.  What I have noticed generally is that days in which I am not incredibly pumped up are the worst days for the students too.  I really must show a desire to be there and to start class on time.  Today I was running a little behind.  As a result, I started class a few minutes later than usual and I could sense the lack of energy in the students because I didn't greet them with energy when they came into the room.  They can sense the energy I have and that determines how they'll respond to the class.  As a result, I failed that class this morning.  For the second hour, I made a mental note to start as close to the beginning as possible.  It was more successful.  For the most part, the majority of the students were trying and I had to coach a couple of them into paying attention.  But hey, that's what the participation grade reflects.  I'll encourage them to participate and pay attention, but ultimately, it is still up to them to run with that.

I did explain that I need them look at me and to answer questions with the rest of the class (in a choral response) so that I know that they understand.  If they don't answer, I will assume that they do not understand and I will keep repeating the same things over and over again.

This seemed to encourage the ones who weren't answering to chime in because I needed them to as well.  When one or two students don't, they send a message to the others that it's ok to not pay attention.  I need to make sure I am constantly offering them positive reinforcement to pay attention when possible to remind them that they have to give their 100%.

I think that what I need to do in the future is to start giving the students a quiz each day and as the last question they should rate their own participation out of 5 points based on how they did.  I think this self-evaluation will help them to want to do better since they can see what their effort is worth.

Día 16 - End of class writing assignment

Today I had my students do a write up at the end of class.  I gave them 10 minutes apiece and depending on if I had been able to do writing with them before or not, I determined my expectations.  For some of the classes, I told them a really small number like 30.  But I made sure to explain that more is better and if they can do more than 30 I expect them to.  Some students who normally would not do more than they were asked did.  I'll have to make sure to praise each of those students when they get their papers back.

Or maybe I could start doing 'homework pass' for a homework writing assignment or something like that for those kids who write the most.  It's good to give them a reward for doing more work.

I was proud of the students who did what I asked and more.  I only had a few students who were not able to get the number of words.  This only frustrates me as a teacher because I should have been better at encouraging them and making sure they were paying attention.

In my Junior High class, I know that sometimes their attention is a little bit of a problem.  It's the last class of the day and they are squirmy junior high students!  It's hard sometimes to keep their attention.  Regardless of what I try, they can easily get off task.  But hey, I'll still working on this method.  What I was saddened to find out was that they were not keeping up their part of the bargain in class because many of them did not write the story that we had talked about in class.  It almost seemed as though they didn't follow most of the story.  One or two of the students did.  I don't have to worry about them because language comes more naturally.  But the rest seemed to miss out on all of the fun details and even the basic skeleton of the story.  This worries me because storytelling is not useful if they are not understanding the language.

The purpose of this assessment is to help me figure out what they know by the end of class when it is still fresh in their minds.  I will probably try again today to see what they come up with.  Maybe Friday was just an off day.

I need to do assessments more often in class instead of assuming that they understood.  As Friday proved in the one class, I was way off on my estimates of their level of understanding.

Día 14 - Writing

TPRS is all about learning through telling stories.  This can be orally or in written format.

Hopefully, the students get better and better at telling stories.  I have been focusing on telling the stories orally.  In the Look I can Talk book by Blaine Ray, he gives you a reading as well as an extended reading.  In the teacher's guide, he gives discussion questions for the class as they read the story.

I understand that the purpose is to get the students to read as well as learn to talk simultaneously.  We also teach the past in class speaking while the stories are in the present tense.  In essence, this helps the students learn to the tenses at the same time.  It makes sense.  In my experience, the students who are taught only the present tense in the first year always use it as a security blanket.  Why should that be if everyday language incorporates more than one tense?

One of the things that you can do to assess your students after a story is to have them write a summary of what you talked about in class.  Depending on how much time is left in class might affect your expectations for how much they write.  I have been finding myself getting through the story and forgetting about that part of the class.  I do need to encourage my students to write as early as possible because we tell the stories so much in class orally, it should be an easy enough transition for them to write the stories in Spanish.

I have done it with a few classes once so far and I was surprised by the results.  They do a great job overall.  I tried to give them an easy goal to accomplish in 5 minutes like 30 words or something.  In one class I had a student write almost 100 words in the 5 minutes left.  He was obviously more advanced in his ability to communicate.  But his enthusiasm is what I hope all of the students can come to have in class.

So I challenge myself to have my students write more about their stories instead of forgetting about that part of the storytelling process.  We need to review the information in various ways instead of just moving on to new stories.  We can easily play with the old stories to make sure to continue to practice the structures.

Día 9 - TPRS

So I had purchased TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan a year or so ago when I was wondering how to implement TPRS into my teaching.  I decided to start the year off with it in my classes.  Nevertheless, I just found that it didn't fit the style of TPRS that I wanted to use.

My class enjoyed the TPR portion in which we had to perform different actions.  But it got to the point where my brain just wasn't able to fill the class with things for the students to do or novel commands.  At that point, Rowan starts adding in Personalized Mini Stories (PMS).  Nevertheless, as I pointed out yesterday, those stories are very forced.  They are forcing the students to follow a storyline so that the teacher is in control of the class and they basically just insert students' names into the story.

When I learned TPRS from the workshop this summer, we learned that it's about teaching certain structures.  A teacher can throw in all sorts of vocabulary into the class as long as they keep in mind that the purpose is to give the students comprehensible input.  The stories that Rowan had created were too detail driven to make sure students acquired the vocabulary.  Instead, it is important to focus on the structures and the vocabulary will come more naturally.  Today, I decided to start over (in a way of speaking) by starting to tell stories from the book Look I can Talk!  by Blaine Ray.

