Using Informal Assessments for English Language Learners

Informal assessments (also called authentic or alternative) allow teachers to track the ongoing progress of their students regularly and often. While standardized tests measure students at a particular point in the year, ongoing assessments provide continual snapshots of where students are throughout the school year. By using informal assessments, teachers can target students' specific problem areas, adapt instruction, and intervene earlier rather than later.

Ongoing assessments are particularly important for English language learners (ELLs). Standardized tests in English do not usually reflect ELLs' true content knowledge or abilities. Yet informal assessments can provide a more well-rounded picture of their skills, abilities, and ongoing progress. Today's No Child Left Behind legislation requires that meticulous records be kept on the progress of ELLs. Having these records will make it easier when questions of program placement, special services, and grading arise.

There are two commonly used informal methods: performance-based assessment and portfolio assessment. Both methods utilize typical classroom activities to measure progress toward curricular goals and objectives. These activities can be monitored and recorded by teacher observation and student self-assessment.

Performance-Based Assessments

Performance-based assessments are based on classroom instruction and everyday tasks. You can use performance-based assessments to assess ELLs' language proficiency and academic achievement through oral reports, presentations, demonstrations, written assignments, and portfolios.

These assessments can include both processes (e.g., several drafts of a writing sample) and products (e.g., team projects). You can use scoring rubrics and observation checklists to evaluate and grade your students. These assessment tools can help document your ELLs' growth over a period of time.

A language and academic assessment form can be completed on a monthly basis to learn about the overall academic and English proficiency progress of your ELLs. If there is an ESL or resource teacher at school assisting your ELLs, you can share this assessment of the ELL's progress during the past month.

When using performance-based assessments, it is important to establish clear and fair criteria from the beginning. It might be helpful to develop these criteria in conjunction with other teachers or specialists at your school. Performance-based assessments promote a wide range of responses and do not typically produce one single, correct answer. Therefore, evaluation of student performances and products must be based on teacher judgment, using the criteria specified for each task. For instance, an oral scoring rubric is very useful for this type of assessment.

You can also develop assessment (and instructional) activities that are geared to your ELLs' current level of English proficiency. Performance-based assessment activities can concentrate on oral communication and/or reading. Here are examples of commonly-used activity types designed for assessing speaking or reading:

1. Reading with partners
2. Retelling stories
3. Role-playing
4. Giving descriptions or instructions using visual or written prompts
5. Oral reporting to the whole class
6. Telling a story by using a sequence of three or more pictures
7. Completing dialogue or conversation through written prompts
8. Debating, either one-on-one or taking turns in small groups
9. Brainstorming
10. Completing incomplete stories
11. Playing games

When using performance-based assessments with beginner and intermediate English proficiency level ELLs, it is best to assess no more than three items at a time. For example, in one role-play activity, you might assess ELLs' abilities to:

1. Respond to "what" and "where" questions
2. Ask for or respond to clarification
3. Read addresses or telephone numbers

Portfolio Assessments

Portfolios are practical ways of assessing student work throughout the entire year. With this method, you can systematically collect descriptive records of a variety of student work over time that reflects growth toward the achievement of specific curricular objectives. Portfolios include information, sample work, and evaluations that serve as indicators of student performance. By documenting student performance over time, portfolios are a better way to crosscheck student progress than just one measure alone. Portfolios can include:

1. Samples of written student work, such as stories, completed forms, exercise sheets, and descriptions
2. Drawings representing student content knowledge and proficiencies
3. Tapes of oral work, such as role-playing, presentations, or an oral account of a trip
4. Teacher descriptions of student accomplishments, such as performance on oral tasks
5. Formal test data, checklists, and rating sheets

Checklists or summary sheets of tasks and performances in the student's portfolio can help you make instructional decisions and report consistently and reliably. Checklists can also help you collect the same kind of data for each student. In this way, you can assess both the progress of one student and of the class as a whole. A math development checklist is an example of how you can organize your data collection for each ELL.

In addition, here are a few ways that your ELLs can have an active role in the portfolio process:

1. Students can select samples of their work and reflect on their own growth over time.
2. You can meet with ELLs to develop their goals and standards, such as with a writing criteria chart.
3. Together with students, you can set tangible, realistic improvement goals for future projects.
4. Students – as a class, in groups, or individually – can create their own rubrics.

