How to Support Secondary Students in Language Arts Testing

Seeing growth and improvement can be a huge motivator for ELL students.

But you tin can't run into growth if you don't measure information technology.

That's why no neat class is consummate without some manner of assessing students.

Non only is it a fantastic way for both you and your students to see what they've learned, but you lot can also employ the results to help you plan future lessons.

Nonetheless, don't rely solely on tests to assess your students!

They're not e'er an authentic way to measure their skill levels. Instead, I have five alternative ways you tin can assess your ELL students, and examples of what each might look like. Just commencement, allow's accept a closer look at the issue with tests.

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Why Tests Aren't an Accurate Way to Measure Performance

1 of the well-nigh common reasons why teachers shouldn't only use tests is because students may accept exam anxiety. What tends to happen is that students are so nervous when presented with a exam that they don't do besides. You lot then aren't able to see what the student is really capable of. For ELL students, they tin be extra nervous because not only do they have to recollect information they've learned, but they may take to decipher what the test question is asking in the first identify.

Also, tests really only measure what students tin can memorize or recall, not necessarily what work they tin can produce. For example, if yous give a multiple choice test well-nigh vocabulary they learned, it really only tests if they understand one pregnant of the word, and not necessarily whether they empathise how to apply the same word in dissimilar contexts.

Another example would be oral skills. If students understand sure phrases yous've taught them, they may non understand if another person outside the classroom says it, peculiarly if that person has an accent.

If an ELL educatee is a little slower to read or decipher material (especially if they've had lots of support in their class), a time constraint on a test won't give them sufficient time to complete the examination. Just because a student didn't finish a examination, doesn't hateful they don't understand the fabric. You then are left guessing as to whether or not your student actually understood what you lot were testing them on.

And so what are some ways to assessing English language language learners so, if tests are non the full answer?

5 Means to Assess English Language Learners Without Resorting to Tests

1. Rubrics and Performance Criteria

Using rubrics and performance criteria is a great way to appraise a variety of student work. It's usually based on linguistic communication proficiency and academic progression through work such equally presentations, written assignments and reading activities. Y'all can not only use these to grade your students, but to nautical chart their growth over a set period of time.

Both tools feature a listing of criteria or standards that students know you lot're assessing. Rubrics show what is considered below level, at level and to a higher place level. A performance criteria tin can simply be a checklist of what to appraise for each student. With either of these assessment tools, information technology'due south important to develop your own, equally assessments are based on the teacher's judgment.

A tool like RubiStar is helpful, as it tin show you sample rubrics other teachers have developed, and anyone tin modify them for their own use. Some possible categories for rubrics include text features, fluency in reading, types of sentences written and neatness in writing.

When creating rubrics or performance criteria, make sure that what you're assessing is articulate and fair from the beginning. Also, don't assess too much at one time, as it'll not only overwhelm you but your students also. If it helps, ask other teachers how they created their rubrics, or simply have someone expect over yours to see if it looks okay.

You tin can even have it a pace further by bringingFluentU into the classroom.

FluentU takes accurate videos—similar music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language lessons.

2. Oral Presentations or Performances

Many students who have test anxiety might get nervous because their reading or writing skills aren't very expert. That doesn't mean, even so, that they aren't practiced in oral skills.

Assessing oral presentations or performances typically include part-plays, interviews, oral reports and summarizing/paraphrasing pieces of text. When used on an ongoing basis, it'southward a great way to monitor a student'southward comprehension through a longer period of time.

Here are some ideas to incorporate oral presentations or performances as part of your assessments:

• Role-plays: Office-plays can exist used to appraise students individually or equally a group. Some ideas include having students write a play and performing it or fifty-fifty having the students teach the teacher as part of a review form.

• Interviews: This blazon of assessment is very helpful if you take students that are early English learners. To assistance test students on content cognition, try to use a lot of visual cues. For instance, have students choice from a pile of pictures, and ask questions to elicit responses from them. You lot can assess the student based on vocabulary used or comparison concepts.

