assessment portfolio

http://sites.google.com/site/assessmentportfolioproject/

Okay this is the right site for my assessment protfolio.

Butler & Stevens

Standardized Assessment of Content Knowledge of ELL K-12, Butler & Stevens

The article states that the number of ESL students is increasing each year for grades k through 12. The students continue to take tests that are normed for English first language speakers, which makes it difficult for ELL students. If ELL students are excluded from tests they would not be represented, meaning needs will not be met for ELL students.

The article covered three ways ELL learners can be included in standardized tests. The first is testing in the first language. The tests are translated, and the translations have to compare to that of English academic language. The problem with that is that not all ELL students are literate in their first language, and if a test were translated in one language, other languages would be excluded. The second is that accommodations are made for ELL students (given extra time, a quiet place provided, use of dictionaries). The problem with accommodations is that results show no significant improvement in content area assessments, and also that accommodations made for one level may not be appropriate for other levels of ESL students. The third is one that seems to make more sense, and that is measuring growth in English. Students are assessed in ELD tests to measure growth in English as an additional or supplemental assessment. This measurement provides accountability for ELL students and gives students practice in taking standardized tests. If I’m not mistaken researches are continuing to be conducted that will benefit the ESL students.

Ch 6 Writing Assessment

Chapter 6 Writing assessment

What I got out of this chapter is that writing is “a personal act” where writers pick a topic, draw on their background knowledge, and conform it to their own style of writing. Another interesting point was teaching the process of writing and not concentrating on the product of writing. The process includes prewriting maybe using a graphic organizer, writing, and post writing where students share their writing with their peers. The process also involves conferencing with the teacher to talk about what process was used in writing, and also getting peer feedback.

Another point the chapter made was that writing across the curriculum allows students to write for a variety of purposes, and in the process students write to learn. This reminded me of how I used to study for exams in college. I found that I was able to retain more by writing and rewriting information I needed to remember for exams.

There is a student checklist that I would like to try for kindergarten. I think the checklist would include:
• Did you pick out a scene to draw about?
• Did you draw your story for the reader?
• Did you add details so the reader will know what your story is?
• Did you label your story using beginning sounds?

There are some really good checklists and rubrics that we can use for writing assessments. There’s the holistic scoring rubric where the paper is looked at as a whole and given one score. The primary traits, like the 6 + 1 traits, looks to see if there is evidence certain traits (idea, organization, sentence fluency), and the analytic scoring rubric where the paper is given several scores on different components of writing. The one I created is based on a holistic scoring rubric. The Process Writing Checklist is a good way to keep track of what writing process to cover in class. The chapter suggests that to find out what writing process to put in the checklist we should observe students as they write, see what is covered during conferencing, and to get a collection of student work. Figure 6.6 is a good way to see how students feel about writing, and what interests they like to write about, and figure 6.7 is a self-assessment on writing strategies. I am thinking this self-assessment would go nicely with the Talking, Drawing, Writing book for primary grades.

These are all very good points, but I have one question that keeps nagging at me for quite sometime now: what about the kindergarten students who are just about to acquire a second language? What worked for me in the past is to pick a topic (something the students will want to write about) and have students tell their story about it. I always start out by saying the topic in Yugtun, and when students want to share I make them repeat the topic first before they tell their story in their first language. Then I would translate and I have the student repeat the sentence several times before going off to draw the story. My only problem with that is students (always 1 or 2) who will copy their neighbors, or they would repeat one story each day, which I found (according to Horn and Giacobbe) is common for students who aren’t sure of their abilities.

Reading Assessment & Instruction

Chapter 10, Reading Assessment & Instruction, Peregoy & O. Boyle

This chapter is mainly of students in the elementary grades who are English language learners. There are three things to know about ELL students: 1) knowing student’s life experiences, interests, and aspirations is to use student’s prior knowledge to give him/her a purpose or motivation to read. 2) language knowledge, or how well they know their second language, 3) prior literacy experiences in their primary language means that knowledge of strategies can transfer over to their second language.

