In addition to these authentic, communicative assessment we are also intentional about using more traditional, comprehension-based assessments. Throughout Spanish 9 and Spanish 10 students are given 4 exams. These exams are meant to gauge their ability to recognize vocabulary in written and spoken form, and use the language effectively in novel but controlled settings. These exams are the tool that is most closely aligned to what students may encounter and how they would be assessed in a traditional language program. The idea is that the last exam is equivalent to what a student may be taught the first semester of a Spanish 101 class at the college level. Ideally, with the exception of some grammatical rules, our hope is that a student who completes our Spanish 9 and Spanish 10 curriculum with an 85% or better could go into a beginning college level Spanish course and be prepared for success.
The first exam we give is the diagnostic on the first day. The content of this exam is similar to a traditional exam you may see at the end of Spanish 1 in High School. Students do not see their results, and it’s not for a grade. We analyze the results and identify student trends in previously learned content or lack there of. With that information Annamarie and I decide how we want to proceed with our classes. A few trimesters there was such a wide discrepancy in previously learned content that we decided to split students who tested highlighly and teach them different content. Then in an effort to limit tracking, the next trimester we split students who had previously mastered basic vocabulary of a specific topic (say school) and exposed them to more vocabulary related to school, some discreet grammar concepts, and more complex tasks such as authentic listening activities. Last trimester so few students demonstrated previous mastery of Spanish vocab topics, we co-taught all classes and differentiated within each lesson between students working on advanced skills to others working on basic skills. This trimester we have a few students who demonstrated significant mastery of many of the topics we plan to teach, so our plan is to get them more nuanced speaking tasks that will develop more grammatical content as well as a more expansive vocabulary set. Moving forward the goal is no matter how wide the content mastery may be within a classroom, to keep students together as much as possible, and all students have the same tasks with differentiated final products.
The second exam we give is the Spanish 9 mid-term. The content of this exam is what we have taught so far in the class, at this point usually school vocab, interrogatives, basic questions and answers, polite phrases, weather and numbers in a variety of situations like time and dates. We also have short answer questions based on culture and a brief reading based on school vocabulary. This exam has a large amount of listening comprehension, and their first reading assessment. We focus more on listening and reading in this exam because it helps to review previously taught material before moving on in a novel, more advanced way that just translating words. We also give this exam as a way to prepare them for the final, and to practice study skills. We show students their results and help them identify what vocabulary they still need to master.
The third exam is the comprehensive Spanish 9 final. This exam covers all content we have taught, and we focus on students writing novel sentences using the vocabulary. The fourth exam is the comprehensive Spanish 10 final which covers all content taught in Spanish 10. Again, if a student successfully completes this assessment with an 85% or better, we believe that student will be able to walk into a college-level beginning Spanish class and have the background knowledge necessary to be successful.
Each of these exams are given using Quia, an online quiz making site similar to Google Forms or Quizlet. Quia provides more robust features like upload audio and visuals in exams, and the ability to copy, modify or re-use other exams. A nice feature quia allows us is to collect data on each students and classes. As we continue to work to align our curriculum we can begin to see how our students progress. We have begun to keep a spreadsheet of each team’s scores of all exams, and every topic tested, and we use this to identify “big picture” trends. This helps us make sure our exams are all aligned to reach our end goal of students comprehending as much Spanish language and culture as possible. While we still need to tweak some aspects of the exams, (for example making sure the Spanish 10 final assess all previously taught topics) twe hope to maintain the general structure. This will help us see the effects of lesson changes in the curriculum on student achievement. And as we continue to try new things, we will see how students are able to retain or grow in their Spanish skills.
The next step for us is to give students Quia accounts so we will easily be able to see individual student achievement as it relates to these four exams. Students will also be able to see each exam they took and which questions they answered incorrectly. It will also allow the instructors to give feedback on why a student got a question incorrect. This will help students identify areas for growth.