Category Archives: Assessment

Grading for Proficiency, 2020

Although I have written about my grading policies in the past, my ideas have continued to evolve since these earlier posts. Prompted by a recent conversation on the French Teachers in the US Facebook page, I thought I would share my most recent policies for grading in a proficiency-based classroom.

Step 1: Gradebook

My preferred gradebook configuration is to have five different categories: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing and Miscellaneous . I weight each of these categories evenly at 20%. Other people use the modes (Interpretive, Interpersonal and Presentational) as their categories and I think that’s great. I preferred to use the skills rather than modes, because my students and I got more specific feedback this way. I found that a student’s interpersonal speaking and presentational speaking skills were much more congruous than their presentational speaking and presentational writing skills were. If I used Presentational as a category, I would not immediately be clear whether a struggling student needed support for writing or speaking. Note: If I were in a school with standards-based grading, I would eliminate the Miscellaneous category and move the other categories to 25%.

Step 2: Formative Assessments

In my classroom the majority of the each class period was spent on communicative activities that I assessed as follows:

Interpretive Reading: When the students read something in class and completed some type of comprehension-based task, I either gave whole class feedback (providing the correct answers) or collected their work for written feedback. This feedback was usually limited to a score (I scored out of 10 rather than percentages) based on accuracy.

Interpretive Listening: I assigned a lot of Edpuzzles (but only because FluentKey wasn’t yet available!) I used the computer-generated score as a basis for a score out of 10. Because I didn’t expect my students to get all of my questions correct (I designed some questions to encourage my high flyers to stretch), I usually gave a 10/10 for 90% or higher, 9/10 for 80% or higher, etc.

Interpersonal Speaking: I circulated among my students as they worked on interpersonal tasks. Sometimes I filled out a rubric with specific feedback and recorded a score (out of 10) but most times I jotted down notes on a class roster. Occasionally I used these notes to determine a grade. I did not generally assign any interpersonal writing tasks.

Presentational Writing: I often assigned short written tasks based on the interpretive and interpersonal tasks from the lesson and gave basic feedback and a score out of 10.

Presentational Speaking: I seldom assigned a presentational speaking task as a formative assessment. When I did so, I provided feedback and a score out of 10.

In addition to these communicative activities, I occasionally gave a quiz of some kind. For example, if the students had done a pair activity that involved describing pictures to each other, I might describe 5 pictures and have the students identify them. If they had done a reading activity with a partner, I might ask some oral true/false questions about the reading.

At the end of a 4-6 week unit, I had a LOT of scores. They ALL went in the Miscellaneous category. A better name for this category would have been Formative Assessment, but I was leaving myself a little wiggle room for the rare instances that I needed to include something that I didn’t consider to be a formative assessment but that I was required to assign by my department.

Step 3: Summative Assessments

At the end of each unit, I assigned an Integrated Performance Assessment. Each task in the assessment resulted in a separate grade. So for most IPAs I had a grade for each performance category: Interpretive Reading, Interpretive Listening, Interpersonal Speaking and Presentational Writing. If I included a Presentational Speaking task, that would be an additional grade in my Speaking category.

The grades for the IPAs were the only grades that went into my performance categories. In other words, 80% of my grades (all but the formative assessments) came from IPAs.

When I graded my IPAs, I used the following rubrics.

Interpretive Reading: I used the rubric from the ACTFL publication, Implementing Integrated Performance Assessment by Bonnie Adair-Hauck, Eileen W. Glisan and Francis J. Troyan. I assigned 10/10 for students whose work fell in the Accomplished Comprehension category, and 8/10 or 9/10 for Strong Comprehension, a 7/10 for Minimal Comprehension and a 5/10 or 6/10 for Limited Comprehension. I did not assign scores of less that 5/10. (See this article for an explanation of this policy.)

Interpretive Listening: Because I did not use the IPA Interpretive Template for my listening assessments, I developed individual rubrics for my listening tasks. I usually used a graphic organizer or comprehension questions for listening assessment and a rubric something like this:

10: Identifies the main ideas and supports each one with relevant details

9: Identifies the main ideas and supports most of them with relevant details

8: Identifies some main ideas and/or several details

7: Identifies a main idea and a couple of details.

6: Identifies a few details.

5: Is unable to identify a main idea or provide any relevant details.

Interpersonal Speaking: I used this proficiency-based rubric from the Ohio Department of Education.

Presentational Speaking and/or Presentational Writing: I used this proficiency-based rubric from the Ohio Department of Education.

Note: The Interpersonal and Presentational rubrics do not provide a numeric or letter grade. I preferred to just check the relevant boxes to provide feedback to my students. In order to determine a numerical grade for my gradebook, I used this conversion chart:

*In each case (9) represents the ACTFL expectation.

Standards-Based Grading

Many schools are adopting standards-based grading practices. I have created standards-based rubrics for each mode of communication and they are available here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Standards-Based-Rubrics-for-World-Languages-4743987

I know that what worked for me may not work in other environments and I look forward to hearing from other teachers who are willing to share the grading practices they have developed!

Making Learning Visible

8 Replies

Thursday evening on #langchat we had a great discussion about what had worked well for us in 2017. When I shared that I had begun having my students graph their progress toward proficiency, several people expressed interest. So I thought I’d type up a quick post about what we’ve been doing and what I’ve learned from the process.

