Creating Assessments for Student Success

 Y'ALL! I LOVE talking about assessment. Can you tell? Before I dig into the nitty gritty, I have to tell you about a FREE PD opportunity including a session by yours truly about assessment! Check out this link get your free summit playbook and to register for this year's World Language Teacher Summit. There are over 30 speakers on a variety of topics that you will love.

Keep reading for simple assessment tips!

Here's what you can look forward to in my presentation Creating Assessments for Student Success when it goes LIVE on October 21st: Kaitlin shares her ideas for putting together assessments which are simple, straightforward, and give you an insight into your students’ language performance levels, while at the same time allowing your students to feel successful. She goes over some key sections of the ACTFL performance descriptors and provides examples of assessment tasks together with video demonstrations. 

Register for the FREE summit now so you won't miss a presentation. You also will get an email right before the week begins with a FREE goodie bag, including my presentation slides with all of the links and resources I discuss during the presentation. This includes sample assessments AND video demonstrations from my own classes. 

Here are 3 tips for creating assessments for student success:

(Check out my podcast Preaching to Acquire for an episode on this topic as well!)

1. Focus on what aligns with the ACTFL and/or your state standards. If you really dig into these standards (like I show in my presentation), they focus on interpreting and expressing meaning in the target language, NOT perfect grammar, spelling, or vocabulary memorization. Focus on the message that students can understand or communicate!

2. Focus on what students CAN control in their assessments. Students can't control how fast they acquire new language. They can't control their background or prior knowledge in the target language or their literacy in their first language. However, they CAN control their effort (most of the time), their inclusion or exclusion of required elements, and their ability to set and reflect on a language goal. So when you assess students, really think about what it is that you are including.

3. Focus on keeping it simple. Assessment doesn't need to be complicated. Typically, I will write a paragraph or more in the target language based on what we've been discussing during our input time in class. Then I will ask students to translate the Spanish into English. I tell them that if they don't know a word or phrase, they should leave a blank space for it and just keep on going. This does a few things... it shows them how much they DO know AND it shows me where the gaps in comprehension are. This gives me valuable data to reflect on the make instructional choices moving forward like what kind of language to give them more input on. I give more examples in my World Language Teacher Summit 2021 presentation on October 21st. 

BONUS TIP: Worried about grading these assessments? Get students to self-code and self-assess their own work based on rubrics/expectations you've set. Then all you have to do is quickly page through them and enter scores into the gradebook! Want to see what I mean? Check out this example of me giving reading, listening, and writing assessments to my 8th grade class. I do this all in 45 minutes including having the students self-code and assess their work.

For more details and even more tips about creating assessments for student success, check out my presentation during this year's World Language Teacher Summit on October 21st. Have I mentioned yet that it's free?! 😉 BUT it will only be available for 48 hours once it goes live.


*If you end up choosing to purchase anything with my link, I may receive a portion of the profit as a thank you for sharing about the summit and presenting



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