How to Play the Game: 1. Learn assessment terminology (never say [Blaine’s term] “breakdown” again – just don’t!). 2. Never say “I don’t assess.” 3. Always say “My assessments, like my instruction are research-proven and based on well-supported SLA theories of comprehensible input.” 4. Don’t test ever again. You could, like make your test just […]

This collection of observations on how we assess by Claire includes a nice little set of comments on “other teachers”: …or don’t fill out the rubrics anywhere but your heads. The purpose of the rubrics is to elevate what we do to something amazing this day and age – real, authentic assessments…. …don’t you see

…just with the time you would have written tests, don’t do that and instead fill out one rubric noticing how one student writes or speaks or responds nonverbally. Or don’t…. …don’t ever diminish the “noticing” that we do by saying we “don’t assess.” We do assess. It just looks different. Our assessment is harder to

…noticing students means we are “showing up” for them means more kids will “show up” for us…. …but why do we have to capture it on paper? We don’t have to, technically. It’s a safety net for some teachers (those who are being bullied) and for some kids-especially those who need to see growth on

More random thoughts from Claire on Authentic Assessment in TPRS that are giving me hope: …if the kids participated in class, tracked the speaker, etc. use jGR/ISR. If they do SSR and read in L1 and described what they read, jot down daily antidotal notes or just check off a list (participated or not; Monday-Friday

I have always felt vaguely defeated by the reporting system in the four schools I’ve worked in since starting TPRS in my own classroom. The current discussion on assessment is therefore affecting me in a very positive way. Below is a nice collection of some random thoughts from Claire over recent days that have gotten

Robert has the new MT/Scripts shared file ready. Here’s the link – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qKNEwG_-D0_U2vWDjYQGujfV0NGUu7B_Gae3HaiYafM/edit?usp=sharing He is temporarily allowing people to edit because we are the only ones using it right now. Later he will open it up to others and change the settings to “may comment”. Robert advises: “As one of the other posters implied, my

Robert has a great idea. I could see a real strong pool of lesson plans coming out of this: Hi Ben, I did something in class today that I have done before, but thinking on it later today, I came up with an idea I thought I would run past you as a possible PLC

This from our one and only Robert goes up on the Primers today: If you follow the history of the teaching of languages, a number of practices become logical – even if misguided. Up until the early modern period, Latin and Greek were taught as means of communication. When those languages were superseded by French

This is a repost of a thread from last April that I wanted us to revisit in August. Some of us may want to do stories this way this year: Hey Nathaniel just yesterday I was observing Zach and his class was crisp and sharp and I wish I had it on videotape to share

If, like me, you are on a big roll of not targeting any pre-planned structures, you may have heard something like this from someone : “Oh if you don’t target structures you’ll go out of bounds.” Poppycock. The way to not go out of bounds when you have no targets is to strenuously limit any

We need to go over every second of what we do in a story with a fine toothed comb. Obviously that is impossible here in this blog space but I just want to say it. I believe that a big answer to our ongoing struggles lies in our initiating a deep and exacting, even unrelenting