I began by passing out this document when I returned the students’ first IPA of the year. Although I am clearly evaluating classroom performance in my assessments, it is important to me that my students see their progress in terms of language proficiency, so I use the proficiency rubrics from the Ohio Department of Education for presentational writing and interpersonal speaking. As the directions on the graph document indicate, I had the students place a dot in the appropriate square for each IPA and then draw a line connecting their dots. I had them use the same graph, but two different colored lines for presentational writing and interpersonal speaking. Here are a few of the graphs from my French 2 classes:

There are a few reasons why I consider the simple task of graphing proficiency/performance progress to be one of my successes in 2017. For one, I LOVED the conversations that I heard among my students as they completed their graphs each time. It is so much more meaningful to hear “I moved up to Intermediate Low 1” than “I got a B.” These graphs are also a great visual for my students. As we transition toward teaching for proficiency (and away from discrete point assessments) some students question “what” they’re learning. These graphs help students to see their progress in a concrete way.

These graphs also inform my instructional and assessment practices. Because nearly every student performed lower on the 3rd IPA, I had to take a long, hard look at this assessment (from this post). My conclusion is that the prompts that I used for the writing and speaking tasks did not encourage the students to stretch in a way that would demonstrate their highest proficiency/performance. Few students ask the variety of questions that would enable them to demonstrate Intermediate interpersonal communication and most did not include the compound sentences, creativity and cultural competence described in the Intermediate descriptors for the presentational mode. I clearly need to either change these prompts and provide additional direction and targeted practice the next time I teach this unit. I also wonder whether some of the results may indicate a lack of evaluator reliability on my part. As with most rubrics, there is a bit of subjectivity and I hope to increase my consistency as I continue to use these rubrics.

Image Credit: http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=13489790414892

In a Nutshell: 5 Steps to Designing a Thematic Unit

13 Replies

As a result of several recent questions by members of my PLN who are beginning their journey to a more proficiency-based methodology, I have created this outline of the steps I take when creating a thematic unit. While I am planning a series of posts with more detailed information about each step, I’ve included basic information about the process I use, as well as an agenda (updated 8/4/18) with resources for an Intermediate Low unit on vacations, in this post.

Step 1: Determine what I want the students to be able to do at the end of the unit and write a Can-Do statement for each mode of communication. Because ACTFL has not yet released their new version of the Can-Do Statements, I based these Can-Do’s on the current benchmarks. These statements are based on the Intermediate Low descriptors, which is my targeted performance level for these students.

Interpersonal Communication: I can participate in conversations about vacations using simple sentences.
Presentational Speaking: I can present information on a vacation using a series of simple sentences.
Presentational Writing: I can write briefly about a vacation using a series of simple sentences.
Interpretive Listening: I can understand the main idea in short, simple messages and presentations about vacations.
Interpretive Reading: I can understand the main idea of short and simple texts about vacations.

Step 2: Create the Integrated Performance Assessment. For an in-depth explanation of how I design IPA’s, please refer to this previous post. In short, I 1) Select an authentic written and/or recorded resource, 2) Create a comprehension guide based on the ACTFL IPA template, 3) Create an interpersonal task based on the authentic text and 4) Create a presentational writing and/or speaking task based on the authentic resource and interpersonal task.

Step 3: Identify the structures, vocabulary and skills the students need in order to demonstrate the targeted proficiency level on the IPA. In this unit, I determined that the students would need to learn/acquire the following language, structures and content.

Vocabulary related to the topic of vacations. This would include terms for vacation activities, lodging, transportation, etc. While these students will be familiar with some leisure activities that are part of a typical vacation, a greater variety of vocabulary will allow for more detailed performances.
The ability to use past tenses to describe vacations they have taken. While these students used some past tenses in French 2, they will need lots of exposure and practice to be able to use these structures, albeit with expected errors, on these performances. Because the descriptor, “I can usually talk about events and experiences in various time frames” is part of the Intermediate High benchmark, it will be some time before I will expect these students to easily use these structures. However, by providing opportunities for students to use past tenses in a variety of contexts in this unit I am preparing them to eventually reach this level of proficiency.
Cultural background on French products, practices and perspectives. Because I assess my students’ cultural competence as part of each mode of communication, it is important that they have adequate preparation in determining these aspects of culture throughout the unit.

Step 4. Create a series of lessons that will allow the students to demonstrate the targeted proficiency level on the IPA. Having determined the students’ needs in terms of vocabulary, structures and content, I create individual lessons designed to fill these gaps. These lessons will provide the students with multiple exposures to the targeted vocabulary and structures as well as learning activities that will allow the students to practice/receive feedback on their use of these structures. Here is a simple explanation of the steps that I usually take in designing each individual lesson for a thematic unit.

A. Determine an organizational structure for the lessons. Based on the theme of a given unit, there are many ways to break the topic into smaller subtopics to provide an integrated structure for individual lessons. In general, I find it works best to begin with lessons that will provide general information on the topic before focusing on more specific details. So in this case, I began with lessons focusing on general vacation practices and then added tasks related to specifics such as beach destinations, vacation activities, traveling with friends, camping vacations and packing for vacation. Because I curate authentic resources on Pinterest boards for each unit that I teach, I often begin the process of creating subtopics by looking at the resources I already have, and grouping them according to subtopic. This saves a considerable amount of time compared to choosing subtopics and then finding appropriate resources. (Of course, I end up searching for additional resources after I have a skeleton of the unit design.)

