Tag Archives: authentic assessment

Journal Writing

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A journal is a log that a student uses to record their thoughts about something. This post will provide examples of journals as well as guidelines for using journals in the classroom.

Types of Journals

There are many different types of journals. Normally, all journals have some sort of dialog happening between the student and the teacher. This allows both parties to get to know each other better.

Normally, journals will have a theme or focus. Examples in TESOL would include journals that focus on grammar, learning strategies, language-learning, or recording feelings. Most journals will focus on one of these to the exclusion of the others.

Guidelines for Using Journals

Journals can be useful if they are properly planned. As such, a teacher should consider the following when using journals.

  1. Provide purpose-Students need to know why they are writing journals. Most students seem to despise reflection and will initially reject this learning experience
  2. Forget grammar-Journals are for writing. Students need to set aside the obsession they have acquired for perfect grammar and focus on developing their thoughts about something. There is a time and place for grammar and that is for summative assessments such as final drafts of research papers.
  3. Explain the grading process-Students need to know what they must demonstrate in order to receive adequate credit.
  4. Provide feedback-Journals are a dialog. As such, the feedback should encourage and or instruct the students.  The feedback should also be provided consistently at scheduled intervals.

Journals take a lot of time to read and provide feedback too. In addition, the handwriting quality of students can vary radically which means that some students journals are unreadable.

Conclusion

Journaling is an experience that allows students to focus on the process of learning rather than the product. This is often neglected in the school experience. Through journals, students are able to focus on the development of ideas without wasting working memory capacity on grammar and syntax. As such, journals can be a powerful in developing critical thinking skills.

Cradle Approach to Portfolio Development

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Portfolio development is one of many forms of alternative assessment available to teachers. When this approach is used, generally the students collected their work and try to make sense of it through reflection.

It is surprisingly easy for portfolio development to amount to nothing more than archiving work. However, the CRADLE approach was developed by Gottlieb to alleviate potential confusion over this process. CRADLE stands for the following

C ollecting
R eflecting
A ssessing
D ocumenting
L inking
E valuating

Collecting

Collecting is the process in which the students gather materials to include in their portfolio. It is left to the students to decide what to include. However, it is still necessary for the teacher to provide clear guidelines in terms of what can be potentially selected.

Clear guidelines include stating the objectives as well as explaining how the portfolio will be assessed. It is also important to set aside class time for portfolio development.

Some examples of work that can be included in a portfolio include the following.

  • tests, quizzes
  • compositions
  • electronic documents (powerpoints, pdfs, etc)

Reflecting

Reflecting happens through the student thinking about the work they have placed in the portfolio. This can be demonstrated many different ways. Common ways to reflect include the use of journals in which students comment on their work. Another way for young students is the use of checklist.

Another way for young students is the use of a checklist. Students simply check the characteristics that are present in their work. As such, the teacher’s role is to provide class time so that students are able to reflect on their work.

Assessing

Assessing involves checking and maintaining the quality of the portfolio over time. Normally, there should a gradual improvement in work quality in a portfolio. This is a subjective matter that is negotiated by the student and teacher often in the form of conferences.

Documenting

Documenting serves more as a reminder than an action. Simply, documenting means that the teacher and student maintain the importance of the portfolio over the course of its usefulness. This is critical as it is easy to forget about portfolios through the pressure of the daily teaching experience.

Linking

Linking is the use of a portfolio to serve as a mode of communication between students, peers, teachers, and even parents. Students can look at each other portfolios and provide feedback. Parents can also examine the work of their child through the use of portfolios.

Evaluating

Evaluating is the process of receiving a grade for this experience. For the teacher, the goal is to provide positive washback when assessing the portfolios. The focus is normally less on grades and more qualitative in nature.

Conclusions

Portfolios provide rich opportunities for developing intrinsic motivation, individualize learning, and critical thinking. However, the trying to affix a grade to such a learning experience is often impractical. As such, portfolios are useful but it can be hard to prove that any learning took place.