The beauty of the stories in the teacher edition is that you can really open up the stories to whatever.  Not all of the classes have to be the same.

For example, in three different classes I decided to teach the same structures.  The levels of Spanish are 1-3 and I can tell already that the level of stories will be different because the students in the higher levels will have more words that we can play with.

The basic structure storyline is that:

There was a boy.

The boy's name was [Student's name].

The boy liked ____.

The boy wanted to have ____.

The boy was in ___.

There wasn't any ___ in ___.

The boy went to ___.

It's pretty basic.  With just that storyline, we went for almost the entire class talking about what the boy wanted and adding details.  In each class the storyline differed greatly.

First hour:
There was a boy.  The boy's name was Jesús.  Jesús liked dogs.  Jesús liked blue dogs.  Jesús wanted 100 blue dogs.  Santiago wanted a new television.  Nacho wanted 50 dark-haired girls.  Marcos wanted lots of money.  Marcos wanted one dollar.  Jesús was in the the mountains in Japan.  Nacho was in the White House.  Marcos was in a big box.  There were no blue dogs in Japan.  Jesús went to Marcos' big box.  Nacho went to Marcos' big box.  There were 900 girls in Marcos' big box.  There was a party in Marcos' big box.

Second hour:
There was a boy.  The boy's name was Pedro.  Pedro liked cats.  Pedro liked pink cats.  Ana liked penguins. Rosa liked to play baseball. Pedro wanted to have 100 pink cats.  Pedro was in the Colorado Mountains.  There were no pink cats in the Colorado Mountains.  Pedro went to Six Flags.

Third hour:
There was a boy.  The boy's name was Burrito.  Burrito liked cats.  Burrito liked green cats.  Burrito wanted to have 900 green cats.  The professor didn't like cats.  Catalina liked yellow penguins.  Eva liked blue horses.  Catalina wanted one incredibly small yellow penguin.  Eva wanted small blue horses.  Burrito was in Diana's house.  There were no cats in Diana's house.  There was one dog in Diana's house.  Burrito went to Brazil slowly on a penguin.

fifth hour:
There was a boy. His name was Diego.  Diego liked cats.  Diego liked green cats.  Carlos liked gigantic squirrels.  Ana liked tall African American boys.  Diego wanted to have 307 green cats.  Carlos wanted to have 11 gigantic squirrels.  Ana wanted to have 16 tall African American boys.  Diego was in the bathroom.  There were no green cats in the bathroom.  There were yellow cats.
So as you can see, each class had very different details that they added and they personalized the story to fit their needs.  I tried to help them learn to play the game.  Hopefully we'll get better about playing the game as we go.

Tomorrow I think we'll continue the story.  Some students seem to just shut off for a moment and they do not signal me as we rehearsed.  I need to be better about making sure I talk slowly enough for the students and to point slowly.

For assessment during class, I did try the 'show me your fingers' activity where the students are supposed to show their comprehension to you.  If they show all 10 fingers, they did not understand.  If they show you 9 fingers, they understood 90 percent, etc.  You want to shoot for about 80% comprehension or more from the entire class.  If there is less, review and make sure that the students understand the material.  I also had the students write 15 words in the last few minutes of class of some of the parts of the story.  This was to build their confidence that they could understand what we were talking about in class.

This method is much more entertaining than traditional teaching because the class can be so different based on their ideas and the story can still be compelling.

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.

Computerized testing

I find myself in a place of tension as an educator.

Performance-based Activities

I've been thinking a lot lately about activities involving performance in the target language in order to test my students skills. Doing this I could still have a rubric for grading and I could be looking for individual things. Or I could have my students perform a task or solve a problem in the target language.

This approach is appealing to me based on backwards-by-design. I could design a unit and then have my summative assessment as some sort of task that students must perform so that I can lead them by the hand all the way up to that point.

And yet, I also feel as though I should give students that might prefer the formal version a test. So I find myself in this limbo between two types of assessment.

What does this mean for me? Well, one thing I would like to do potentially with this is to give students an option by the time of the test. Either they can take a written test or perform a task in the target language and both would be covering the same points, but would offer the students with a choice. I like this idea in that I could be tapping for multiple intelligences.

But at the same time, perhaps I could give students both and they would even each other out. Or alternate depending on the units. Some students will prefer the 'test' over an 'activity' because it's safer while others might like the risk of trying out the language for a purpose other than an 'A'.

Testing

Then there is testing. I change my philosophy each year on how I should be teaching my students and therefore, how I assess them. This is my fourth year of teaching and I have never used the same test. Every year I write it again. This year I am proud to say that I try to include different types of activities that are more focused on meaning and less interested in spelling because do I really care if the students can spell the word right? Or do I care more if they can use it to express themselves. How often will I have my students write on a piece of paper instead of speaking? I would think speaking makes more sense.

So testing should reflect their understanding without forcing them to worry about every single letter. Instead I can offer Cierto/Falso questions and even multiple choice and matching (something that I shunned before).

This year I have also decided that I would rather test my students over the computer in order to save paper and the hassle of subjectivity in grading. In addition, I can ask the students to improve on their first performance and to take notes on anything they missed. It doesn't mean anything extra for me if they are to retry the test.

The pictures to the sides are some examples of tests that I've been making through: quia.com.

It's pretty basic to use and takes a little longer to make the tests for my students, but I see the perks as being higher.

Something I've wondered though is that because my school is small, I have to have to students go to the library to take the tests and that is changing the environment and taking them out of their 'Spanish' comfort zone. So scores might be slightly lower on the test due to inability to recall information as a result of the environment.

But thus far my Spanish 2 students have preferred the computerized tests and tomorrow I will test out my Spanish 1 students and we will see if they also prefer the format.