B. Create a hook for the lesson. I choose an authentic written or recorded text to present at the beginning of each lesson. Presenting simple texts such as infographics or short videos allows me to provide comprehensible input as I talk about the information in the text and ask personalized questions incorporating the vocabulary, structure and content of the text. Click here for a transcript of a sample discussion during the hook portion of the first lesson in this unit based on this infographic.

C. Design an interpretive activity for the lesson. I choose an authentic resource that the students will read or listen to and create a corresponding learning activity/formative assessment that will allow the students to interact with this text. While I will go into greater detail about this aspect of lesson design in a future post, you will find several different examples in this and other units in this blog. In my opinion, this is the most important part of each lesson, as it provides the basis of the interpersonal and presentational activities that follow. In addition, because I don’t use a textbook in my classroom, the authentic resources used in the hook and interpretive activities provide the vocabulary and some structures that the students will use in their performance assessments. Note: You will notice that most of the authentic resources used for the interpretive activities in this unit are written texts. In order to ensure that my students have adequate opportunities to interpret recorded texts, I’ve included several video-based formative assessments (using Edpuzzle) that the students will complete in class or at home throughout the unit.

D. Construct an interpersonal activity based on the content, vocabulary and/or structures in the authentic resource. The interpersonal activity provides students with an opportunity to use the vocabulary and structures that were introduced in the authentic resource to create their own meaning. In addition, as they negotiate meaning on these tasks they are practicing the skills they will use on the IPA with additional scaffolding. Based on the authentic resource and the targeted proficiency level, I incorporate a variety of different types of interpersonal activities. At the novice level, I often focus on vocabulary-building activities such as those described in this post or even this one. As students reach the Intermediate level and are able to create more with the language, I often integrate interpersonal and interpretive activities by having the students co-create graphic organizers (such as in the 1st and 2nd lesson in this unit) or discuss responses on target language interpretive assessments.

E. Devise a presentational writing and/or speaking formative assessment. These activities provide the students with scaffolded opportunities to synthesize the vocabulary and structures introduced in the lesson to create a written or oral product. The scaffolding provided in these formative assessments, as well as the individualized feedback I will give on many of these tasks, will provide the support the students need to demonstrate growth in proficiency on the IPA. Note: While I have included an idea for a written or spoken presentational task for each lesson, it is unlikely that time will permit me to actually assign all of these tasks. Instead, I will choose from among those tasks as time allows.

Step 5: Administer and assess the IPA. Because the format of the IPA mimics the organizational structure of the lessons in the unit, the students should feel confident in their ability to be successful on this assessment.

Stay tuned for additional posts on each step of the lesson design and let me know if you have any questions!

Image Credit: http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Peanut-Shell-Nutshell-Peanut-Shell-Nuts-Nut-390081

Closing the Feedback Loop: An Action Plan

7 Replies

As my understanding about how languages are acquired continues to evolve, so does my vision of my role in the classroom. When I began teaching, I considered my prime responsibility to be that of providing vocabulary lists and explanations of grammatical rules followed by opportunities to practice them. A lot has changed over the past few years! I now see my primary role as that of creating contexts for my students to communicate using language suitable to their proficiency level and then providing feedback on their use of that language. Specifically, I provide language input via culturally-rich authentic resources (as well as my own language use) and create activities that require the students to interpret this language and use the vocabulary and structures they acquire to communicate with others. Of course, my work isn’t finished when these learning opportunities have been created! These students need feedback on their language use. They need to know whether their interpretation of a text is accurate and whether their own oral and written communication is comprehensible. More importantly, they need to know what they can do to increase their proficiency in the language.

In an ideal world, this means that the students would engage in communicative activities, I would provide immediate feedback on this communication, and the students would use this feedback to set goals enabling them to communicate more proficiently in the future. However, in the imperfect world of my classroom, this process has not been working they way it should. My feedback has not been timely enough and I have not provided adequate opportunities for the students to use this feedback in a way that would inform their subsequent communication. As a result, my feedback process looked like the image linked to this post rather than the loop it should have been. The feedback my students received from me often seemed to be a dead end–clearly I need to do much better at closing my feedback loop!

After careful reflection, I’ve come up with the following action plan for the upcoming school year.

Interpretive Communication

My students read a lot of authentic materials in class, but I often fail to provide timely feedback on the accuracy of their interpretation for several reasons. First of all, I’ve been using the ACTFL IPA template to create comprehension guides for many of these texts. While I think it’s important that instruction mirror assessment, the use of English for these formative assessments (which I support) would impede my ability to stay in the target language. Furthermore, I worried that my students will be less likely to focus on interpretive tasks if they know that I would be providing the answers at the end of the class. As a result, I collected way too many papers, spent way too much time grading and recording them (and cajoling absent students to complete them) and wasted valuable class time passing them back to students who looked at the grade and threw them away. I plan to address these obstacles this year by 1) creating formative comprehension tasks that don’t require English, 2) letting go of the idea that grades can be used to control student behavior and 3) providing whole-class feedback directly after the formative interpretive task. As a result of these changes, I will spend less time grading and my students will receive immediate feedback on their interpretive communication.

