Formative+Assessment

 ** // Tests: You either hate them or love them, but they are often the only way to conclusively know if students are "getting" what we are teaching. // ** ** // What skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, other) do you test in your class(es)? Do you use more formative or summative assessments? Do you do formal quizzes and tests or performance-based assessments or do you use more informal methods of "checking in" with students? Give (an) example(s), if possible. // ** ** // Share your best practices for assessing your students' progress (and/or give your advice about what not to do, from your experience). // **



 **Submitted by Kristi Reyes** These are the techniques I most frequently use to find out if students "get it":  **Think-Pair-Share** By sharing ideas with others, students take risks while at the same time saving face, and by telling other students what they have learned, the new content is better retained. These activities take no set-up time. I simply pose a question or problem for students to solve, give students some individual "think time," form students into pairs or small groups for sharing and discussion of their ideas with a time limit, circulate to supervise discussions, and then randomly call on students. They will have already shared their ideas at least once with a classmate and confirmed or rejected their ideas, so the affective filter should be lowered. In higher level classes or when I want students to be held accountable for their participation in the sharing phase, a "write" time can be added: Think-Write-Pair-Share.  **Board races** provide a break from the norm and can be structured around just about any type of course content. I am always surprised by how competitive some of the more complacent students in my class become and by the rampant cheating they all are willing to commit in order to win. One example I use with intermediate level students is irregular past tense verbs. I created a PowerPoint of 50 irregular verbs students memorized during the course of the term. After considerable practice, but before being formally tested, students are assigned to teams for a competition. Each member of every team takes turns coming to the board and is shown a slide of a base form of a verb. He or she must write (spelled correctly) the past tense of the verb. The team that spells the verb correctly the fastest gets the point. Of course, students could simply listen to the teacher say the verb or see the verb on a flashcard.  **Other Classroom Assessment Techniques** (CATS) I distribute index cards and ask students to write anonymously an answer to a question I pose: What did you learn today? What has been the most valuable thing you have learned in the class so far? What questions do you have? What do you need or want more practice doing? What is something you dislike in the class? Do you have any comments or suggestions? Invariably the majority of students write that they want more of everything, which is not incredibly helpful, but usually there are a few golden suggestions. For students who report that "everything is fine," they are nevertheless appreciative, just knowing that the teacher is concerned with the progress of their learning and their language / communication needs. I am always anxious to read what they have written, but the activity serves two purposes: confirmation that the instruction is on the right track or the necessity for clarification and review.  **Interactive PowerPoint Team Games** I use interactive PowerPoint slideshows, such as Jeopardy, and students love it! There are numerous sites where you can download templates that allow for entering your own questions: **Parade of Games in PowerPoint** http://facstaff.uww.edu/jonesd/games/index.html (//sample games and game templates for download, including Buzz Word Bingo, Correct Order, Idea Map, What is the Truth, What am I?, and more),// **Fun and Games** http://teach.fcps.net/trt4/FETC03/fun2.htm //(compilation of some of the most popular PowerPoint game templates), and// **PowerPoint Games** http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/ppt-games (//Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Pyramid Game, and others)//  **Audience Response Systems (Also known as "Clickers")** These gadgets provide teachers with a <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">quick way to measure students' attainment of learning outcomes and engage passive learners. There are several brands out there, and in the Adult ESL program I teach, there are sets of the hand-held devices for of the Turning Point (http://www.turningtechnologies.com/) for check-out. The software, a PowerPoint add-in, is a free download; however, the hardware -- a USB receiver and the devices are not free, making this option of formative assessment more costly. I prepare the PowerPoint question slides (with or without images) ahead of time. In class, I use the PowerPoint to ask the students the prepared questions, and students "vote" using their remote devices. When the polling ends, the software tabulates the results and displays them in a chart -- pie, bar graph, line graph, which can be downloaded for saving. Individual students or teams can anonymously give answers or the hand-helds can be assigned to particular students so that I can know exactly who replied correctly or not to each question. I have been using clickers for a few years, and the benefits I have noticed are that quiet students participate, I get input and feedback from every student in the classroom, and there is increased classroom participation and attentiveness. To see <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">OTAN's teacher training video on audience response systems, visit the OTAN Web site at http://www.otan.us/ and choose Education Technology and Media -- Video Gallery -- Technology Integration Videos or see the video on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/arsesl. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">