7 Mindful Assessment Tools

First of all, we need to understand that it is the learner, and not the teacher, who creates learning. As teachers, it’s our responsibility to learn how to guide that learning by responding proactively to student performance. We do this by using mindful assessment practices, being present for our students and aware of what’s happening with them, and using simple mindful assessment tools to provide avenues for them to grow as they learn.

Teachers are always looking for ways to check for understanding, which we practice through applying mindful assessment. Mindful assessment tools come in many shapes and sizes. They can be quick and light or more in-depth. In the end, assessment can happen anytime in any classroom. The following 7 mindful assessment tools and best practices are quick and easy applications for anytime/anywhere assessment.

7 Mindful Assessment Tools

1. Quick Summaries

Students can be asked to summarize important lessons or concepts. You can even add a summary challenge using social media. Have them Tweet their summaries, for example; the challenge there is that the limit is 140 characters. Students must be concise and brief with their entries.

2. Open-Ended Questions

These are content questions that really get students thinking about what they’ve learned. They can chat about or write their responses. Try not to use closed questions like, “Did this make sense to you?” Instead, give students a chance to really think about the learning that took place.

3. Student Interviews

This is similar to Think-Pair-Share and happens at the end of the class. Groups of 2 or 3 students take a few minutes at the end of class to discuss what they’ve learned. Each student takes a turn interviewing the other. You can give them guiding questions like:

1. What was the most useful thing you learned?
2. What did you struggle most with?
3. What will you ask for help with next class?
4. What can you do to help somebody else learn better?
5. What’s your learning goal for next class?

4. Daily Learning Journals

This is a daily brief reflection exercise. It lets students privatize their experiences in their own words on a personal level. As far as assessment tools go, this is one that some students may resist. Some may not enjoy writing daily reflections. If so, offer up some alternatives.They could do it using screencasting or simple audio recording if they wish. Younger students can create vision boards or collages, relating imagery to what they’ve learned. They may also choose to share their excerpts on a class blog or web page. This is a great classroom community-building exercise.

1. they could do it using screencasting or simple audio recording
2. younger students can create vision boards or collages, relating imagery to what they’ve learned
3. let them share their excerpts on a class blog or web page

5. Peer Teaching

Assessment tools used by other students are a great way to check for understanding. You know students have truly learned a concept when they can teach it to other students. This can be done in groups of 2 or 3, but that’s a recommended limit. Bigger groups require the kind of attention-wrangling skills students don’t yet possess.

6. Quick-Draw Showdown

This one is a fun competitive exercise. Square two students off against each other, and have them quickly write down a sentence or draw a quick sketch of a learning concept. It works better if they are both using the same thing. When you say “Go!” the fun begins. The first one to finish wins the quick draw.

7. Self-Grading

Students can use this one to grade their own progress. Have them give themselves a grade on the material covered. They must then explain why they feel they’ve earned that grade.

Thinking About Thinking

What is Cognition?

Cognition is generally thought of as your ability to process information. As related to culture, you can think about it as the complete knowledge and experience you have gained about cultural situations and your interactions within those situations. Additionally, how you have thought or processed this information is stored in your memory. Your ability to retrieve this stored information is defined as cognitive ability.

What is Metacognition?

Metacognition refers to “thinking about thinking” and was introduced as a concept in by John Flavell, who is typically seen as a founding scholar of the field. Flavell said that metacognition is the knowledge you have of your own cognitive processes (your thinking).Flavell (1979). It is your ability to control your thinking processes through various strategies, such as organizing, monitoring, and adapting. Additionally, it is your ability to reflect upon the tasks or processes you undertake and to select and utilize the appropriate strategies necessary in your intercultural interactions.

Metacognition is considered a critical component of successful learning. It involves self-regulation and self-reflection of strengths, weaknesses, and the types of strategies you create. It is a necessary foundation in culturally intelligent leadership because it underlines how you think through a problem or situation and the strategies you create to address the situation or problem.

Metacognition is broken down into three components: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experience, and metacognitive strategies.