Interpersonal and Presentational Communication

While whole-class feedback can be effective on interpretive tasks that often have right or wrong answers, students need specific, individualized feedback to improve their performance on this mode. While I am able to provide some feedback as I circulate among the students during these activities, I think I could provide more global feedback if each student had an opportunity to receive feedback on the entirety of their performance. Therefore, my plan is to provide each student an opportunity to be formatively assessed on the same prompt they will have on the IPA, although with a different partner in order to maintain spontaneity on the summative task. I will then use this document to provide feedback, an opportunity for goal-setting and a means of self-reflection for the students. As the document shows, the students will check the level of proficiency that their formative performance demonstrated (see note below). They will then check which steps they need to take to improve on their performance on the IPA, based on the feedback given on the rubric on the back of the page. I will then assess their performance on the IPA using the rubric on the second (identical) rubric. After the IPA, the students will complete the reflection portion of the document which I will then file until the next round of IPA’s. (I might end up making the process digital, rather than paper and pencil.) I am hoping that the requiring the students to choose action steps, simplifying the rubrics and providing an opportunity for reflection will help close the feedback loop on interpersonal assessments.

I will follow this same process for the presentational task of the IPA. Using either the presentational speaking or presentational writing feedback form, the students will again record their formative proficiency level, create an action plan and then reflect on whether they were able to achieve their proficiency goal.

Note about the rubrics

One of my favorite aspects of the Ohio Department of Education rubrics that I had been using is the fact that they break down each proficiency level into 3 different sublevels. This has allowed me to track small changes, which helps my students see their progress and me to use proficiency-based grading. However, this specificity makes the rubrics very wordy. While this would not be especially problematic if I were using them as they were intended–to document proficiency growth from the beginning to the end of an academic year– I found that my students did not have the patience to read through the lengthily descriptors. Therefore, I created the simplified versions I have included in the documents. However, in order to document smaller increments of growth, I will add the following sublevels to their proficiency level.

Sublevel 1	Meets all relevant criteria for previous level and at least 70% of the relevant criteria for the targeted level.
Sublevel 2	Meets all relevant criteria for the targeted level.
Sublevel 3	Meets all relevant criteria for the targeted level and at least 30% of the relevant criteria for the targeted level.

While I may adjust the percentages, I think these sublevels will enable the students to see growth and allow me to continue to assign grades based on proficiency levels.

I’d love to hear suggestions on what procedures you’ve developed to create a successful feedback loop!

Using Rubrics to Assess Interpretive Reading

16 Replies

Last night’s #langchat was hopping! One of the most lively discussions had to do with the topic of using rubrics to assess students’ communication in the interpretive mode. So, at the request of @MmeBlouwolff, I’m sharing a few thoughts about how I use rubrics to assess reading in my classes.

Like many of my colleagues, I did not understand how I could use a rubric to assess reading comprehension when I first began using IPA’s. It was not until I saw the ACTFL Interpretive template, that I realized I didn’t have to assess comprehension with discrete point measures. After adopting the question types suggested by this guide, the switch to a more holistic grading system made perfect sense. A student’s comprehension is not adequately assessed by the number of questions they answered correctly, any more than their presentational writing can be evaluated by counting spelling errors. Furthermore, our current understanding of the interpretive mode of communication does not limit us to evaluating our students’ literal comprehension of a text. Instead, we are encouraged to assess inferential strategies such as guessing meaning from context, making inferences, identifying the author’s perspective and making cultural connections. Using a rubric to measure student growth on these skills allows me to show my students what they can do, as well as how they can improve their interpretive strategies.

Here’s a look at a sample of student work and how I used a rubric to assess both the student’s literal and interpretive comprehension. Please note that although I relied heavily on ACTFL’s Interpretive IPA Rubric, I changed the format to make it more similar to the Ohio proficiency rubrics that I use for the interpersonal and presentational modes. In addition, I modified some of the wording to reflect my own practices and added a numerical score to each column.

As the completed rubric shows, I ask my students to assess themselves by circling the box which best reflects their own understanding of their performance on each section. In addition to providing an opportunity for self-assessment, this step ensures that the students have a clear understanding of the expectations for the assessment and encourages goal-setting for future performances. This process also provides me with important information about the students’ metacognition. In this case, the student seemed to feel very confident about his/her responses to the Guessing Meaning from Context section, in spite of the fact that he only guessed one word correctly.

After collecting the assessments and student-marked rubrics, it’s my turn to assess the students. The use of a rubric streamlines this process considerably, as I can quickly ascertain where each student’s performance falls without the laborious task of tallying each error. I simply check the appropriate box on the rubric, and then project a key when I return the papers so that each student receives specific feedback on the correct responses for each item.

When it comes to determining a score on the assessment, as a general rule I assign the score for which the student has met all, or nearly all of the descriptors. I do consider, however, how the class does as a whole when assigning numerical grades. I am frequently unrealistic in my expectations for the Guessing Meaning from Context, for example, and as a result I do not weigh this category very heavily when assigning a final score. In the case of this student’s work, I assigned a grade of 9.5/10 as s/he met many of the descriptors for Accomplished and demonstrated greater comprehension than the majority of his/her classmates.

While the use of rubrics for interpretive communication might not work for everyone, I have found that holistic grading provides better opportunities for self-assessment, encourages students by providing feedback on what they can do and saves me time on grading.

As always, I look forward to your feedback, questions and suggestions!