• Describing/explaining/retelling/paraphrasing/summarizing texts: Instead of a written book report or summary of a slice of text, you can have your students retell the plot in forepart of the class or just to y'all. Other ideas can include asking the students to pick a graphic symbol in the book and tell a story from their indicate of view, or even to describe their favorite role of the text.

When assessing oral work, it's helpful to use a checklist of things to look for, such as pronunciation, volume, pace and content. Employ the same checklist for the same types of oral presentations to see the progression over time.

iii. Non-verbal Assessments

For students who are shy or aren't as proficient in English, using non-exact assessments is a bang-up mode to see a pupil's academic progress. What you're looking for in this type of assessment is their understanding of vocabulary.

Examples include:

• Charades: Give a student vocabulary words you've taught, and have them act information technology out to see if they understand what the word or concept is. Y'all could fifty-fifty have them summarize a text by miming it.

• Pictures: You can ask students to draw or collect pictures to evidence their knowledge on a topic. For example, if you're assessing a pupil on their knowledge of nouns, ask students to choice out pictures of nouns in a magazine. Pictures can also be used to assess reading comprehension. Students tin read a paragraph and and then draw a picture to testify their understanding of the text. If the picture is mostly accurate except for a few details, it could be a vocabulary issue.

4. Written Assessments

Written assessments are a nice way to see how students can utilize their knowledge of English over a broad variety of concepts. For case, y'all can utilize assignments to come across just how well they empathize a text, or even unlike forms of writing.

Some different ways to incorporate written assessments in your grade include:

• Artistic and structured writing assignments: Ask students to write a artistic story, or even give them a writing prompt—where students read the beginning of a story and are asked to write the ending.

• Editing writing: Requite students a piece of text with grammatical mistakes and ask them to correct information technology, to test their knowledge of grammar.

• Reading response logs: Give students a list of questions, such as how exercise they know a character is evil, or how would they change the ending of a story. When students are finished reading a book or article, have them write down the answers to these questions. Make sure to only appraise for content, and not spelling or grammar, unless you specify to your students that y'all're doing then.

• Content logs: Take students write down facts they learned nearly a text. You can also have them write what parts they didn't empathize. This is helpful for y'all to meet if there are concepts you may need to reteach or review, peculiarly if a lot of students are confused nigh similar parts of the same text.

With writing, don't assess likewise much at once. For a writing piece, you could assess just spelling, complete sentences or unity in paragraphs. Build it up to assess more than than a few criteria in one case you see that your students accept mastered what y'all have taught them.

5. Portfolios

Portfolios are powerful assessments and are used to gather diverse samples of student piece of work to track their development over a period of fourth dimension. In order to maximize the potential of using a portfolio as an assessment tool, y'all should regularly curate educatee work to include in them, and have scheduled conferences with students near their work.

You should also have a checklist of qualities that are of import to showcase student accomplishment. Non just practise you critique and assess the work, but so should the students. That way, they're responsible for their learning and accept more buying of making certain they ameliorate.

Textile yous can include in a portfolio can include the following:

• performance criteria or rubrics
• recording of oral presentations
• tests
• writing samples, drafts and final copies
• book reports
• interview checklists

In order to best assess a student, you should include more one kind of pupil work in the portfolio. The piece of work does not have to be the all-time work they've done, rather a broad variety is best. Based on your judgment, you can even ask students for their opinion as to what types of piece of work they should include.

In a portfolio, you are looking for any type of improvement in their work. For case, if y'all continue a couple of a pupil's writing pieces, wait to encounter if their sentence or paragraph structure gets better. When looking at tests, meet if their spelling tests, for example, have gotten higher scores over time. If yous notice that they continually lack in certain skills, this would be the fourth dimension to address it. You can either give the student extra support in class or find ways for them to exercise with extra work at abode.

Tests aren't bad, but they're not the only way to assess student achievement. If you use a wide variety of assessments, you'll be able to portray an accurate movie of your student's English abilities. In turn, you, your students and their parents will be able to run into their progress, which can profoundly motivate students!

Download: This blog post is bachelor equally a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a re-create. (Download)

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Source: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/assessing-english-language-learners/

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