I can't emphasize enough the importance of assessing your students in the first few weeks of school! Determining a baseline for each of your students is essential to providing appropriate instruction to all students in the room. Perhaps most importantly, it helps to ensure that students are accurately placed in the correct level class. This is not only best practice as a teacher, but also creates a more equitable educational experience by making sure that students are placed in the class where they will succeed and learn most.
When to assess your students
No one likes to return from summer break and take an assessment on the first day of school. I would argue it's not ideal for the second day either! As mentioned in my previous post about an interpersonal speaking activity on day 1, I like to spend the first two days getting to know my students and beginning to make connections and build a sense of community within my classroom. Within those first two days, I am sprinkling in some grammar review to make sure my non-Spanish speaking students are beginning to recall prior knowledge in the target language. Depending on how these few days go, I usually assess on day 3 or 4 of the school year. The reason I don't want to wait much longer than that is twofold - 1) I want to see how much Spanish my students remember walking into my classroom after summer break, and 2) if any schedule changes are recommended, there is usually a short time frame when I can try to make that happen.
How to assess students
My curriculum is aligned with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, and I want to know that my students are placed in the correct level class. To do so, I develop a presentational writing task that builds in proficiency level across three separate prompts. When thinking about my Spanish 4 honors class, the goal is for students to obtain an intermediate mid level of language proficiency by the end of the school year. Therefore, I want my writing task to reflect a few things. First, I want to ease into the task (I don't want to scare anyone away within the first week of class!) with a novice task asking students to describe their lives. Theoretically, this should be a relatively easy task for my students if they completed Spanish 3 honors the year prior, and it immediately raises a red flag if a student struggles with this initial prompt.
The second prompt for my students is aimed at a more novice high to intermediate mid level as they reflect on a past event. Students, if placed in the correct level, tend to do well on this one as well.
Finally, the third prompt triggers more an intermediate mid to high response depending on text type and vocabulary. Remember, the goal for the end of my school year is for my students to obtain an intermediate mid level of proficiency, so if a student easily writes at an intermediate high (or higher!) level with this most challenging task, a different red flag is raise.
So what do I do with this information?
This presentational writing task provides a variety of useful information for me. First, it helps me get to know my students and their interests through what they write about, and of course it provides me a glimpse into their language proficiency. Next, it helps me determine if the student is placed in the correct level. The first two prompts reflect grammatical structures and vocabulary taught in previous years, so if a student is struggling with those two prompts, I start exploring the situation a bit more right away. I usually begin by reaching out to a school counselor to see if a switch to a different level class is even possible, and then I speak directly with the student. I ask them how they feel about class so far, how their general experiences have been in Spanish class, and whether they think this is the right class for them. This conversation can go many ways, so it's paramount that I speak directly with the student to get more information. Sometimes, it can simply be a case of extreme test anxiety, so then I assess them in other ways to see how they do. Depending on our conversation, I take next steps, speak to caregivers and other administrators, and potentially initiate a change to a different level.
However, what tends to happen more frequently in my classroom is the exact opposite - I find a few students every year who are typically native or heritage speakers who write extremely well, use the present subjunctive required in the third prompt very well, and add other advanced structures that I didn't even elicit in the prompts. What typically happens is these students take a placement exam if they just moved into the district or haven't taken a language class before, and may have been placed in an incorrect level. Usually it takes something like a presentational task the first week of school to determine this, thus the importance of assessing students early on in the year! With this group of students, I follow the same procedure as above by speaking to the student in Spanish and figuring out next steps. If we are all lucky, the schedules (and stars) align where they can jump into a more advanced class right away. If not, I know that I have to challenge these students and collaborate with them throughout the years in creative ways where they can grow as language learners and perhaps help their peers succeed as well.
Every once in a while a student is incorrectly placed in my class but is unable to move levels. By determining all of this within the first week of school, I immediately know that I need to provide additional support for this student to ensure that they are successful this school year. Your school or class numbers may not even allow for students to change levels - in which case assessing students that first week is still essential so you can meet the group of students in front of you and adjust your instruction accordingly.
Regardless of whether any schedule changes are made, this presentational writing task provides me valuable information. It helps me plan my instruction moving forward and helps me provide a more equitable teaching environment that meets students where they are and propels them to where I want them to be by the end of the school year. The task I outlined above focuses solely on presentational writing, but interpretive and interpersonal tasks should follow shortly after so you can get to know all "modes" of your students toward the very start of the year.
Where to begin?
If you previously haven't assessed your students in the first week of school or want to change the ways in which you assess them, reflect on the proficiency levels students should have achieved in previous years and where you hope they arrive by the end of the year in your class. Think about prompts that are relatively easy to answer with vocabulary students should be able to recall at this point in their language learning experiences. The last thing you want is for a student to leave a prompt totally blank simply because they don't know what to write! (Note: If that does happen, investigate a little bit more to see why they did that.) Most importantly, make sure you provide prompts in progression that elicit the language proficiency levels that will help you determine if the student is in the right class. Don't forget to read the assessments shortly after students complete them as they don't provide much value sitting in a stack on your counter unread!
Do you have other ways to get to know the proficiency levels of your students toward the start of the school year? Share your thoughts below!
Happy Teaching!
- Dana, Señorita's Spanish Class