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rubric.jpg

Taking the plunge into proficiency-based grading

38 Replies

A couple of years ago when I decided to drastically change what I taught (cultural content instead of vocabulary and structures) and how I taught it (by using authentic resources instead of textbook exercises), I took a close look at my assessment practices. While I embraced the concept of IPA’s, I struggled a bit on how to assign a grade to these assessments. In the beginning I used my own holistic rubrics and later adopted the Ohio Department of Education’s Performance Scoring Guides for World Languages. Being a rule follower, I chose the Performance rubrics because that’s what ODE’s website said that teachers should use for IPA’s. Although I knew that some teachers were linking students’ grades to their proficiency level this practice didn’t fit with my understanding of proficiency, which I’ve been taught can only be measured by an OPI. Because I understood that my classroom assessments were clearly performances (measurements of what my students had learned as a result of my instruction), I used the Performance rubrics. While these are great rubrics, as I continue to adapt my instruction, I find that I will need to make some changes to my assessment practices in order to meet my goals for this year. Specifically, I want my students to be more involved in their own learning. Rather than passively waiting for me to assign a numerical score to all of their performances, I want my students to understand their proficiency level, set their own proficiency goals, understand how to meet those goals, and self-assess their progress in reaching these goals. Because the descriptors in ODE’s Performance Rubrics do not reflect different proficiency levels (There is only one scoring guide for each skill/mode.), my students were not able to determine their current level of proficiency based on my completing this rubric. Furthermore, they were not able to determine exactly what they needed to do to improve their proficiency (or grade). In the absence of clear descriptors for each level of proficiency, the students were faced with trying to hit a moving target. As my performance assessments required increasingly greater levels of proficiency, a similar score on a string of assessments did not allow the students to see the progress that they were making.

In order to remedy this situation, I’ve decided to use ODE’s Proficiency Scoring Guides this year. Based on my current understanding of the common language of world language educators, I will be able to describe my students’ performances as exhibiting characteristics of a proficiency level, without implying that I am able to assign a specific proficiency level to an individual student. But most importantly, because these rubrics contain separate descriptors for each proficiency level, they will enable my students to define their performances as exemplifying a targeted proficiency level. Not only will my feedback allow them to identify their current level of performance, they will know exactly what they need to do to achieve the next level. I especially love that these rubrics include three levels for each proficiency level (NH1, NH2, NH3, for example). As a result, I hope to be able to measure each increment of progress in my students’ path to proficiency.

For many of us, of course, it is not enough to only identify a student’s proficiency level, we must also assign a numerical (or letter) grade for each performance. After reading many outstanding teachers’ methodology for doing so, I’ve determined the following guidelines for implementing my proficiency-based grading system.

Students who reach ACTFL Proficiency Target will earn an 85% (B). Because it seems unfair and unrealistic for the students to reach an end of course target first semester, I have (somewhat arbitrarily) determined that the first semester goal will be two sublevels below the end of the course target. For example, since Novice High 2 is the targeted proficiency level for the end of French 2, Novice Mid 3 is the targeted level for first semester. This table shows what score a student will earn for each proficiency level. (The numerical scores reflect my preferred maximum score of 10 rather than 100 [a percentage].)
In order to more easily implement this system, I have prepared a first semester and a second semester rubric for each course. As indicated on the rubrics, the language is taken directly from the ODE scoring guides for each skill/mode. I simply chose which 5 columns I felt would be the most likely to cover the range of levels for a particular course and typed them on a single page, with an additional column for comments. I also took the liberty of creating a separate rubric for each Presentational skill and removed the comments about pronunciation from the Writing rubric in order to streamline the feedback process. I can easily use a lower level rubric (changing the scores accordingly) for those students who are unable to meet the lowest level on the rubric for his/her course. Note: I have not included a 2nd semester rubric for French 4, as the ODE rubrics stopt Intermediate Mid 3. I’ll use my own judgment in assigning a score for any students who exceed this level.
Because ODE does not have an Interpretive rubric (They provide only a link to the ACTFL IPA Interpretive Rubric), I will use the ACTFL rubric for interpretive reading tasks at each level. Because it is the task, rather than level of performance which demonstrates a student’s proficiency in interpretive assessments, the same rubric is appropriate for all levels. I will assign the following numerical scores to each level on the rubric: Limited Comprehension (7), Minimal Comprehension (8), Strong Comprehension (9) and Accomplished Comprehension (10). A student who does not meet the descriptors for Limited Comprehension will earn a 6.

I’m sure that I’ll make modifications to these guidelines as I implement proficiency-based grading, so if you’re assessing according to proficiency, I’d love to know how it’s working in your classes!

Resources for Planning and a Food Unit for Intermediate Low French Students

4 Suggestions for Assessing Interpersonal Communication with Novice Learners

4 Replies

As I’ve evolved in my teaching practice, I’ve made significant changes to how I assess oral communication. Here are a few suggestions that have helped me improve my assessment of my Novice students’ interpersonal communication, resulting in increased proficiency among these early language learners.

