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Comprehension Checks

by Scotton Tuesday, May 21, 2013 in articles with no comments
Comprehension Checks @ teachforjune.com
 

We all know how important comprehension checks are as we are teaching. Without them, we lose guidance on how our lesson is going. Are we going to fast? Are we going too slow? Which students are with us? And which students are lost?

And I know that a lot of you also do end-of-lesson comprehension checks. I know I’ve implemented in the past “DEDOS!” where students show their hands using their fingers to indicate how much they understood the lesson–10 fingers means 100% comprehension, 6 fingers, 60% comprehension, etc. However, for me with 40+ students in the classroom, it’s difficult to gauge individual comprehension-levels. I can get an idea for the class as a whole, but identifying individuals who may need additional assistance, it’s quite difficult. Plus, we all know that students lie. Not that they want to deceive us, but they may be embarrassed about their performance level and don’t want to be singled out among their peers.

To address this problem, I’ve come up with my Comprehension-check papers–an integral part of our new Immediate Immersion Curriculum. The idea behind this paper is that students can answer honestly and privately, and it’s a record of comprehension for each student over a period of time which makes it easier to identify any issues that may come up.

Each student is handed out one of these sheets. They will keep each sheet for the entire semester. On the front is each week with a spot for the student to write the number 0-10 for each day to indicate their level of comprehension with a larger space for them to write a question or comment. On the back, there’s more room for questions and comments.

The teacher then collects this sheet on a daily or weekly basis, responds to any comments or questions, and makes note of any trends. Are students understanding the lessons? Which students are having difficulties? Was there a particular day where there were more issues than normal? Which lessons did all the students understand? Which ones were more problematic? Etc. There’s a lot of information that can be gleaned from the sheets and what’s best of all, there’s a paper trail of evidence for yourself, for parents, for administrators.

Can students still lie on their sheets? Of course they can. But if they know the importance of these sheets, how you use them–not for a grade, but to help teach them better, and that they are confidential, they are less likely to.

After implementing this just this year, I have found that I’m getting a better feel for the pulse of comprehension and learning in my classroom and I’ve been able to make the appropriate adjustments to my teaching to adapt to the students in front of me each day. Yes, I also got a lot of this information from formative assessments–both observed and paper-and-pencil, but with comprehension checks, I got a little closer to the students point-of-view and a new vantage point.

Along with traditional assessments, these comprehension-check papers have added tremendously to my assessment arsenal.

Download Comprehension-Check Papers

 

How to Assess Writing Effectively

by Scotton Friday, March 22, 2013 in articles
All rights reserved by goldenfeld
 

For me, assessing anything boils down to “what can a student DO with what they know?” with the emphasis on DO. So effort and the like has no bearing. I appreciate it, but think about it in real-life terms. Someone can put a lot of effort into something, but the end result is still not good. We are measured on end results. It doesn’t matter how much time and effort you put into your lesson plans. If that effort and time doesn’t translate to a successful lesson with students, then the effort and time doesn’t matter. Truly, if one puts effort and time into something, it usually will show up in the results, but we cannot reward just for effort itself. Now I don’t say this to discourage students or anyone else for that matter, but the goal of my classroom is to get students to USE the language and become ever increasingly more proficient at it. By giving them grades for effort, I’m not really promoting my classroom goals.

Another way to look at it. How can you quantify effort consistently, evenly among all teachers, all levels, all schools, all districts, all states? There’s no way to do it. So if in your class a student earns a B because of effort and they move to another school or district even, when a teacher sees that B, they expect the student has a B’s worth of knowledge, but they really don’t. By trying to help the student, you’re actually making it worse. I have had personal experience with this. I had one student who ended my Spanish 2 class with a C but couldn’t string two words together in Spanish, let alone know any vocabulary. Yet, because she put in effort on her homework and projects, she was able to overcome her failing assessment grades enough to earn her a C. I also was a recipient of a student who had earned a B in level 1. But this student failed to know even the simplest of level one vocabulary including cognates like escuela. He was failing my class and couldn’t figure out why. After having talked to him, I found out that he earned a B because of extra credit and his artistic ability on projects, but that he had a consistent D average on assessments.

