Authentic Assessment for Language Learners: Chapter 1

I felt that much of this chapter touched on the same issues that the McNamara chapter focused on. Once again, we see how useless standardized tests are when trying to assess language learners. Not only are they written in a language that may be ambiguous and unfamiliar to many language but they don’t provide enough information for teachers to accurately know how to adjust their instruction to help their students improve.

One of my biggest issues when looking at standardized test score is that I just get to see some mark on a page. We look at the high marks and identify the areas that the student is strong in and then look at the low areas and talk about what we are going to help our students improve in. However, what frustrates me is that I can never know what specific questions the students got wrong. I just see a black dot in the areas they are weak in and really, it tells me very little.

I was pretty pumped to learn that we will be learning more about the creation and implementation of portfolios in the classroom. I’ve tried to keep portfolios for my students before and I haven’t done such a good job. My students’ portfolios are a manila folder with their names on it with a bunch of their work inside. I don’t think that any of them have gone back to look at what they have written over time and reflected on whether they felt they improved or not.

As I was reading this chapter I kept thinking of what I already do in my classroom to assess my students. I try to focus very much on what my students’ strengths are and use their strengths to help them feel more confident in overcoming their weaknesses. I am very lucky that I have the same students for six hours a day. I have a chance to observe them in many different content areas and to determine what it is that they are really good at doing.

On page 7 the author states “authentic assessments take time and careful planning to be used effectively”. I agree with this…so much in fact that I often find myself giving out those multiple choice tests because they are just kind of a “wham bam, take the test and let’s move on to the next chapter” sort of assessment. I don’t have to spend a whole bunch of time coming up with a rubric and figuring out projects. This past summer I spent the greater part of the day just trying to figure out how to create ePortfolios to use in my classroom and still felt like I had gotten nowhere by the end of the day. I know assessment is my weak point as a teacher and although I have been making efforts there are many times I find the end of unit approaching and feel I need to give some sort of test at the end to see if the kids learned anything. It’s like I got programmed to give a test at the end of each unit in teacher college and it’s hard to rid myself of that undesirable habit. However, I am making changes in my classroom and I am trying quite hard to make assessment more of my focus. I will conquer ePortfolios even if I exhaust myself in the process. Authentic assessment, here I come!