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Jen on jGR
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7 thoughts on “Jen on jGR”
…I am not keeping track, just asking them to hone in on something related to listening or responding or asking for clarification. I don’t do this weekly. It’s random, maybe a couple times per quarter…
I think that element of chance is huge, and really aligns with keeping assessments unannounced. Anyone having doubts about the daily record keeping of jGR or another equivalent might want to give this process a try.
I especially love your paragraph on that “listening summative”, jen. Boy I miss teaching the non-heritage classes so I can try some of these things you and Tina and Ben and everyone are doing!
Awesome! Thanks jen for the detailed strategy. I’ve been doing it all wrong! Well, it can totally up my game for sure!
PS I enjoy your RAW comments on this PLC.
I have a quick question and I apologize if the answer is somewhere on this blog…how often should the JGR be used? After each story asking session…once a week…a month?
Last year I used it once a month but I used a modified version of it. I am now thinking ahead for next year and I want to use it the right way.
When I used it last year, I used it along with Blaine’s “Págame” system. This worked great when kids spoke English or when they didn’t ask for clarification…any time this happened, I would take away a págame card which helped me to remember what the student was doing wrong. I also had a student secretary record the amount of times each student offered a “cute” answer. All of this made it super easy for me to justify the grade they received.
My problem was (and still is) the “consistent / inconsistent observable non verbal responses”…how do I accurately measure that? I don’t want to be biased when taking this part into consideration. Also, what exactly does this mean, “non verbal responses”?
Also, I used to try to take into consideration when they all answered chorally with “yes” / “no” or one word answers. I think this is so important to also consider but I couldn’t possibly remember for sure who did and who didn’t respond.
Thanks so much! I would appreciate any suggestions anyone may have.
I believe there is no one correct answer to “how often?” It, like so many other things, depends on you and your situation. I constantly assess but enter a grade once a “grading period” (about every four weeks). You can do a number of different things to keep a record, and various people have suggested various ways of doing this.
“Non-verbal responses” are things like smiling, nodding or shaking the head, thumbs up/thumbs down, going to one side of the room or the other, going to a specified corner, giving the “don’t understand” sign, and anything else that does not require the student to utilize the speech mechanisms. A non-language verbal response is laughing at the appropriate time, which indicates that the student understood a joke or the humor in a “communicative act”.
Hope this helps.
Keri you asked:
…My problem was (and still is) the “consistent / inconsistent observable non verbal responses”…how do I accurately measure that?…
That term [credit: Barbara Vallejo in DPS] “observable nonverbal responses” in my view is at the core of jGR/ISR. It implies a less quantitative, less concrete measurement of what we see in our students. This makes people nervous. Don’t be. Just rate your kids on the 1-5 scale in terms of how they present to you in class. Follow the chart. It’s genius. Then forget about it.
And use it often or as little as you want. I rarely used it because, surprise of surprises, I could just look at a kid and rate them on that scale and you can do. Look in their eyes. Rate that. Or count smiles. Rate that. Isn’t this the first chapter of Le Petit Prince? But it’s not a children’s book. It’s real and it’s happening slowly – the detox work or robotic assessment in WL has begun.
So don’t anyone categorize what I am saying here as hippy. Them’s fighting words. It is not hippy. All new stuff is called hippy. It’s not. The new assessment world in WL education has arrived and it doesn’t include the robotic collection of data. Rather, it focuses on the whole person.
Keri my suggestion is that you quantify less. Why work so hard when the research tell us that we can’t know what they are getting in their deeper minds (where languages are actually acquired)? We may present three structures and they may learn three others!
Thank you so much, Robert. Yes, that’s what I had thought the non verbal responses were…but, like I said before, we as teachers pretty much know who does and who doesn’t give those non verbal responses…however when it comes to putting a grade in for it, I like to have something somewhat tangible similar to the points the secretary records, or the pagame cards…I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this but I would love to hear any other suggestions.
Thanks again! This definitely did help!