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Speaking Assessment "Game" – Tina
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15 thoughts on “Speaking Assessment "Game" – Tina”
Congratulations, Tina!!!
Thank you ?
GET THIS ON FILM!!!
I love that a rubric can become a game or a tool to empower reticent speakers of L2. So much of improving learning/teaching is just changing our perspective.
…so much of improving learning/teaching is just changing our perspective….
Me likey.
I like the word game board for rubric. By the time kids are in hs, they are pretty tired of rubrics but they never tire of games!
This is brilliant! So many jumping off places popped up in my mind after hearing this (and not the kind of “jumping off places” that pop up after a long rough day that ends with immature sophomores! Lol)
Sophomores! Who invented them? How do such jerks turn into wonderful juniors in a few short months?
That’s exactly it–I don’t know what happens to them, but I’m very glad to have them as juniors also so that I can think of them as people again!
I just tried this in one of my classes and it was GREAT! Not only could the kids say way more than I thought they were going to be able to, they really enjoyed the experience, were challenging themselves to say more, working in their pairs to help each other improve sentences and pronunciation AND were really pleased and surprised that they could say so much without ever having practiced speaking.
I’ve noticed in my classes this year, since making the switch to CI, that the students have tremendous comfort in the language. This is a big deal in the high-poverty school where I work. Students are willing to read texts and guess, even when they’re not sure. They’re ready to listen to stories and read, even when it’s challenging. Then, today, I saw that they’re willing to jump into speaking because it feels natural to them; they’re not intimidated by it. I’m so grateful to see their enjoyment and belief in themselves.
This is so very different from my colleagues’ students’ attitude towards the language. I can’t express how much it warms my heart to see my students bloom in the CI environment. So glad I waited until March to ask them to speak!
Gretchen what you describe here is exactly what we want as opposed to “gains in the language”, since we know that they will all acquire at different rates in a natural way that is unique to each one of them. When you see
…their enjoyment and belief in themselves….
shouldn’t THAT be the goal? Why isn’t it? Probably bc we can’t measure enjoyment and belief. Now, if a person could acquire a language in the 500 hours we have in a high school program, I could understand all the testing. But when we only have a small fraction of the time needed, it just seems so silly. Well, when I read what you wrote, I am filled with hope for the future anyway.
And there is always the equity piece that enters here. Maybe someone could do a study of who succeeds at those tests – white, brown or black kids. Or maybe they – who worship at the alter or data gathering – don’t want that kind of data.
Another equity piece — students coming from trauma, students who receiving SPED services, students who are homeless/highly mobile and miss class, and students are ELLs all can find more success in a CI classroom. I believe that it’s not all that often that teachers see their SPED students and their TAG students engaged with equal interest and sense of confidence in the same assessment, and, yet, that’s what I saw using Tina’s speaking rubric ‘game.’
I think this speaking game is great, and I just created a similar game board thinking that I might try it as we’ve jumped into post Spring Break aka Get Me on a Sunny Warm Beach and Let Me Swim with the Turtles mindset. But I wonder if Tina would have her students play this game if she didn’t feel pressure from your admin to show students’ output. Just curious. You know, students gain confidence from understanding us when we speak to them. As long as they value that and we as teachers have the magic (or situational circumstances… like I have a class of just 12 students) to continue the conversations and stories into June, then go for it!
Tina mentions “partner book boxes” above. I’m not sure what that means but I’m envisioning like students having the side cut out of a big box to place on their desk while they are reading. A kind of instant reading seclusion. Sounds great to me. I got tons of extra boxes in my house right now. I’m going to bring them in tomorrow.