Metacognitive Knowledge

Metacognitive knowledge involves (a) learning processes and your beliefs about how you learn and how you think others learn, (b) the task of learning and how you process information, and (c) the strategies you develop and when you will use them. Let us say you have to learn a new language in 6 months. Here is how you would think about it, using metacognitive knowledge:

Learning Process: I am good at learning new languages and I think I can do this in the time period I have been given.

Task of Learning: To complete this task, I will need to think about the following:

1. How soon can I get information to start learning the language?
2. How long will it take me to learn the language?
3. What information is available to me to learn this new language?
4. Is this language similar to a language I have learned before?
5. Will I be able to learn the language in time?
6. How hard will it be for me to learn this language?
7. What do I need to do to learn the language?

The Strategies: I think learning this new language is going to take me 12 months, but I only have 6 months to prepare. I better find other ways to me meet this goal. I think I will find out if there is an accelerated language class that I can take. Maybe I should consider hiring a private tutor, or maybe I will just focus on learning the basics of the language.

Metacognitive Experience

Arnold Bennett, a British writer, said that one cannot have knowledge without having emotions.Bennett (1933). In metacognition, there are feelings and emotions present that are related to the goals and tasks of learning. These components of metacognition speak to metacognitive experience, which is your internal response to learning. Your feelings and emotions serve as a feedback system to help you understand your progress and expectations, and your comprehension and connection of new information to the old, among other things.

When you learn a new language, for example, you may recall memories, information, and earlier experiences in your life to help you solve the task of learning a new language. In doing this, your internal responses (metacognitive experience) could be frustration, disappointment, happiness, or satisfaction. Each of these internal responses can affect the task of learning a new language and determine your willingness to continue. Critical to metacognition is the ability to deliberately foster a positive attitude and positive feelings toward your learning.

Metacognitive Strategies

Metacognitive strategies are what you design to monitor your progress related to your learning and the tasks at hand. It is a mechanism for controlling your thinking activities and to ensure you are meeting your goals. Metacognitive strategies for learning a new language can include the following:

1. monitoring whether you understand the language lessons;
2. recognizing when you fail to comprehend information communicated to you in the new language;
3. identifying strategies that help you to improve your comprehension;
4. adjusting your pace for learning the information (for example, studying for 2 hours, rather than 1 hour, every day);
5. maintaining the attitude necessary to ensure you complete the lessons in a timely manner;
6. creating a check-in system at the end of each week to make certain you understand what you have learned.

Differences between Testing, Assessment, and Evaluation

What Do We Mean by Testing, Assessment, and Evaluation?

When defined within an educational setting, assessment, evaluation, and testing are all used to measure how much of the assigned materials students are mastering, how well students are learning the materials, and how well students are meeting the stated goals and objectives. Although you may believe that assessments only provide instructors with information on which to base a score or grade, assessments also help you to assess your own learning.

Education professionals make distinctions between assessment, evaluation, and testing. However, for the purposes of this tutorial, all you really need to understand is that these are three different terms for referring to the process of figuring out how much you know about a given topic and that each term has a different meaning. To simplify things, we will use the term "assessment" throughout this tutorial to refer to this process of measuring what you know and have learned.

In case you are curious, here are some definitions:

A test or quiz is used to examine someone's knowledge of something to determine what he or she knows or has learned. Testing measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached.

Evaluation is the process of making judgments based on criteria and evidence.

Assessment is the process of documenting knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs, usually in measurable terms. The goal of assessment is to make improvements, as opposed to simply being judged. In an educational context, assessment is the process of describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about learning.

Why is Assessment Important?

Hopefully, by this point in your life, you have discovered that learning can be fun! You have probably also realized that you are constantly learning, whether you are in a classroom, a car, or a kitchen.

Assessment helps you build confidence in your ability to learn.

Perhaps you have heard that the global work culture is changing. Unlike your grandfather, you will probably have a number of different jobs and careers during your lifetime. In order to be successful, you will need to have confidence in your ability to learn and you will need to become a lifelong learner. Assessment plays a key role in developing your confidence in your ability to learn, as well as in developing your lifelong learning skills.

