The Quick Quiz Process
Here is a step-by-step explanation of the quick quiz process:
- A student distributes quarter panels of paper and pencils.
- The quiz writer hands the quiz to me, at any moment during class.
- The quiz writer has prepared the quiz in a yes/no format. This does a greater job of guaranteeing student success – the most important thing – while at the same time guaranteeing a faster and easier-to-grade quiz.
- I read each question twice.
I weigh small assessments like the quick quizzes as 35% of a student’s overall grade. Other examples of such formative assessments that are added into the 35% are dictées and free writes, or any kind of short written assessment that you may do in your classroom.
The other 65% comes from a single assessment source, a magnificent one, a rubric that is in my view a true breakthrough in foreign language education and an even more powerful classroom management tool than quick quizzes, because it also is formative in nature. The 65% rubric is based on the Three Modes of Communication. I first started experimenting with it in 2008. It is discussed in greater detail in Supplement 19.
We must always keep in mind, so as to always align with the research, that all that is really required from our students in our CI classrooms is that they listen well. This supports every single fundamental curricular precept laid out in this book, that the main job of students in a comprehensible input classroom is to just listen. The quizzes are one of the main vehicles – besides the 65% rubric described above – that we use to see if this is happening.