Tapping into peer-to-peer teaching with assessments

I am constantly looking at how I am assessing students and trying out new ideas to help the students do a better job of demonstrating their knowledge. With this in mind, I tried a partner test for my new level 1 class. It started as an idea from necessity...we had three snow days in five class days, and there just wasn't enough time to get everything done that needed to be accomplished before Spring Break. When I decided upon this partner test, I had no idea that it was going to turn out to be a great idea.

So, I had the students sit two to a table and let them use notes and their partner to complete the test. They were allowed to use any notes and their partner at their table, no one else and no other resources. (I was pleasantly surprised by how some of the pairings worked out - I had some A/B students with B/C students.) I had created the test so although there would be some quick, easy answers from the notes, there was quite a bit of long answer: translate the sentence, write original sentences with specific words, and writing an original paragraph.

Amazingly, what happened was not a furious copying down of material from the notes, but great dialogues about how and why some grammatical things happened. I loved watching all of the students work together to come up with the right answers. Some worked together the whole way, some each did what they knew and then compared and discussed what was missing. Others (mostly the A students) did the test on their own and then swapped papers to peer review.

Yes, I know that this is not necessarily a true assessment of what each student knew, but to be honest, I thought the dialogue that came from doing this was well worth it. The most interesting part was that when I finished grading the assessments, the majority of students performed the way they normally do on tests. The only exception were my lower achieving students, who, for the most part, did better than normal. The best part was that in the days since we did this, I have heard more students doing peer-to-peer teaching, even the lower achieving students.

Since this went so well with level 1, I thought I would try something similar with my level 3 classes. We are studying adverbial phrases with the subjunctive, which is really some tough material. So, what I decided to do was have the students take the assessment normally. Then I gave them 10 minutes to compare and correct mistakes on their tests. Again, there were some great discussions about some tough grammatical concepts. I did have two students (out of 80) that really made out because they clearly had not studied at all, but the majority were able to tweak and refine their answers.

I guess I am just a sucker for peer-to-peer teaching. The students all have so much to offer each other and it is very difficult to tap into all of their knowledge. I don't think it is bad for students to discuss the concepts and then make decisions about what is right. I wouldn't do it all the time, but with a really tough concept, thought it was a good idea.

What do you think??

My favorite Saturday sessions at CCFLT

The last day of the conference had some fantastic sessions, but two stood out as my favorites. First was The Essential Question presented by Yo Azama. This session followed his great keynote, and was packed. (As a side note, when I first read the title of this session, all I could think about was Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.) this session was a great follow up to e session on mode assessments from Friday. When I create my thematic units, I have "essential questions" done, but I realized that I need to expand those questions for each of the different modes. He showed some wonderful examples of projects that he has done in his class with the assignment sheet outlining the summation and formative assessments for a unit. I am going to work on recreating the template for these assessments and one that is completed with an assessment. (Look for them soon in the Helpful Docs tab.)

The summative assessment that he outlined was for his technology/inventions unit. For the summative assessment, students create a new product that could be sold in Japan and the US and create a commercial for their product. For the interpretive, they need to explore Japanese and American products and commercials - demonstrate an understanding of the gist. The interpersonal summarize assessment was for the students to email product ideas to gather market research. The presentational was presenting their market research and their commercial. Lucky for me, this is the last unit I do in level three, so I think I will be "stealing" this idea!  **Check out my recreation of this doc in the Helpful Documents Tab)

Again, Yo is a great presenter, and is someone I would love to have a long chat with about how his class runs. I found the video samples that he showed impressive as well. Guess that is is why he is ACTFL's Teacher of the Year!