So what I’m trying to say here is that using effort, participation, behavior and other such indicators as part of the academic (letter) grade, muddies the water and doesn’t give a clear picture of what a student can DO with what he/she knows.

Now, how do I grade writing? I basically look at two things: comprehensibility and complexity. First, I ask is the sample comprehensible. If it is, it has a chance of earning an A, B, or C grade. If it’s not, it will likely get a D unless there is so much lacking that I can’t even justify a D grade.

After determining comprehensibility, I then look at complexity. If the sentences are simple and vocabulary basic then this is a C-level of complexity. These are usually your choppy sentence papers that read like “There is a cat. The cat is fat. The cat’s name is Bob. Bob runs. Bob runs fast.” If the sentences contain many examples of compound sentences (sentences with and, or, but), and the vocabulary is a little more diverse, then it is a B-level of complexity. These samples have more details and the sentences flow a little better like “There is a cat and he is fat. The cat’s name is Bob and he runs fast.” An A-level of complexity is demonstrated with complex sentences and rich vocabulary usage. “There is a cat named Bob who is very fat, but can run very fast. He can run very fast because he has magic paws.”

Also when I grade, I like to write one good comment and one thing to work on for next time. I phrase both of these positively.

Now I only grade two writing samples per quarter per student. We write every week without fail. I tell the students that I read each and every writing they turn in, but the truth is I only read the first one of the year, the last one of the year, the two that I grade per quarter, and any other one where the kid tells me that I should read that one because they did really well. What they don’t know won’t hurt them! :)

Now, for the ones I don’t read, I just place a smiley face on their paper. That’s it. I even have a smiley-face stamp to save even more time. I had a girl improve her writing one full grade based on nothing but receiving a smiley face on her paper. She would come in to class each week saying she was going to work hard to earn her smiley face. After every few smiley faces, I noticed marked improvement. It was the simplest of positive feedback, but it was enough to invoke change.

Anyway, I know the post was long, but I hope it was helpful!
Please share your ideas in the comments!

Thanks!

Scott

 

 

 

Picture Credit: By goldenfeld
 
  by Scotton Thursday, December 27, 2012

TFJ Topic Talk: How to Start the Year Right!!

As we’re about to start a new semester (some of us when we get back from break and others in a couple of weeks), I thought it might be helpful to reacquaint ourselves with some good tips to start the year (or semester) off right! Enjoy the video!

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by Scotton Monday, November 5, 2012 in articles

Teaching Numbers the “Sesame-Street” way

I’m always searching for better ways to teach and numbers are one of those things we all need to teach, but are difficult without resorting to teach them in order.

When school starts, instead of teaching the numbers 1-10, I start with the numbers that are most important to my students–their ages. I take a survey of all the ages that are represented in the room and I work those numbers into our conversations for the first couple of weeks.

I then move to teach the numbers 1-10. I do this in various ways keeping away from teaching them in order. When we do “Kindergarten Day” or talk about animals, pets, people, etc, I constantly ask students to tell me how many of something there are: how many eyes does the dog have?, how many tails does the cat have? how many legs does the octopus have? Once I’m confident that my students know the numbers 1-10 and the ages represented in the room (usually 14-16 and sometimes 17 and 18), I then start teaching the rest of the numbers “Sesame-Street” style.

Watching Sesame Street as a child, the Count always chose a number that would be the “magic” number of the episode. Every thing that can be counted in that episode used that special number of the day. I thought that was an effective method of teaching numbers without teaching them in order so I wanted to incorporate that into my own classroom.

So I start with the teens and chose a random number that I haven’t covered yet and make that the number of the week. I write it on the board in English and the target language and leave it up all week so that it is easily visible to all students. Whenever I ask a question where the answer is a number, the students must use the number of the week. So for example, if the number of the week is 19, no matter what the question, if the answer is a number, the answer must be 19. How many eyes does the monster have? Nineteen. How old is the girl? Nineteen. How many children does the woman have? Nineteen. How many tails does the dog have? Nineteen. You get the point. I continue until I have taught all of the teens and now the students have a number vocabulary of 1-19.

I then choose a tens number. Again, I do this randomly so that it’s not in order. I may choose fifty to be the number of the week next. I write the number fifty on the board in English and the target language and since the students already know the numbers 1-9, they can easily do 50-59 once they’ve been taught the number pattern of the target language.