For the primary grades, especially kindergarten level, their experience with text varies. Students who have been read to at home, who have exposure to variety of print come to school with knowledge of concept of print (reading left to right, top to bottom, opening the page, title and author). Another assessment we give out is to see how many reading strategies they know (do they look to the illustrations to get meaning? Are they able to predict what will happen next? And how many letters do they know?). Students who have funds of knowledge about print usually get the Yugtun concepts right away.

One procedure I found interesting in the reading is on echo reading. In echo reading students are assessed to see if they are able to repeat what the teacher said. If they have difficulty repeating word for word, then the students will probably have difficulty with the book which the phrase or sentence was taken from. Another procedure I liked was the ReQuest where the students ask a question and the teacher answers the question and then asks another question. This is done after reading a passage. For younger kids the teacher says the answer and has the students ask the question for it. The purpose of the activity is to be able to question while developing student’s comprehension. I noticed that in kindergarten students tend to say a statement when someone asks, “do you have a question?” I often wonder if that is part of developmental process. Is it too early to teach students to ask questions in kindergarten?

Reading Assessment

Reading Assessment, Ch. 5, O’Malley & Pierce

What I got out of the chapter is that reading for English language learners should include: large quantity of reading, time in class for reading, appropriate materials that encourage students to read, teaching reading strategies, materials & reading strategies matched to student level of interest and language. Reading should also be holistic not skill based, it should tap into students’ prior knowledge and experience, focus on comprehension while teaching reading skills, and allow time for collaboration among students. Discussing reading materials allows students to develop language skills.

There is another book that I’m reading (and I wish I had read it before school began) called Talking, Drawing, Writing Lessons For Our Youngest Writers, by Martha Horn & Mary Ellen Giacobbe. It is about a group of teachers who teach writing to kindergarten students by beginning with storytelling. From storytelling students move onto drawing, and by drawing they learn to draw their stories in detail (drawing to the reader). The teachers say that the more students are detailed in their storytelling, the more detailed they are in their drawing. And the more detailed they are in their drawing the more writing they produce when they learn to form words. This makes sense because as little kids are telling their stories they are practicing their language skills, which transfers to their drawing don’t you think?

I noticed as I’m concentrating on comprehension how hard it is to get across questions (who, what, where, when) to second language learners. The simplest question students can answer is what is this and who is this, but most still don’t get, “who/what is in the book”. I’m starting to wonder if we failed the previous kindergarten students by not teaching them to answer those questions. Before I used to notice 1st and 2nd grade students answer “I’m fine” when I would ask, “what are you doing?”

Disproportionate Representation

Disproportionate Representation of Diverse Students in Special Education

The chapter spat out some numbers of minority groups who were identified as needing Special Education Services which was quite depressing. More minority groups were labeled as mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, and learning disabled. There is little data on LEP students, but the data that came from Texas showed that a small percentage were LEP. But district wide the numbers increase. What I found interesting is that the criteria for receiving special education services differs in each state, so the same child that was identified as LD may not qualify for services in another state.

Was the latest information from 2002? and the book was published in 2005. The chapter starts out saying that the controversy first came about in 1968. Was there anything done to fix the problem after that?

Dynamic Assessment

Dynamic Assessment in the Language Classroom, Poehner & Lantolf

These are some of the things that I got out of the article:

Formative Assessment (FA):
- helps in teach planning and management
- provides evidence of student learning
- shows where student and teacher are in curriculum
- provides evidence of self-evaluation of teaching
- Shows what student still need to know
- Informal, hit or miss. May over or underestimate student ability

Dynamic Assessment (DA)
- Came from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
- Cannot separate assessment and instruction
- Mediation focuses on meaning for development
- Mediation is intervention after assessment? And it is ongoing.

The article gave a lot of information about DA, and I’m really interested to see how it can fit into our kindergarten grades. Also, is mediation given individually? Sounds like it.