My other favorite session of the day was the last session of the day, and I was glad that the snow held off so I didn't miss it. "Three vocab strategies that change how kids communicate" was presented by Mira Canion and Ya-Wen Chang. Now anyone who has been to a language conference in Colorado has probably seen Mira. She has given fantastic presentations about getting kids reading, and I was so happy to see that she was presenting something new this year as well. The presentation centered on how we need to be teaching vocabulary, which even though is the crux of any language, there is so little time devoted to this topic. To demonstrate the technique, Ya-Wen taught us some Chinese (with some help from her friends). They presented words and sentences on the screen with pictures to illustrate what they were teaching. They also used props, like a basketball, chocolate, and a hamburger as well as exaggerated gesturing to convey meaning. They taught us some simple Chinese words and phrases, which I was pleased to realize that I still remembered today. They reminded me that the focus needs to be on healing students acquire the vocabulary, and it was our job to present it in a manner which would interest them and had them using the words right away so they could start adding them to their working vocabulary. After doing a basic presentation of new words and phrases, they suggested that we use them (orally) in a story as well since the brain is wired to remember words in a story.

I am ashamed to admit it, but after participating in this session, I realized what a disservice I am doing to my students. I have thought about new and different ways to introduce vocabulary, but it has never been something that I truly focused on. I had talked about playing games, having discussions, and other ideas for introducing vocabulary, but I haven't followed through. So, thank you, thank you, thank you ladies for making me realizing that I need to get with it and make this a TOP priority.

Finally, finals!

So, after almost an entire semester (finals are next week), the majority of complaining about the flip has ceased. Students grades seem to be spot on, in comparison to past years and the students performance in Spanish II. There are a few exceptions, but they have extreme circumstances. For instance, I have a student that is usually an A student who has a C in class. But she missed some class and never came in to do a retake of a quiz.

I am looking forward to our last Unit Assessment, which is a conversation about the students futures. We have done quite a bit of practice, and I love hearing my students say "Hey I can say way more than I thought I could!". I feel like their listening and speaking have improved quite a bit over the semester....much more than their peers from previous years.

I will say that since there are so few quizzes (6 for the semester) and only 3 Unit Assessments, the kids can be in big trouble if something goes badly wrong. For example, I have 6 students that wrote their fairy tale (the Unit Assessment for the last unit) with a translator and they received a 0. They are all looking at Ds right now. After the Unit assessment next week, there grades should improve, but they can never truly recover from something like that happening.

Some students have asked for more quizzes, shorter vocabulary lists, and there are a few holdouts for a word bank. However, I really don't believe that 35-40 vocabulary words every two weeks is excessive. I keep hoping that they will choose to study over the entire 2 week period instead of always waiting for the last minute.

As I believe I have mentioned, every student can retake every Benchmark Assessment (or quiz). They are required to have "a ticket" which is more practice for grammar, or writing vocabulary words a certain amount of times. I have increased the "price" for the retake as we have continued through the semester, hoping to encourage them to do it right the first time, and for many of them, this has worked. Still, I am surprised by how many students never take advantage of the retake. When I talk to them about it, the answer I usually get is that they are too busy with sports or their other classes. Sad :(

The Final Exam for the semester is going to be an application of the material that they have learned this semester. This is making some of my students crazy, because they want a study guide, a list of exactly what will be on the test, etc. I have told them I am not giving a grammar or vocabulary assessment. They are going to do a writing sample, which will be a letter based on our fairy tale unit. The prompt incorporates fairy tale vocab, future tense and direct and indirect objects. The example I gave them to try was as follows:

• Cinderella lost her shoe again and the prince found it. Write an email that says: 1. When you will return it, 2.  When you will get married, 3. Where you will live after the wedding.

The listening section will be a listening that I gave them earlier in the year. (I have told them that the listening would seem familiar, but the majority seem to not get it). It is from the Challenges in teen life unit. It is a video where a girl is telling about her life. The first time I gave it to them, I had them make a list of unknown words and define them. This time, I will give them some open ended questions that they will have to answer. When I write them, the questions will include verbs in the perfect tenses.

The reading selection has presented a bit more of a challenge, and honestly I am still wavering between a government reading and a legend. I am probably going to use the government reading but ask simplified questions. I have decided that I am going to give them the reading first and then after 10 minutes give them the questions. I am SO tired of students not reading things, just finding the answers to the questions.

