Projects

The following

are some calendars

made by students

from 10th level.

They had to include

holidays are celebrations

from Costa Rica and

a country of their choice. They

also had to represent each

month with one or various

pictures.

This one in      particular  is made out of wood, strings, and mailers. It is used to store important documents such as receipts, notes,  bills, etc....   This student is now promoting her calendar.

Pronunciation

Ever thought about the consequences of not going to English pronunciation classes?

Here is a sample…

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

Chapter 6

Assessing Speaking

We find ourselves living in a society in which many of our students feel ashamed to speak English in and out the classroom. Some feel this way because they don’t want to be laugh at or they are afraid of not being understood. This is causing our kids to grow out of the English language, making it their enemy. Many do not realize how important English is (not only in but out of the classroom) until they are out in the business world, searching for a job, a way to make a living. Therefore, we must see to it that our students fall in love with the language and try to take away the fair that invades them. As teachers we must also find the way to fall in love with the language but most importantly with teaching. Let’s fall in love again with our profession and encourage our students to speak English.

What do we understanding by speaking? It is an important conduit of communication that we use on a daily basis. In order to achieve our goals, we must prepare tasks that simulate real life situations for which our students will see the need to speak: asking and answering questions, giving and providing information, among many others.

 

Let us understand that there are oral skill categories:

1. Routine Skills: These are principally linked with language functions and the spoken language required in certain situations.

2. The Improvisational Skills: These are more universal and can be brought into play at any moment to elucidate something or to maintain a conversation flowing or to even change topics.

There are many factors we need to bear in mind while elaborating our speaking assessment. A very important one is whether to focus on fluency or accuracy. The truth is that both of them are important. On one hand, fluency is important for students but only when there is an important amount that can impede students from comprehending something. On the other hand, accuracy helps students use language appropriately and formally; it is more technical. You can balance both on your assessment sheet not to leave either one out, but remember that these should be handled with care because in a frenzy demand of excellence we can cripple our students’ language development. Remember that mistakes will be made and we cannot go ballistic on our students for that instead make it a time to explain what went wrong and always in a positive way.

One more factor to consider is the procedure for grading. Teachers tend to be a little flexible or very hard on students during oral tests, so a very good solution is to have other teachers to grade along your side having in this way a second and third opinion. So you may have an interlocutor who interacts with the students and an assessor who will focus on writing scores and making notes.  These teachers will help you by discussing and agreeing on a final score for learners. This idea will make your test much more reliable and of course much more easy if you and the raters use an assessment sheet.                        

There are various techniques you can use to assess:

Warm up: Its purpose is scholars’ relaxation

Level check: Its purpose is to determine students’ speaking proficiency level.

Probe: Value maximum height of student speaking skill.

Wind down: Its purpose is to get students to relax.

Some activities you can use are:                              
 Reaing / Reading aloud / Finishing sentences

Picture cue

                                                    Role play

Information gap

Dramas

Debates

Retelling a story

Wok with these ideas and be amazed of what you and your students can achieve!!

Students Project

The details my students put on these models were amazing. Final touches were great and the fact that many used material that can be reusable makes me think that they care for 
 nature which is very important.

Students Projects

Due to the new program from MEP, teachers must assingn projects to their students for each trimestre. So, these are some of my students projects for this year.

They had to build a model that represents a business, they had to describe it using the

vocabulary learned in class and they had to explain the vision and mission of their business.

Learning can be fun

Choosing a Textbook and Other Printed Materials

By Prof. Latoya Murray H.

Choosing a texbook may seem to be an easy task to carry out but the truth it is not anything like that. It takes time and dedication to find a textbook that can fullfl our students' needs as well as our own. 

There are many things that we need to take in account before deciding to use a textbook. Content for example, is an important part in a textbook, and we need to look at it because that is what we are going to be using to teach our lessons.

According to the article from Curtain ,H & Pesola "Many schools programs come up with a curriculum that is not dependent on the use of a text series for at least the two first years, but it is very hard to mantain a well articulated local curriculum over a large period of time without reference to a professionally developed text series. In the absence of  satyisfactory commercil text series, some school systems have invested the funding and the effort necessary to create succesful locally developed materials for an entire elementary school sequence."

