The arrival of the new Ohio Scoring Guides for World Languages, as well as an excellent post by Amy Lenord served as an important reminder that I need to improve the feedback that I give my students.  Although I have used a checklist for feedback in the past, I haven’t been completely consistent in using it as of late.  Furthermore, my previous checklist was not aligned to these new scoring guidelines.  It was definitely time to do some updating!

Fortunately, the Ohio Scoring Guides for Performance Evaluation provide a great framework for meaningful feedback.  Each of the rubrics includes an additional page that lists the criteria, as well as blank spaces for self or teacher feedback. Unfortunately, I know that my written comments do not always meet the students’ needs, especially on speaking assessments. The notes that I do jot down while listening to their production are most likely incomprehensible to my students.  My hurried handwriting is illegible, and it is difficult for my students to see the connection between my comments and their success on the performance. In order to address these issues, I prepared a series of checklists that I will incorporate when providing feedback using these rubrics.  For each set of criteria on the ODE rubrics I have added specific comments to target the student’s strengths, as well as a list of comments to identify suggestions for improvement.  By providing these specific comments, I hope to provide legible, focused feedback to my students on both formative and summative performance tasks.  In addition, I envision having the students do their own goal-setting by highlighting specific areas of the rubric that they would like to focus their attention on.

When developing my comments, I considered both the criteria, and the comments that I find myself using over and over again.  As a French teacher, I specifically addressed common errors made by English speakers, especially in terms of pronunciation and common structures.  In addition, I have included an “Other” line, for strengths/errors that are not specifically addressed on the checklist.  It was important to me that my checklist fit on one sheet of paper for ease of use, so I tried to include only those errors that are the most often made by my students.

It is my hope that these checklists will help my students identify both their strengths and areas for improvement and streamline their progress toward higher levels of proficiency. Here are the checklists, let me know what you think! Feedback checklists