Mindee asked:
Could someone help me with the idea of assessing via word count. I’m going to pretest w/a series of pictures (story) and ask kids to write as much as they can about the picture. I’ll do it again at the end of the year. How do I know what is a reasonable amount of words (sentences?) for a 4th grade class to be able to write? Would I be better giving them questions/true false/cloze type questions?
Admins don’t actually read the research. They don’t have time. If or when they do read it, they do not really grasp it. How could
I got a question: “Hi Ben, I am preparing some documents that support CI teaching to show my administrators. I looked through the blog and
A teacher contacted me awhile back. She had been attacked about using CI from a team leader. I told her to get some research from
We don’t need any more research. In academia that would be a frivolous comment, but as a classroom teacher in languages I support it. Yes,
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5 thoughts on “Smart Goal Assessment Using Word Count”
I used 100 words in 5 min. for 7th grade last year and half the class was already able to do that by January. My motto is go small or go home on goals like this. Especially if this is part of a formal eval. system. I was our union president when we transitioned over to the goal-setting evaluation system. The formal eval. system is NO PLACE to “push yourself” or “explore”. It is a place to COVER YOUR ASS AND KEEP YOUR JOB. Go small there and go big in the places where it counts, like the actual work you do in your actual classroom.
Damn you’re good.
How laughable is this? I done even know if i am being evaluated by my goals. We do smart goals as teachers not by what the students do/learn or get assessed on. We have to have objectives an alignment to the objective and an assessment. Does all of Oregon do this Tina? BTW, i got a about 5 kids who couldn’t pass 70 words on a freewrite last year. This year one of those same students is got over 120.
Update. I’m very lucky. I have a great Principal who’s giving me a lot of freedom. I’ve chosen to do my Smart Goal on question words. All I do is give a multiple choice quiz now and at the end of the year and show the kids have learned their meaning. I have no doubt they will learn them this year. Not sure they would have last year. I can’t wait to come up with gestures for each of the question words (any suggestions welcome) as well as giving jobs to kids who call out L1 when we use one of the interrogatives. Any other strategies welcome although I think just from all the daily reps, it’s going to be pretty easy.
I love this, Tina: “Go small or go home,” on formal/summative assessment benchmarks/standards. Hysterical. It captures both how tired I am with having to fabricating these assessments for admin and how much I need to keep my sense of humor about it.
Mindee, I think that if your kids are feeling good about their growth in the L2 and in relationship with the classroom community, I doubt your admin will really care what specifics you place on some data related assessment.
Let’s not forget the kind of individualized, anecdotal assessment Claire highlights.