Dec 6, 2008

assessing the standards

I am doing a curriculum map for my school - part of the purpose of this map is to get a schoolwide gap analysis - to see which standards are not being covered and where throughout the school. This is shown through attaching standards to each of the activities in class. Each skill I am teaching has to be tied to an activity and an assessment and I must show that I am covering all of my standards.

I am having a great amount of difficulty with this because the 5C's are not all assessable at least to my way of seeing, and because TPRS itself is so flexible and spirals so much.

Communication - This is the easiest one since we speak primarily in the target language nearly everything we do ties into either interpretive or interpersonal communication. But how do we work on presentational communication?

Culture - We work on perspectives and practices as well as perspectives and products through some of our readings, but I am not very good at assessing that.

Connections - This is fairly easy we study so many other topics in our classrooms - history, geography, etc.

Comparisons - Other than having students make the requisite venn diagrams for holidays and discussions of explicit grammar, I'm not sure how to assess this. This is one of those areas that I usually cover fairly improvisationally. Students mention that this works just like in their native language, etc. But that is something that develops organically in each class and cannot be put into a predictive map.

Communities - I have no idea how to assess this standard. The first substandard is that students will use the language within and beyond the school setting. The second substandard is that students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using language for personal enjoyment and enrichment. Now, those are laudable goals and I'm sure that is where we are all aiming for. But, I don't know how to assess that students are using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment, or that they are using Spanish outside of school. Even if I could think of how to create assignments that would have students doing these things, I believe that the standard is pointing towards students should begin doing these things because they can and they want to - not because it is an assignment so the activities would be pointless as far as the standards go.

I would love any thoughts/suggestions/input on this.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Gifted Education 2.0 Ning