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 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.

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 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!