In an online setting, I recommend that we grade our students on two things: (1) the five kinds of quick quizzes that we have at our disposal, and (2) the observable non-verbal behaviors that we see them doing during class, as per the Communication standard.
By grading them in those two ways, we answer the questions:
- What are they actually learning?
- How are they meeting the Standard?
Here are some ways our students have of communicating with us in a Zoom platform when we are using comprehensible input to teach them our language:
(1) We can see in their faces if they are listening with the intent to understand.
(2) We can see if they are responding to our yes/no questions with visible thumbs up or down.
(3) We can see if they are responding to requests for cute suggestions during the creation of a tableau or story.
(4) We can see if they respond to us in any call and response situation that we may initiate.
(5) We can see if they are doing their jobs.
(6) We can see if they are doing the preposition hand signals and other gestures that we ask them to do with us.
(7) We can see and hear if they are chanting and singing with us, if we do that in our classrooms.