Kaufman’s Model of Learning Evaluation 

As a first-grade teacher, every year there are students who join the Chinese immersion classroom without any prior knowledge of Chinese, presenting a significant challenge for both the newcomers and the teachers. In this blog post, I'll share how to use Kaufman’s Model of Learning Evaluation to assess the performance of newcomers in the Chinese immersion classroom. This model consists of five aspects—Reaction, Learning, Behavior, Results, and Societal results. Reaction refers to whether students enjoy learning Chinese. Within Reaction, there are two parts: Input is whether they enjoy the instructional materials (textbooks, teaching aids, learning centers, etc.), while Process refers to whether they enjoy classroom activities and interactions. This overlaps with the TPACK model, where Input corresponds to content knowledge, and Process corresponds to pedagogical knowledge.

When students enjoy learning Chinese and are willing to participate in classroom activities, it's a good start! In the learning aspect, teachers need to assess whether students' Chinese proficiency continues to improve, which can be done through formal and informal assessments. It's important to note that assessment criteria for newcomers differ from those with Chinese experience; for newcomers, understanding a class direction is considered progress. In terms of behavior and results, teachers provide immediate feedback to newcomers to help them understand what they did well and where they need improvement. For younger students, they may not fully understand the specifics of what you're saying, but they can infer expected behavior from your feedback (tone, facial expressions, body language, etc.) and reinforce such behavior. In this context, societal results are not applicable.