Assessment

According to Herrera and Murry (2016), there are mainly two types of assessments, formative assessments and summative assessments. Formative assessments are a type of ongoing or in-process evaluation that allows the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson to ensure student comprehension. Summative assessments, on the other hand, refer to the culminating assessments that occur at the end of lessons. No matter what kinds of assessments teachers implement in the classroom, we should pay attention to five aspects when we design assessments: content, administration, reliability, validity, and if we have spanish speakers in the classroom, we also need to take those students into consideration. In my own teaching, I would use quizzes, oral tests or written assignments as formative assessments to see if my students have mastered contents that we have covered in class. For quizzes, I would create 3-tiered assessments. The first tier would be the easiest one. Students who are assigned to this level are mainly less proficient students. Contents in tier-1 assessments are taught in the classroom, and they are mainly repetitive. Tier-2 is designed towards 80% of the students. In this assessment, students will be evaluated based on their understanding of previous contents. The difficulty of questions are mainly intermediate level. Tier-3 would be created for advanced students. Some questions would be like the tier-2 level . Students will be tested on their understanding of knowledge. The rest of questions would be related to students' advanced thinking, like whether they can use what they have learnt in the classroom into real life, and for English, it would be more related to the application of the language. By evaluating existing assessments and designing new assessments by teachers ourselves, we may have a better understanding of the standards and also the key points in our own teaching.

Reference

Herrera, S.G. & Murry, K.G. (2016). Mastering ESL/EFL methods: Differentiated instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students (3^rd ed.). Upper Saddleriver, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

This course focuses on the assessment of ESL students. By taking this courses, teachers can understand the selections of appropriate ESL assessment instruments, their administration, scoring and interpretation in a more thorough way.

TESOL Standards:

Standard 1b: Language Acquisition and Development

Standard 3a: Planning for Standards-Based ESL and Content Instruction

Standard 3b: Implementing and Managing Standards-Based ESL and Content Instruction

Standard 3c: Using Resources Effectively in ESL Instruction

Standard 4a: Issues of Assessment for ESL

Standard 4b: Language Proficiency Assessment

Standard 4c: Classroom-Based Assessment for ESL