Transcript
You have to find a way to assess students based on keeping them engaged during the assessment absolutely. At the same time, making the assessment fun and not making the assessment seem so rigid. What I do for the ESL students, I do the assessments in a variety of forms, so Ive done personal interviews with the ESL student, so just picking questions that I know right away they will be able to answer. What is your full name? When is your birthday? And then I'll add in a little discussion "Oh what did you do on your birthday? Is your birthday coming up?".
The other thing that I like doing with students is if they don't speak any English, which is students with no working knowledge of English and students that may have been out of the school settings for a number of years, and that doesn't mean homeschool that just means there were no formal education for these students in any language, English or their home language. I like to get a translator in to do the assessment as well. So when I'm doing the interviews, I'll ask the question in English and the translator will ask in the home language and the student can try and answer in maybe one or two English words but most of that interview is done in the first language. What I could evaluate from that is the proficiency of communication and that's extremely important. So theyre put sentences together, they're able to communicate with proper vocabulary, proper intonation, and pronunciation in their home language. Not to mention that it also gives me an opportunity to assess even their thinking. It's a sequence of events even if it is just an interview, they're telling me from beginning middle and end, all about their personal life. It gives me a good chance to place them in what level of ESL I would like to start working with them.
Assessment can happen, you know pencil paper assessments, they could be games for example, and they love playing scrabble so it gives me a chance to assess spelling or knowledge of English vocabulary. They love instructional assessment. One of the activities I'm doing now is cooking classes with the ESL students, so it gives a chance to look at sequence of directions and we put in a little bit of math in there as well. So measurement and also teamwork very important. So interactive assessments is what I find most valuable for the ESL students.
