Purpose 4: Holistic Assessment

I tried these notebook reviews last year, and it was nice to connect with families about student learning. This allowed families to connect with students and give feedback about their student's current understanding of the content. 

Next year, I want to continue to use science notebook reviews as a form of holistic assessment for students, where they are able to share their knowledge of science concepts in their home language. I have adapted the English version of the page that I used last year into Spanish, so families can fill out the page in whatever language they feel most comfortable. For the purpose of this portfolio, English and Spanish are on top of each other; however, when I send this home with families, I will likely print English on one side and Spanish on the other. This will help to challenge English as the dominant language, since it appears first on this handout. 

In order for students/families to participate in science notebook reviews, students will bring home both their science notebook and this flyer to their families. Then, they will share with their families about the content, vocabulary, and experiments we have done in class (typically as a review for a quiz or test) in any language that is appropriate. Families will be able to give feedback about their child's learning on the flyer, which will be returned to school for me to check. Eventually, I would like to take this a step further and invite families to share with the class if they have any relevant knowledge about anything we have learned so as to cultivate effective parent partnerships. 

I have altered the district's writing rubric to reflect translanguaging practices. For some writing pieces, students will be given the opportunity to utilize their entire linguistic repertoire and I will assess their general linguistic performance. Other times, to prepare and practice for high-stakes testing, I will assess students for language-specific performance in English (second rubric). 

At all times, I will encourage students to use their entire linguistic repertoire when planning their essays. In Cumberland, we teach "TIDE" planners for students to plan paragraphs and essays, and "CSPACE" when writing narratives. When students are encouraged to use their entire linguistic repertoire to plan their writing, it will help me to see what the child knows holistically. Then, we can work together to find out how to write what they need to in English when I am assessing a language-specific performance.