So, my plan is that the final will be fairly easy if they did their work all semester. I think it will be way better than my exam of old which had the reputation of being "scary" and a "monster". I'll keep you posted!

Thank God for Unit Assessments!

Well, thankfully, even though the kids grades were not improving the way I wanted on the Benchmark Assessments, the Unit Assessment projects looked much more promising.

I had begun the Unit by going over my expectations and putting the kids into groups. I had given them a small amount (and I do mean small) of time in class to work on scripts, etc. The kids had the last two days of the unit to finish up a few tasks and work on their project.

I have to say, clearly, many of the kids were reading their "memorized" scripts, but at least the majority didn't look like they had never seen the script before. They Spanish was all pretty good, and some of the videos were genuinely funny. Check them out under Spanish III Class Projects on my website http://ehscardinals.com/?page_id=1715

So, with the Unit Assessment, my students grades greatly improved, and the grumbling about dropping my class at semester seemed to die down.

But, that didn't really take care of the root problem, did it. I had to find a way to fix the gap in their performance on assessments and their knowledge. After the Unit Assessments, I could tell that the majority of the kids got the material.....so why couldn't they do better on the Benchmark Assessments?

What to do????

Is the problem flipping, the new curriculum, or both?

With the early success of the review unit, I was excited to get started on the first full unit. It is called "Challenges in Teen Life" and I thought that with the flip we would be able to get so much more accomplished and the kids would be able to do so many fun things with this unit.

When I passed out the unit assignment packet, there were plenty of wide-eyed looks. I kept reminding them that these were all of the assignments for the entire unit - 5 weeks. The unit assessment was going to be a video project done in a group. I began the unit by having the students choose either a Judge Judy format or a Jerry Springer format. Then I divided up the groups. I wanted to have some amount of say in the formation of the groups so that no one person was left out, and I also didn't want to have a group that was totally composed of weaker students. Everyone had some of their friends in the group, and almost everyone was happy with how the groups shaped up.

Then I went over the highlights of the assignments and due dates. I made sure I pointed out when the assessments were and what would be on them. We also discussed the new format of the assessments. There would be two benchmark assessments and one unit assessment for each unit. The benchmark assessments would be on vocabulary and a grammar concept. The vocabulary would be in fill in the blank format, not just a regurgitation of a list. The students all nodded and got to work.

When the day of the first benchmark assessment came, I knew something was wrong. I was about to hand out the assessment and I was asking if there were any last minute questions. Students asked me to define to ostracize, to define to conform. These were words that were on their vocabulary list. Not only did they not know what they meant in English, but they were only now asking me what they meant!! How do Juniors not know what these words mean?

That was only the beginning. I had no sooner handed out the quizzes that the students started to look like deer in headlights. They started asking for hints, for a word bank, and my favorite "could I please tell them one this word means?". I had given them practice worksheets for the vocabulary that were in the same format as the assessment. Many of the questions on the assessment had come directly from the practice. I told them all to do their best, and I was confident my reign of "tough and mean" teacher would continue.

The assessment grades were a disaster. Yes, I did have a few As - there are some students that will always get them. However, most of the grades were Fs, and not just Fs, low Fs....37, 26, 14. I was really shocked. What went wrong? Was it me? Was it the flip?

After the I handed back the assessments, I talked to the students. It would seem that many didn't really study, and the ones that had studied did it right before class. And yes, in my effort to use vocabulary that would enable them to discuss teen issues, I clearly went over their head.

Luckily, my plan had always been to allow the students to retake the assessment if they needed to. So, I chalked it up to experience and knew that the next one would be better. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The next one was a little better, but still more than half of them were Fs. Worse yet, many of the students didn't take advantage of the retakes, so the grades were in the toilet. We were six weeks into school, and I had kids planning on dropping at semester. What was I going to do to make this better???