Q. Without tools like Can Do statements, how are we supposed to evaluate what our students can do?
A. Why is it so important to evaluate what our kids can do with the language, especially at such an early age? They can’t do much with it, certainly, any more than a three or four-year old child can. The amount of actual language in the child’s brain, waiting to manifest when God says so, is massive. It’s there, just not available yet.
In fact, any child has had tens of thousands of hours of comprehensible input by the time they are three or four years old. The input is certainly there – it’s just in storage since the wiring has not yet been completed for output to occur in the form of speech or writing.
It’s like trying to get a flower to bloom before the plant is ready. All you will do when you do that is mess up the flower by tugging and pulling at it.
Krashen’s “Natural Order Hypothesis” suggests the presence of a natural sequence in which learners acquire a language, rather than in a random or arbitrary order or when the textbook says it’s time with semantic sets, etc. or whenever the teacher hubristically decides to command it to manifest in a testing environment.
Writing and speech output emerge naturally from the unconscious mind (Chomsky’s LAD) when God says so, and we don’t get to know when that is.
The term “Einstein Syndrome” describes a child who has delayed speech but is simultaneously gifted in other areas. These children eventually speak with no constraints or indications of being incapable, while remaining advanced in other areas. This is a scathing indictment of the use of Can Do statements in our schools.
When we focus on teaching certain things and expecting the child to be able to produce them soon after in the form of Can Do statements, when we don’t even know their natural order of emergence ourselves, because we can’t know, because it’s hidden from us, thereby forcing from the child a different Can Do outcome that conflicts with the one that her deeper mind is programmed to produce, then we are messing with a natural order.
Flouting the research in this way is a dangerous game. When students don’t feel ready to be able to do a task that requires output in the form of speech or writing, then they will feel embarrassed and frustrated, which goes against other important aspects of the research (Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis). Why teach against the dictates of the research?
What we do when we “evaluate” too early (it may be an evaluation to us but it’s an intimidating test to the child) threatens the emotional safety of the child. If a child feels as if she is being judged when attempting a (very neurologically challenging!) task like a Can Do statement, if a child is judged and made to feel that she can be wrong, then she won’t learn. Would you?
This is how I say it: if we can’t make our classes fun and lighthearted and simple and easy for the child, and if we can’t create a classroom that the kids want to come into, then we are going to watch our first year classes split between the high achievers and the other kids. This brings exclusion of the majority of kids in the class by the few, dragging down the entire recent diversity/belonging/inclusion initiative that we are now talking about in our schools, but without actually walking the walk on it.
This kind of judging and branding has gone on for far too long in our schools and there seems to be no end in sight because of the curriculums we continue to use even though they, and especially the highly laughable but highly profitable textbook curriculums, have become a laughingstock in our schools as students even after four years of instruction show any degree of proficiency from having used.
Any activity that is good for language and literacy development must be pleasurable. Noam Chomsky says as much:
“…[language] is acquired by virtually everyone, effortlessly…merely by living in a community under minimal conditions of interaction, exposure, and care….”
Krashen’s Pleasurable Hypothesis, or Affective Filter Hypothesis, suggests that language acquisition is facilitated by low-anxiety, high-motivation, and strong self-confidence, creating a “filter” that allows for better comprehension of comprehensible input. We largely ignore that in our teaching. Many of us reason that if five or six kids are getting it, that’s enough – they get the A’s and the other kids must not be very smart, and we walk around and call ourselves teachers.
The new frontier in this work, in my opinion, lies in our ability to make our classes pleasurable for all our students and in our ability to find ways to assess our students authentically in ways that do not shame them. The secret to doing that is making all of our students feel that they belong in the classroom as a valued member of the group.
It would be better for your work as a teacher if you were to work first on building into your teaching classroom skills that lead to lightheartedness and belonging in a trusting community and then, if you are required to do Can Do statements then at least make them pleasurable for the kids by making them easy and fun. Is that asking too much of you? Asking for the kids….