So now that the number of the week is 50, every number answer must be between 50 and 59. After a week of using 50-59 every day, multiple times, the numbers should begin to sink into the students consciouses. If not, work the same number for the next week.

I continue this way until I teach all of the numbers from 0-99. Then I do the same thing with the hundreds. I choose one of the hundreds (again not in order) and make that a number of the week and work that number until it has been acquired by the students.

Building up the numbers this way allows the students to create new numbers based off previous knowledge of the numbers that come before.

After a few months of teaching the numbers “Sesame-Street” style, the numbers have become second nature to most students and not a mere afterthought of second-language instruction.

Any ideas or comments? I’d love to hear them.

 
by Scotton Monday, January 30, 2012 in articles

First thoughts on Pimsleur Method–Eastern Arabic

After having read the posts on the list about the Pimsleur Method, I decided to retry this methodology for learning a language. I had tried the Pimsleur tapes for Spanish and German when I was young, but never really followed through.

As Maltese is my family’s native language, I wanted to learn something as close as I could to that. I have no real experience with Maltese. My grandparents spoke it, but only my grandmother is currently alive. My mother never learned it and there’s not much available in the US to learn it, but I know it’s a semitic language like Arabic and that its base vocabulary is Arabic in origin along with its grammar with a lot of Italian and English thrown in for good measure.

So I ordered the basic beginner into collection and have been listening in my car on my way to work (about a 30 minute drive each way). I’ve been listening to each lesson twice and I have been repeating despite what we know in the TPRS community. Mostly because I think I need to “feel” the sounds in my mouth.

Anyway, here are my first observations. First of all, it’s very TPRS-like because it is very much linked to comprehensible input. There is tons of input and it’s explained every step of the way, so there is no ambiguity as to what you’re hearing and/or saying, unlike my experience with Rosetta Stone. The methodology does require you to repeat and answer questions. Obviously the repetition of the phrases is not something we do in TPRS, but I do find it helpful in the absence of the written form and I don’t think that it’s mindless repetition which would have no benefit. It does require you to answer questions like TPRS and it offers tons of repetitions a la TPRS, but in a precise timed interval that is supposed to maximize retention. I found that I am asked to remember and/or repeat words and phrases at various, staggered intervals and it has helped me to keep those words and phrases fresh in my mind. Also, like TPRS, it doesn’t go heavy on the grammar explanations, but gives a pop-up here and there to make things more clear or to explain something we just heard. Not enough to scare you away, but just enough to make everything comprehensible.

So far my biggest frustration with the methodology is the lack of a visual component. Me being a visual learner, I need to see the word written down. In the case of Arabic or any other language with a differing alphabet than the Latin-based one, I need to see it both in pinyin (transliterated) and in its true modern form. As I’m listening on the way to or from work, I get frustrated because I can’t “see” the word and what it looks like. I can’t always tell if they’re using an “m” or an “n” sound, a “b” or a “v” sound, etc. So I’m not always sure if I’m saying it right. Not unlike a quick translation that is so helpful in TPRS, a quick view of the word would alleviate that issue for me and allow me to progress faster. I know that even with German and Spanish, I need to be able to “see” the word before it becomes a part of my own lexicon. I can hear it over and over again, but will refrain from using it until I have seen it spelled out, and preferably in a sentence. Only then will the word truly be mine and a part of my written and spoken vocabulary.

Another thing I found frustrating was the amount of information thrown in a 30 minute lesson. It’s not like there are a lot of vocabulary words, because there are not, But in lesson one, they have forms for you feminine, you masculine, and I. In Arabic, at least, these are not simple verb endings. The entire word changes. For example and please forgive my transliteration (remember I’ve never seen these words spelled out): entebtareef (you understand male), entibedarfi (you understand female), and annabarif (I understand). That’s a lot to absorb in 30 minutes and sometimes the pauses given to you to answer don’t allow for any processing time. In the second lesson they throw at you even more of these types of changes and I feel that they are too much too fast (or at least for me). I would like a lesson or two on just one form at a time before they start moving on to another form. I just feel as if I’m trying to juggle too much in my brain at one time. We’ll see if that holds true as I continue to progress.

So those are my first thoughts. As I continue to progress, I’ll keep you updated.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

 
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