Authentic Listening Tasks

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There are many different ways in which a teacher can assess the listening skills of their students. Recognition, paraphrasing, cloze tasks, transfer, etc. are all ways to determine a student’s listening proficiency.

One criticism of the task above is that they are primarily inauthentic. This means that they do not strongly reflect something that happens in the real world.

In response to this, several authentic listening assessments have been developed over the years. These authentic listening assessments include the following.

  • Editing
  • Note-taking
  • Retelling
  • Interpretation

This post will each of the authentic listening assessments listed above.

Editing

An editing task that involves listening involves the student receiving reading material. The student reviews the reading material and then listens to a recording of someone reading aloud the same material. The student then marks the hard copy they have when there are differences between the reading and what the recording is saying.

Such an assessment requires the student to carefully for discrepancies between the reading material and the recording. This requires strong reading abilities and phonological knowledge.

Note-Taking

For those who are developing language skills for academic reasons. Note-taking is a highly authentic form of assessment. In this approach, the students listen to some type of lecture and attempt to write down what they believe is important from the lecture.

The students are then assessed by on some sort of rubric/criteria developed by the teacher. As such, marking note-taking can be highly subjective. However, the authenticity of note-taking can make it a valuable learning experience even if providing a grade is difficult.

Retelling

How retelling works should be somewhat obvious. The student listens to some form of talk. After listening, the student needs to retell or summarize what they heard.

Assessing the accuracy of the retelling has the same challenges as the note-taking assessment. However, it may be better to use retelling to encourage learning rather than provide evidence of the mastery of a skill.

Interpretation

Interpretation involves the students listening to some sort of input. After listening, the student then needs to infer the meaning of what they heard. The input can be a song, poem, news report, etc.

For example, if the student listens to a song they may be asked to explain why the singer was happy or sad depending on the context of the song. Naturally, they cannot hope to answer such a question unless they understood what they were listening too.

Conclusion

Listening does not need to be artificial. There are several ways to make learning task authentic. The examples in this post are just some of the potential ways

Portfolio Assessment

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One type of assessment that has been popular a long time is the portfolio. A portfolio is usually a collection of student work over a period of time. There are five common steps to developing student portfolios. These steps are

  1. Determine the purpose of the portfolio.
  2. Identify evidence of skill mastery to be in the portfolio.
  3. Decide who will develop the portfolio.
  4. Pick evidence to place in portfolio
  5. Create portfolio rubric

1. Determine the Purpose of the Portfolio

The student needs to understand the point of the portfolio experience. This helps in creating relevance for the student as well as enhancing the authenticity of the experience. Common reasons for developing portfolios include the following…

  • assessing progress
  • assigning grade
  • communicating with parents

2. Identify Evidence of Skill Mastery

The teacher and the students need to determine what skills will the portfolio provide evidence for. Common skills that portfolios provide evidence for are the following

  • Complex thinking processes-The use of information such as essays
  • Products-Development of drawings, graphs, songs,
  • Social skills-Evidence of group work

3. Who will Develop the Portfolio

This step has to do with deciding on who will set the course for the overall development of the portfolio. At times, it is the student who has complete authority to determine what to include in a portfolio. At other times, it is the student and the teacher working together. Sometimes, even parents provide input into this process.

4. Pick the Evidence for the Portfolio

The evidence provides must support the skills mention in step two. Depending on who has the power to select evidence, they still may need support in determining if the evidence they selected is appropriate. Regardless, of the requirement, the student needs a sense of ownership in the portfolio.

5. Develop Portfolio Rubric

The teacher needs to develop a rubric for the purpose of grading the student. The teacher needs to explain what they want to see as well as what the various degrees of quality are.

Conclusion

Portfolios are a useful tool for helping students in assessing their own work. Such a project helps in developing a deeper understanding of what is happening in the classroom. Teachers need to determine for themselves when portfolios are appropriate for their students.