You may be thinking that learning to bake cookies and learning something like chemistry aren't the same at all, and, in a way, you are right. But, the information you get from assessing what you have learned is the same. Brian used what he learned from each batch of cookies to improve the next batch. You learn from every homework assignment you complete and every quiz you take what you still need to study in order to know the material.

Another really good way to understand the importance of assessment is to think about learning skills. When playing basketball, for example, you get immediate feedback about how well you are doing, and this tells you how to adjust to get the ball in the hoop next time. When you are learning a skill, feedback (assessment) is automatic. When you are learning chemistry, the feedback process needs to be made visible through assessment.

Assessment doesn't have to be a written exam. You can determine if you have successfully learned something in a number of different ways, depending on what you are trying to learn. Recognizing that there are many different ways to assess learning and becoming skillful at self-assessment are important lifelong learning skills.

Six Thinking Hats

WHAT IT IS?

The Six Thinking Hats tool is a powerful technique used to look at decisions from different points of view. This helps us move away from habitual thinking styles and towards a more rounded view of a situation.
There are six different imaginary hats that you can put on or take off. Each hat is a different color and represents a different style of thinking. When we change hats, we change our thinking.

THE PROCESS

You can use Six Thinking Hats on your own or in meetings, where it can minimize the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem. Each hat represents a different style of thinking:

BENEFITS

The main benefits of the Six Thinking Hats method are the following:

1. allows you to say things without risk; 
2. generates understanding that there are multiple perspectives on an issue; 
3. is a convenient mechanism for “switching gears”; 
4. focuses thinking; leads to more creative thinking; 
5. improves communication; and 
6. improves decision-making.

KEY POINTS AND PRACTICAL TIPS

This technique allows the necessary emotion and skepticism to be brought into what would otherwise be purely rational decisions, thus opening up an opportunity for creativity within decision-making. It also helps, for example, persistently pessimistic people to be positive and creative.

Plans developed using the Six Thinking Hats technique will be sounder and more resilient than would otherwise be the case. It may also help you to avoid public relations mistakes, and spot good reasons not to follow a course of action before you have committed to it.

In a Six Thinking Hats session the facilitator must:

1. define the focus of your thinking; 
2. plan the sequence and timing of the thinking; 
3. ask for changes in the thinking if needed; 
4. handle requests from the group for changes in the thinking; and 
5. capture periodic or final summaries of the thinking for consideration by the team.

Student-Centered Learning: Essential Conditions

Planning, teaching and assessment centers around the needs and abilities of students  

What is it? 

Student-centered learning moves students from passive receivers of information to active participants in their own discovery process. What students learn, how they learn it and how their learning is assessed are all driven by each individual student’s needs and abilities. 

At the system level, this requires implementing curriculum planning practices, pedagogy and assessment methods that support a student-centric approach. In the classroom, teachers craft instruction and apply technology in a way that best serves each student’s learning journey. Technology use is always guided by two primary criteria: 

What’s appropriate for the task at hand? 

How can activities be designed to develop higher-order thinking skills? 

Why is it important? 

When students take responsibility for their own learning, they become explorers capable of leveraging their curiosity to solve real-world problems. To that end, the ISTE Standards guide teachers toward designing learning experiences that permit student independence and foster lifelong learning. 

Technology allows for an unprecedented level of personalized learning, with valuable opportunities to monitor progress and engagement, follow student thinking, and digitally assess competencies. When schools effectively leverage both technology and pedagogy, both students and teachers become empowered to make decisions about their own learning and teaching. 

True student-centered learning requires more than just an increase in technology implementation. It represents a shift in the educational culture toward a system that supports technology for standards-based learning and real-world problem-solving. As a system transitions to a student-centered approach, educators can more effectively apply technology to improve learning outcomes and help students develop the skills for college and career readiness.

What does it look like? 

Successful student-centered teaching emphasizes both creative and effective use of technology to meet students’ learning goals. Teachers address content standards in ways that not only support the material but also help students develop the essential digital skills outlined in the ISTE Standards.

When evaluating how student-centered learning is incorporated into a school or district, it is critical to assess the extent to which:

Technology-powered pedagogy is applied 

Technology is used to increase access and differentiate teaching approaches 

Teachers know how to differentiate their teaching using technology