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

A Practical Guide to

Assessing English

Language Learners

Christine Coombe

Keith Folse

Nancy Hubley

Michigan Teacher Training

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Languange Learners

Chapter 5

Assessing Listening

Listening was considered at first as a passive skill because it could not be observed. But now we know that it goes hand in hand with the speaking skill and that makes it interactive.

Listening is more than just hearing words. It is an active process whereby students receive and construct meaning from and respond to spoken message.

Based on Nunan, before creating appropriate assessment to evaluate the listening skill we are due to understand its nature. There are two models of listening, which are:

1. Bottom up, where comprehension occurs when the listener successfully decodes the spoken text.

2. Top down, where the listener is directly involved with constructing meaning from input.

Based on Buck 2001, there are three major approaches to the assessment of listening abilities:

1. Discrete point: Breaks listening in components and assess the separately.

2. Integrative: The whole language is greater than the parts.

3. Communicative: Listener must comprehend the message and use it later in context.

We want our students to understand spoken messages and be able to comprehend what they hear outside, on the radio, on the news, and others. Furthermore, listening can take our students very far in life.

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

Chapter 4

Assessing Writing

By Licda. Latoya Murray H.

Is it important to assess writing in our class rooms? Of course it is. It’s of great importance that our students be capable of expressing themselves in a written way. Therefore we should come up with our own creations or modifications of writing assessment.

Consider the two major approaches in writing assessment which are Direct and Indirect.  Indirect assess correct usage of grammar and it focuses on accuracy while Direct assess students ability to communicate and it requires the students to produce.

Consider also the basic elements which are:

-The Rubric: Instructions                                                                              

-Prompt :The task

-Expected Response: Teachers aspirations for students

-Post: Effectiveness of the writing task

Two techniques you can use to assess writing are: Free writing and Guided writing. Free writing requires student to read a prompt that poses a situation and write a planned response based on a combination of background knowledge and knowledge learned from the course while guided writing requires students to manipulate content that is provided in the prompt.

 

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

By Licda. Latoya Murray H.
Assessing the Skills

Assessing the four skills can be difficult at times because sometimes teachers lead to put their feelings in the assessment process. How is this so? Well there are many kinds that really het to teachers in the way that they see them as role models and want to like them. This unable teacher to project the reality of these students

When creating our assessments we must make sure that these be valid and reliable and must important they should reflect the goals of the course.

Chapter 3

Assessing Reading

Reading is considered as an invisible skill, but isn’t something we can’t see invisible? Reading is the way people take in new information and the way they blend or complement that new information with their background knowledge. Therefore, reading is no longer invisible because teachers can acknowledge or see how troublesome it can be for students to decode, recognize and understand readings or even extracting the main point or ideas from a text.

The bottom line here is that there’s nothing invisible about reading but most importantly is that we must take it as an interactive skill.

How can we assess reading? To assess reading you must take into account the two reading sub-kills which are:

-Major skills         Deals with reading quickly and carefully.

-Minor skills         Deals with understanding.

Also bear in mind the specifications. These are aids that help teachers and test administrators establish a clear link between the overall objectives for the program and the design of particular assessment instruments. These are: 1. Content 2. Conditions 3. Grading Criteria

Taking all these ideas in mind and using them for the creation of your assessments, you will find yourself helping your students learn a lot better.

A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

Chapter 2

Techniques for Testing

By Licda. Latoya Murray H.

What is testing? What is a test and what is it good for? A test is an examination or evaluation of something or someone and testing is finding out how well something works. When it comes to human beings, testing tells what level of knowledge or skill has been acquired.

Test items are the foundation of tests and the backbone of most assessment instruments. There are various items that can be used in test such as: selection and copy, true and false, matching, and multiple choices.

Items are classified in Objective which test mostly recognition and Subjective which requires students to provide open ended responses.

Items are classified by the way they are scored. Objective test items can be scored based only on following an answer key. It does not require expert judgment, specialist knowledge.

Scoring subjective items require that the maker have knowledge of the content area being tested. Make this kind of item depends on impression, human judgment, and opinion at the time of the scoring.

But are test reliable? They are when you test what you teach and hopefully when your students study what they have seen in class.