Over my practicum experience my perceptions and pre-conceived notions regarding ELL assessment changed drastically. I went into my practicum believing that I would be able to adjust my assessment of my ELL students, which turned out to not be an option. Instead, I focused on changing and adapting assignments and class work so that the process of learning itself was being adapted instead of the grading on the final product. Yes, this decision created more work for me as the teacher, however the assessment portion was a lot easier in the long-run.
Experience 1: Short Story Unit Assessment
During my practicum I taught a class of grade tens, including six English language learners. In this group, four out of the six had very low level English language abilities. I knew the ELL students were struggling because of my summative assessment during class discussions, group/partner work, and exit slips. I was required to give the class an essay as my formative assessment, however, I wanted to create a project that the ELL students could engage more easily with. I decided to create a poster project surrounding the units theme of identity. Each student was to pick a character from one of the short stories and analyze the characters identity. Students would collect images that depict the characters identity (from the web, magazines, newspaper etc.) and create a collage. They also needed to pick ten quotes that best exemplified the character and ad these to the collage. On the other side of the poster, students created a collage of images that best depict their own personal identity, with a little write up describing three images in the middle. The outcome from this project was incredible as the ELL students were engaged and seemingly had fun creating their posters. The project obviously demanded some level of comprehension from the stories read in class, but the students choice of picking a character and the personal collage side made the project more free in terms of expression and less demanding/ridged then the in class essay.
Below is the project instructions handout:
Story Quilt Project
Theme: Identity through images.
The story quilt will be a double-sided poster board. One side will represent the identity of one of the characters from our short story unit. The other side will represent your personal identity.
SIDE 1: SHORT STORY CHARACTER IDENTITY
Step 1- Choose a main character from one of the short stories we have read in this unit.
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut (Harrison or his father)
“Borders” by Thomas King (the narrator or his mother)
“Mirror Image” By Lena Coakley (Alice)
“Blue Boots” By Carol Newhouse
Step 2- Think about the characters identity and identity struggles in the story. You can begin with simple identity images such as their physical identity that the author describes in the story. Write down key words/phrases that describe the characters identity. Example from “Borders”; woman, mother, Aboriginal, Blackfoot, strong, empowered, culture (for the narrator’s mother).
Step 3- Search for images that represent the recorded words from step two. Keep in mind the characters identity and the struggles they face in regards to their identity. Images can be printed off of online, taken from magazines, newspapers, or drawn by hand. BE CREATIVE!
Step 4- Once you have collected the images you can start creating your collage. The center of the poster should have the character’s name. Below is an image of what a typical collage looks like.
Step 5- Keeping your character and their identity in mind, find six quotes from the story that represent their identity and the images you have found. These quotes will also be printed off and put onto your poster. Make sure to include the page number with the quotes.
SIDE 2: PERSONAL IDENTITY
Think about your own identity and consider the following questions… Who are you? What defines you? How do you express your identity on a daily basis? How does our identity affect our lives?
Follow the same steps as before. Find images (online, magazine, newspapers, hand drawn) and create a collage on side 2 of the poster. You may also include words/phrases that support your identity. Please include your name in the “identity box” in the center of the collage.
Personal Identity Box.
-approximately 150 words.
-pick three images in your collage and describe why these relate to your identity.
TOTAL PROJECT /20
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Experience 2: self-assessing
Something that I tried to do often during my practicum was having my students self-assess. Not only does this give them a chance to reflect back on their work, but it also gives them a chance to critically analyze what they are turning in to be graded. From my experience, self assessment with ELL’s (and non-ELL’s) can often be in-effective unless there are strict guidelines and guiding questions given to them prior. Simply asking a student what grade they think they deserve is ineffective. Instead, I try to ask leading questions such as…
What part of this assignment did you find the hardest?
What part of the assignment are you most proud of?
What makes your assignment/paper stand out from the rest of the class?
I often found that the ELL students liked to assess themselves as they were able to point out to me their favorite parts of the assignment/paper, which were usually the parts they understood the best. This also mapped out for me their areas of deficiency and where I needed to focus my teaching on.
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Experience 3: Group work
As daunting as it may sound, group work has effectively elevated my ELL students learning. I strategically would split up my ELL students between groups so that they were surrounding by mostly non-ELL students. Out of their comfort zone, the ELL students did need extra attention from me as I supervised the group work. This extra attention included me prompting them to answer questions, asking questions to the group members (including ELL’s), and having each group member assigned to a role so that each student was accountable for engaging and producing knowledge. What I found was that the non-ELL students were very supportive and encouraging of the ELL’s, which in turn built the ELL students confidence in the classroom.
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Experience 4: Building Rubrics
While designing my rubrics for essays and projects I try to be as flexible as possible to allow for success. For example, one rubric I created for my grade ten blog posts assessed the students conventions and style of writing as well as their ideas. Both side of the rubric were worth an equal amount of points, therefore, if an ELL students grammar was lacking yet they had some strong ideas, their grade was reflective of this.
Rubric for Content
Includes; purpose, understanding of the topic, development, support, text features
Rubric for Conventions and Style
Includes; spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, usage, voice and tone, syntax, word choice, clarity, and conciseness.