Suggestion #1: Just do it! It seems that many of my colleagues are hesitant to assess their Novice students’ interpersonal communication. It is their belief that that because these students are entirely dependent on memorized language, no true interpersonal communication can occur. Fortunately, we’ve agreed to disagree on this point! In my opinion, a Novice speaker’s reliance on practiced or memorized language does not preclude her from true communication on an unrehearsed task. While the topics that these learners discuss will be limited to those which have been practiced, they will still be able to demonstrate interpersonal communication when given an appropriate communicative task. In fact, the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements list the following for Novice Mid Interpersonal Communication:

I can greet and leave people in a polite way.
I can introduce myself and others.
I can answer a variety of simple questions.
I can make some simple statements in a conversation
I can ask some simple questions
I can communicate basic information about myself and people I know
I can communicate basic information about my everyday life

Clearly we can expect students to be able to demonstrate an ability to communicate about such basic topics as likes/dislikes, leisure activities, family members, school subjects and supplies, eating habits, etc. While appropriate questions, answers, and rejoinders may be practiced in advance with Novice learners, we can ensure that they are demonstrating actual communication in this mode by creating prompts that prevent memorization of a script. For example, by pairing a student with a classmate with whom he hasn’t yet practiced, we ensure that he is unable to memorize the exact questions he will ask and the answers or rejoinders that he will give. Consider a unit on likes and dislikes, often one of the first topics in a Level 1 curriculum. We might give an assessment prompt such as, “You are choosing a roommate for choir camp and you want to make sure you end up with someone that likes the same things you do. Discuss your likes and dislikes in order to find out what you have in common.” While these students will have practiced expressing their preferences (“I like…”) , asking questions (“Do you like…?), and replying to a partner (“Me, too.” “Not me.” “Me neither.”), they will not know in advance which questions they will be asked or which responses their partner will provide. As a result, each student must be prepared to ask a variety of questions, in order to avoid repeating those asked by his partner. Likewise, working with a new partner will require a student to comprehend his interlocutor’s response (rather than simply memorizing a script) in order to choose the appropriate rejoinder. (“Me neither” is not an appropriate response to a partner who has stated that she likes something, for example.) Furthermore, even Novice learners can make some adjustments in order to clarify meaning for an interlocutor who has demonstrated a lack of comprehension. Requests for repetition are often all that’s needed in order to understand a message, whether because the original speaker is able to correct an error that impeded comprehension or because the repetition enable the interlocutor to establish additional meaning. Clearly, even a task as simple as this one does require the negotiation of meaning which typifies interpersonal communication.

Suggestion #2: Stay out of it! I rely almost entirely on student-to-student interaction for my interpersonal assessments, even for Novice learners, for the following reasons:

In my experience, allowing students talk to each other great increases the quality of the interaction. I have followed the suggestion of Colleen Lee (@CoLeeSensei) who said in a #langchat discussion, “I teach my [students] that your partner not understanding you is YOUR responsibility to clear up!” Nothing is more magical than hearing a level 1 student encourage a classmate by suggesting possible language chunks that would provide the necessary clarification to allow communication to occur. In an early unit this year, for example, one student negotiated meaning by asking C’est ta mère ou ta sœur? when her partner used the incorrect vocabulary word when describing his family photos. This clarification gave valuable feedback to the speaker who had made the error, as well as allowed his interlocutor to stretch beyond the rehearsed statements and questions she had anticipated using during this assessment. As a result of this negotiation, both students are likely to make progress toward proficiency that wouldn’t have been likely had the conversation occurred between a teacher and student.
I have found that being able to talk to a peer, rather than the teacher, greatly reduces the students’ affective filter. A conversation between a teacher and student, regardless of the prompt, is a conversation between an expert/evaluator and a student, which creates a certain level of anxiety in many learners. When a student’s focus is on communicating with a peer, however, she is often able to disregard the presence of the teacher (who is most likely busily taking notes in order to provide feedback to the speakers). As a result of this decrease in anxiety, the quality of the communication is considerably greater than it would have been if the student was speaking to the teacher.
In my opinion, the authenticity of the communication is significantly reduced when one of the speaker’s primary motivation is assessment, rather than comprehension. In a teacher-student interpersonal assessment, the student’s goal is most likely to avoid errors, and the teacher’s is to note them as part of the feedback process. As a result, the communicative content of the conversation often loses its significance.
Lastly, assessing pairs of students saves valuable class time. While I can generally assess all 30 of my students in one class period when listening to two speakers at a time, I would not be able to do so if I were assessing each one individually.

Suggestion #3: Use a great rubric. I love the one from the Ohio Department of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Ohios-Learning-Standards/Foreign-Language/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum-Framework/Instructional-Strategies/Scoring-Guidelines-for-World-Languages/3-Interpersonal-Rubric_unit_august_2015.pdf.aspx ) because it includes an interculturality component, as well as great descriptors related to the quality of the interaction. The wording in the comprehensibility section makes it clear that some errors are to be expected, even for those students rated as Strong. Knowing that the content and quality of the interaction are as important as accuracy encourages students to make more risks during interpersonal tasks. This risk-taking leads allows the learners to demonstrate greater proficiency than they would if their only goal was to avoid grammatical errors.

Suggestion #4: Don’t forget to incorporate culture. As I discussed in an earlier post, I am experimenting with using role plays in order to incorporate more culture into my novice interpersonal communication assessments. My previous prompts, in which I asked students to discuss their own personal preferences and experiences, often failed to produce adequate evidence of interculturality. On the other hand, I was pleased with the results I had during a recent holiday unit when I assigned a role to each member of the conversation pair. In this assessment, I asked one student to play the role of someone who had traveled to France for the holidays and the other to play the role of someone who had traveled to Canada. When these students discussed the pictures they had “taken” (a Google Slides presentation I prepared), they were able to demonstrate their cultural competence in a comprehensible way, in spite of their Novice proficiency level.

