Teaching Students With English As Their Second Language

I believe assessment is important and is the basis of planning for instruction, whether it is diagnostic prior to learning, formative during units or lessons, or summative to evaluate student learning. Rowan’s quote in Every Teacher’s Guide to Assessment, "After all, in the end, the problem is less the idea of testing itself, but how we design them, apply, them, and make use of their data." definitely has an impact on my assessment practices. I feel it is necessary to make sure the student acquires all aspects of the learning. Assessment should be used to bring a value for students. Within my instruction, I implement daily formative assessments which may include turn and share, quick writes, graphic organizers, online discussion responses, KahootIt, and other forms. Designing the appropriate formative assessment to match the lesson is important to assess how the learning is taught and whether the students are showing progress. In addition, I have worked on building blocks of formative assessments in checklist style leading up to the point of reviewing for a summative test. Each of these are checked off as completed and instant feedback is given. Feedback from an assessment is essential to student learning and how a teacher will ensure the content is being acquired.

The term ‘formative assessment’ is used to describe the activities and processes used by teachers and learners to gather information that informs future teaching and learning. Assessment becomes formative if the information gathered is used as feedback to adapt and modify teaching and learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998, p.2). There are a variety of different methods and techniques that can be used by teachers and learners that can contribute to enhancing learner progress. These include

Assessment, both formative and summative, plays a significant part in the learning experience as it determines progression and enables learners to demonstrate that they have achieved their desired learning outcomes.

A formative assessment provides informal feedback and information during the teaching process. This assessment measures student progress and performance thus allowing further improvement and development. It can also assess the teacher’s progress as an instructor, enabling the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods.

Assessments are the process of evaluating an individual’s learning. They involve generating and collecting evidence of a learner’s attainment of knowledge and skills and judging that evidence against defined standards. Formative Assessments (quizzes and practical tests) are used to

There will be formative assessments on student’s participation, progress, and effort during the lesson. For instance, in the individual handout sheet, student’s ideas and thoughts on each question will be assessed, and the differences of the responses between the Bellringer and the exit slip will also be evaluated as well. The Bellringer can be examined as a pretest that teachers can use for determining what students already know (Woolfolk, 2015, p. 571). The summative assessments will be held mainly on students’ English language development in order to examine the level of accomplishment students gained (p. 571). For native speaking students, teachers will examine the quality of student’s response on the homework assignment sheet and the usage of tone, diction, and literary devices in building arguments on the critical response. Also, student’s reflection on fellow students’ contribution regarding the argument construction and the racism will be examined as well.

The use of formative assessment practices with ELL students are observational checklists, peer assessment, and performance skills. By having students writing a lesson plan, the roles between the teacher and the students will be changed. This is a formative assessment that engages students in distinctive ways. Students are focused on goals and objectives. It gives them confidence. They are creating a lesson. For ELLs, this is a tremendous accomplishment when done correctly, as well as when done in a collaborative classroom environment. It promotes constructive feedback. Students play an active role in formative assessment. They not only perform the task given, providing evidence of their current learning, but they are also involved in self-assessment (and sometimes peer assessment); therefore, developing and enhancing autonomy.

Initial assessment can be described as set of procedures we go through to determine what previous experience, skills and abilities a learner has. The process may include skills scan screening for numeracy, literacy and language as well as learning styles and skills abilities, and recognise any prior R.P.L .The results of initial assessment should form individual learning plans so that training and support are delivered that will meet the needs of each learner .Formative assessment is the on-going assessment made in order to adapt to learners needs and respond to learning. Formative assessment helps you keep record of learner’s progress and

There are characteristic differences between the two uses of assessment: • Summative comes at the end of learning episodes, whereas formative is built in to the learning process; • Summative aims to assess knowledge and understanding at a given point in time, whereas formative aims to develop it; • Summative is static and one-way (usually the teacher or examiner judges the pupil), whereas formative is on-going and dynamic (feedback can be given both to the pupil and the teacher); • Summative follows a set of pre-defined questions, whereas formative follows the flow of spontaneous dialogue and interaction, where one action builds on (is contingent upon) an earlier one. The term “assessment for learning” is often used interchangeably with “formative assessment”. In 1999, the Assessment Reform Group defined assessment for learning as “the process of seeking and interpreting

Formative assessment-Teachers that collect evidence about what a student still needs to comprehend and adaptions that are made to meet the student’s needs.

Assessments are vital to the educational process. They provide feedback about what the students know and what they may need to learn in order to obtain the content within a given curriculum. It provides teachers with a glimpse into the student’s readiness on a particular topic or subject. One of the six key principles of having an effective differentiated classroom is having a formative assessment that informs teachers on the effectiveness of their teaching. It also provides teachers with the readiness levels of their students and shows them exactly where the students’ readiness, interests, and learning profile needs really are (Tomlinson, 2014).

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting further student learning and enabling improved student learning through purposeful interaction and providing meaningful feedback. Formative assessment is specifically intended to generate feedback and feed forward on performance to improve, accelerate and enable learning (Sadler, 1998). Formative assessment can and should occur throughout a daily class, through implementation of learning and teaching strategies that lead to both oral and written feedback. The Formative assessment approach is equitable and reliable, producing some significant indicator of student developed understanding that links directly to the syllabus outcomes. This then allows the teacher or other students to respond by trying to

In the article Classroom and Formative Assessment in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Learning written by Ketabi and Ketabi states the importance of utilizing formative assessments to drive instruction (2014). “Teachers should continuously assess their students in order to help teaching and learning progress” (Ketabi and Ketabi, 2014, p. 435). The article gives a brief overview of different forms of assessments. Ketabi and Ketabi go on to explain the difference between formal and informal assessments. Formal assessments thoroughly planned and developed to acquire evidence about a student’s success in prearranged times while informal assessments are “occasional and unplanned comments and feedback” (Ketabi and Ketabi, 2014, p.436). The article continues to

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and