Goal #8:  Assessment

The beginning teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, emotional and physical development of the learner.

To demonstrate my understanding and competence as outlined in program goal 8, I am submitting several assessment items.

At Pleasant Lea Middle School, I taught Spanish 1 eighth grade students.  At the beginning of the semester, students started at a Novice low level according to the ACTFL standards.  The method of teaching that I used, TPRS, quickly advanced students to a novice mid level.  Students were able to use the vocabulary that had learned in a variety of settings in both speaking and writing.  Since the entire Lee's Summit R-7 school district has adopted this method of teaching, the teacher knows where they need to be in order for students to progress to the next level.  The next level is Spanish 2 at the high school. 

During my student teaching experience, I was able to assess students in a variety of ways.  In assessment artifact A, eighth grade Spanish 1students were assessed on their ability to create a story with given set of pictures.  Students were asked to use the new vocabulary, using a possessive adjective once and writing two sentences per picture.  There were four pictures students had to write about.  Students were able to interpret the situations in their own way.  This was a very open ended form of assessment.  This particular student displayed her understanding of the subject matter by correctly applying the vocabulary and grammatical concepts that had been taught in class.

At Raytown High School, I taught Spanish 2.  I kept track of their participation in class by using puntos for every correct answer students gave.  This was a way for me to track their participation as well as informally assess where students are and how I could help them succeed in class.  Students were not very proficient in their speaking at the beginning of my placement, but the more oral participation I tracked, I noticed that they felt more comfortable speaking and eventually became better at speaking.  The average participation grade in the 4th trister before I began my placement was 18.  At the end of the 5th trister, the average was 24, some students nearly doubled this number.  This displays a 33% increase due to more oral activities in class. 

In Assessments B and C, Spanish 2 students were given a letter much like a Dear Abby letter.  They had to respond by giving advice to the girl as to how she can become a better student.  Students presented these letters in class.  These students both displayed their knowledge of the subject by correctly apply the new vocabulary and grammatical concepts along with prior information they had learned in previous chapters.

In Assessment Artifacts D, E and F, students are formally assessed in the areas of listening, reading, writing, and translations.  These are assessments from the textbook that I cut and pasted to create an assessment that assessed all parts of learning a language.  Students that were more auditory learners performed better with the listening part of the examencitos, students that were more visual learners performed better on the reading and labeling parts of the examencitos.  These students demonstrated their understanding of the content in the chapter by applying the knowledge in all parts of the language: listening, reading, recall, and application.