I’ll look forward to hearing what has worked for you when assessing impersonal communication with Novice students!

Using Cartoons to Assess Interpretive Listening with Novice Learners

12 Replies

This week’s #langchat discussion about interpretive listening revealed that we language teachers are very diverse in the way we approach this skill, especially with novice learners. Although I reflected at length on the topic of assessing listening in an earlier post, I’d like to specifically address a few of the questions that came up during Thursday night’s discussion.

Question #1: What resources are appropriate for novice learners? While some teachers are hesitant to use authentic resources with early novices, I have found that first semester French 1 students can successfully interpret carefully selected authentic materials when given level-appropriate tasks. My go-to resource for these students are cartoon videos for the following reasons:

These videos were made for novice language learners—young children in the target culture! As a result, the vocabulary and sentence structures are relatively simple and the linguistic input is supported by strong visual cues. This is exactly what our novice learners need.
The wide selection of these videos ensures that there are several choices available for any theme we’ve included in our novice curriculum. My favorites for my Level 1 and 2 students are Trotro, Petit Ours Brun and T’choupi et Doudou, because of the broad range of topics covered and the comprehensibility. I also occasionally use Peppa Pig with my level 2 students. Although originally recorded in (British) English, the French translation was clearly intended for French-speaking children, so I do consider these to be authentic resources. However, the target culture would not, of course, be represented in these videos.
Cartoons are very engaging to my students. They look forward to their turn at the computer and a few students have even mentioned that they have watched additional episodes of the series at home, “just for fun.”
As authentic resources, these cartoon videos often integrate cultural products, practices and perspectives of the target culture. When Petit Ours Brun puts his shoes under the Christmas tree, his grandfather comments on the delicious turkey, and he wakes up to presents on Christmas morning, my students learn relevant cultural practices regarding Christmas celebrations in France.

Question #2: What types of tasks are appropriate for novice learners? I realized as I participated in Thursday night’s #langchat that I have interpreted ACTFL’s descriptors regarding interpretive listening differently than many of my colleagues. The Novice Mid (my goal for level 1) NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Benchmark for interpretive listening reads, “I can recognize some familiar words and phrases when I hear them spoken.” If I understood my colleagues’ responses correctly, many of us may be assessing listening by having students list the words and phrases that they hear. Because it isn’t clear to me how this type of task would demonstrate interpretation/comprehension, I ask students to answer questions to show comprehension of the video, but phrase these questions in a way that the students can use previously-learned words/phrases (along with visual context clues) to respond. This year I am using a multiple choice format for my formative listening assessments using our district’s recently-adopted Canvas learning management system. Although I don’t feel that multiple choice is appropriate for many language tasks, this platform has the advantage of providing immediate feedback to my students. In addition, since creating and assessing them requires a minimal time commitment on my part, I am able to provide more opportunities for listening than I was using other task types. Lastly, this format provides students with additional context clues. Their listening is more purposeful as they are listening for a specific response, as well as to eliminate distractors. While I typically use open-ended question types on my IPA’s, these multiple choice quizzes, which the students complete individually at a computer, provide the majority of my formative listening assessments.

In order to save time, I create these quizzes directly in Canvas, which unfortunately makes them very difficult to share. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ve uploaded a Word document of screenshots from a quiz I made this morning for the video, Trotro et les cadeaux de Noel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRcv1pVaitY ). As this document shows, the questions that I’ve created enable these Novice Low-Mid students to demonstrate their ability to interpret this text using only previously-learned words and phrases and visual clues. While most of the items assess literal comprehension, I’ve included a few questions that require the students to make inferences and guess the meanings of new words using context clues. Here’s a quick explanation of my thought process for each question.

#1: While each of these questions would be appropriate to the context, my students will probably understand “pour moi” when they hear it. They will also be able to eliminate the 2^nd choice, because they know the word for Santa. Although I’ve used the other question words in class, the students are not using them yet. I included them in the distractors to encourage the students to start thinking about how questions are asked.

#2: This question is a “gimme.” The students know the word for book and have visual clues as further support. I created the question to improve the students’ confidence, enable all students to have some “correct” answers, and to provide more context for further questions. As you can see, I write LOTS of questions, because I find the questions themselves provide important context and help the students follow along with the video.

#3: “Chouette” is a new word for these students, but it appears in a lot of children’s literature/videos and I think they’ll enjoy using it. The context should make the meaning of this word clear.

#4/#5: The students have learned the word “jeux-video” so I think they’ll get “jeu.” Also because Trotro also uses “jouer” I think they’ll understand it’s something to play with rather than listen to.

#6/#7 Students can answer by recognizing the previously-learned words “gros” and “belle.”

#8: Although this question does not assess listening comprehension (the word appears in written form), it does provide a contextualized way to introduce a new vocabulary word.

#9: The students can listen for the word “content” as well as eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned words.

#10: The students have heard “maintenant” repeatedly, but it hasn’t been formally introduced. If they don’t recognize it, they should still be able to eliminate the other choices.

#11: Although the students will not understand the entire sentence in which it appears, they should be able to answer this question by identifying the word “cadeaux.”

