Tina reports from a class today:
“OK, so I have this new rubric I made for the new book called the Speaking Rubric. It basically has the kids working in partnerships and speaking to each other to respond to questions and it has them score their partner’s utterances on a 1-5 scale, with 1 being responded in English and 5 being saying 2+ sentences to respond. So I was like, I want to give the kids a chance to show off for the admins. The reason that I invited the guy to my LAST CLASS of the DAY and one with 38 kids in it and CRAZED eighth grade boy energy ALL OVER was because the perennial complaint is that the kids are not “doing anything with the language” and I wanted them to see free-choice reading and the kids outputting.
“I had them get their partner book boxes and read for ten minutes. I thought about having them share out but I was like, no, we need time for the “Partner Speaking Assessment Game” (everything’s more fun with the word “game” in it, right?) so I just had them get out their “game boards” (that is to say, RUBRICS) and commence the game.
“First part is to tell them something and draw on the board (a visual story modeled on Story Listening). I made up a story about a dog that gets elected president of the Super Dogs club because he fakes his way onto public transportation.
“I told the the story and wrote key words on the board. Then I asked them questions and they spoke to their partner who ranked their answers on the rubric, oh wait, I mean game board.
“They really liked it and so did the two seventh-grade classes I practiced on. In fact, seventh grade pretty much thought of it as an ACTUAL game. Eighth grade told me that on their French class chat group (uh first time I knew THAT existed) last night they made a new joke – that all I did was stick the word “game” onto the name of a test.
“It was really fun! I think that the admin should be duly impressed by seeing kids reading, listening, and speaking like that. I was, at least.
“Note, this is the FIRST TIME I have ever asked them to output in speech. And they were outputting two-three sentences EASILY. They were saying words I know I have NEVER EVER said to them…that I can assume only came from reading.
“Now I have unleashed the beast cause I am sure that they are going to want to talk all the time now. Whatever, sounds fun. I almost teared up listening to some of them, and seeing how proud they were.