When we give kids a reason to be happy in our classrooms, instead of placing them somewhere on a scale of how good they are at the language we are teaching them, we do it right. We place the needs of children to be an accepted part of a vibrant language sharing community over our own needs to label them in terms of what they can or cannot do with the language as a result of our instruction.
The primary needs that our kids have, to be acknowledged as important to the group, are needs of the heart. The second needs are needs that many of the kids don’t even want, because they spend most of their childhoods immersed in the things of the mind, namely screens.
Teachers say that they want data in order to “better infuse and change how they teach”. Bullshit alert! Nobody uses data to change how they teach. So it is not a difficult decision for me to make when I plan my assessment in my CI classes – I vote for fun. No administrator or parent is going to tell me how to do my job.
I don’t need data on which to make decisions about how I teach. What do I need? I need faces. Happy faces. Kids enjoying my class with confidence in what they can do. If I see happy faces in my class, that’s real data.