#12: I’m curious what my students will do with this inference-based question. They should recognize the phrase, “Moi, aussi” which should enable them to infer that Boubou got the same gift.

#13: The students should recognize the word “jouer” as well as be able to eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned vocabulary.

#14: The students should be able to use the visual context to guess the meaning of this new vocabulary.

#15: The phrase “c’est moi” should enable the students to choose the correct response for this one. As with several other items, I’ve included the transcription of the entire sentence to introduce new vocabulary—the verb “gagner.”

#16: Although my students won’t be able to use the linguistic content to answer this question, I’ve included it to encourage inference based on visual context clues.

#17: I’ll be curious how they do with this one. “Bateau” is an unknown word and although they’ve seen “mer,” I’m not sure they’ll pick up on it. Some might pick out “pirate” but I’ll be curious how many are able to answer this one correctly.

#18: The students have heard “rigolo” and this word even appears in Trotro’s theme song. In addition, they should be able to eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned vocabulary.

While there’s nothing especially innovative about this assessment format, after completing many similar tasks during their first semester of language study most of my level 1 students are pretty accurate when completing this type of formative assessment.

Question #3: How should interpretive listening be assessed? I did want to make a point about grading these formative assessments. Although I do my best to create questions that are mostly at the students’ current proficiency level, with a few items thrown in to encourage “stretch,” I rely heavily on my students’ results to determine how close I came to hitting this target. Therefore, I do not decide how to grade these assessments until I have data on how the class scored as a whole. In other words, this particular formative assessment will not necessarily by worth 18 points. If, for example, the highest score is 16, I might make this the maximum score. For teachers that do not record a score on formative assessments, this isn’t an issue of course. I only suggest that we expect and allow for student errors when assessing interpretive listening (even using objective evaluations) just as we do when assessing the other modes.

I’d love to hear from any of you who are willing to share your experiences and ideas about assessing listening with novice learners!

Image credit: www.gallimard-jeunesse.fr

5 Tips for Grading IPAs

23 Replies

The first grading period ended in my school this week so there was lots of talk in my department about how time-consuming it is to grade IPA’s. While I am enough of a teacher nerd to actual enjoy creating IPA’s, I cannot say the same for grading them! Here are a few suggestions that have helped me streamline the process and cut down the time I spend on this task.

Assign a rough draft for the Presentational Writing. I often incorporate a series of learning stations before an IPA and one of these stations consists of writing a rough draft for the IPA. Since I have only 8 students at each station per day, the process of providing feedback is less overwhelming. The students benefit from this feedback on this formative assessment and usually do much better on the IPA as a result.
Use rubrics. I began using the Ohio Department of Education rubrics this year and I really like them. Since Ohio has not yet created an Interpretive Rubric, I use the ACTFL rubric, which I’ve modified to meet my needs. (See this post for a detailed explanation.) When grading the reading and writing sections of an IPA, I lay a rubric next to the student’s paper and check the corresponding box, making very few marks on the student’s paper. Since I will go over the interpretive sections with the class, I don’t find it necessary to mark each response on each student’s paper. Likewise, having given specific feedback on the rough drafts, there is no need to do so on this final copy, which I will keep in my files after returning temporarily for feedback purposes.
Avoid math. After I have checked the appropriate box in each section of the rubric, I determine a score for that section of the IPA. (My gradebook is divided according to language skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking, so each IPA task gets its own score.) I use a holistic system, rather than mathematical calculations to determine an overall score for each task. If all of the checks are in the “Good” column, the student earns a 9/10. If there are a few checks in the “Strong” column (and the rest are Good), the student earns a 10/10. If the checks are distributed between the Good and the Developing column, the student earns an 8. If the checks are all in the Developing column, the student earns a 7. If there are several checks in the Emerging column, the student earns a 6. If a student were unable to meet the criteria for Emerging, I would assign a score of 5/10, the lowest score I record.
Grade the Interpersonal Speaking “live.” I know that many teachers have their students record their conversations and then listen to them later. If this works for you, you have my admiration. I know myself far too well—I would procrastinate forever if I had 30 conversations to listen to when I got home at night! It works much better for me to call up two randomly-chosen students to my desk while the rest of the class is working on the presentational writing. I can usually get most of the class done in one period, in part because I also place a time limit on their conversation— usually about 3 minutes for my novice students and 4-5 for my intermediates. I find that I can adequately assess their performance in that amount of time, and the students are relieved to know that there is a finite period of time during which they will be expected to speak. I mark the rubric as they’re speaking, provide a few examples, and then write a score as they next pair is on their way to my desk.
Use technology for lnterpretive Listening. Each of my IPA’s includes both an Interpretive Reading and an Interpretive Listening. Because I haven’t found the ACTFL Interpretive Template to work well with listening assessments (see this post), I am currently using basic comprehension, guessing meaning from context, and sometimes main idea and inference questions to assess listening. Although I’ve used a short answer format for these items in the past, I am starting to experiment with creating multiple choice “quizzes” on Canvas (our learning management system). I know that other teachers have had success creating assessment items using Zaption and other programs. I’m still reflecting on the use of objective questions to assess listening, but these programs do offer a way for teachers to provide more timely feedback and for students to benefit from additional context to guide their listening.

If you have any tips for grading IPA’s, please share!

Photo Credits

Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images

Madame's Musings

A site about proficiency-based world language instruction