ASSESSMENT
In this post, I am writing about assessment because I think people (teachers,
parents and children) are confused moderately about this term.
When I was a child, I was afraid when I had to
do an exam because only I had traditions test in all my subjects. From my point
of view, nowadays, there are several schools whose teachers only do this kind
of assessment. As possible that teachers have a wrong concept about this term
or teachers do not know to put it into practice.
For this reason, I would like to start this
topic by the explanation of three similar terms, evaluation, assessment and
testing, because these are often confused and used interchangeably.
- Evaluation: it is the way that teachers can know if they are reaching the aims that they want to achieve. Some of the tools of the evaluation process can be observation, test, questionnaires, textbook and analysis.
- Assessment: this type includes all the methods that teachers use to collect information about children’s knowledge, ability, attitudes and motivation. Teachers can use many different instruments as self or peer assessment and it can be formal or informal.
- Testing: it is a procedure that teacher can use to assess a child’s performance. Testing use tasks and assigns marks based on quantifiable results.
(Sophie Loannou-Georgiou &
Pavlos Pavlou, 2003, Assessing young learners)
At first assessment can be a threatening word for teacher and above all for children. On the one hand, CLIL´s teachers have to assess of development’s children and it seems a quite difficult because they don´t know how can do it. On the other hand, children are afraid because always they have to do the same traditional test.
For
this reason is really important that CLIL´s teachers know why and what have to assess
to children. They have to know it because it is a necessary part in the process
of teaching and learning and they should assess cognitive skills, attitudes,
learning how to learn and behavioral and social skills. (Sophie Loannou-Georgiou & Pavlos Pavlou,
2003, Assessing young learners)
Such as I
have said before, is necessary that teachers know how have to do different kind
of assessment. They have to be able to carry out assessment in a way for create
positive atmosphere and attitudes towards English and learning in general. There
are some methods for assess in this ways:
- Portfolio assessment.
- Structured assessment activities and tasks.
- Projects.
- Self-assessment.
- Peer-assessment.
- Traditional tests.
- Learner-developed assessment tasks.
- Take - home tasks.
- Observation.
- Conferencing.
(Sophie
Loannou-Georgiou & Pavlos Pavlou, 2003, Assessing young learners)
Finally, I am going to focus on peer-assessment because I think learning and assessment can be more fun when it is done with your friends and they will be more motivated when they have to learn and work in classroom.
Peer
assessment “involves students taking responsibility for assessing the work of
their peers against set assessment criteria” (University of reading (UK), http://www.reading.ac.uk/engageinassessment/peer-and-self-assessment/peer-assessment/eia-peer-assessment.aspx)
Thus, children can be engaged in give feedback to their peers, summative grades or a combination of the two. Besides this is a powerful way for your students to act as the 'assessor' and to have an opportunity to better understand assessment criteria. In this way, it can also transfer some ownership of the assessment process to them and thereby their motivation and engagement will increase.
To conclude this post about assessment, I would like to emphasize on the importance to do correctly assessment because teachers have to carry through all these methods alternately for to achieve it. Also teacher can use the assessment to motivate children to learn because is possible that they aren´t able to recognize the usefulness of have acquired a foreign language in the future.
Now, I
would like that you take a few minutes to think about assessment. What kind of
assessment did you have when you were in Primary school?
What kind
of assessment do teachers use in class nowadays? Are correct?
References:
Bibliography:
SOPHIE LOANNOU-GEORGIOU & PAVLOS PAVLOU,
Assessing young learners. Resource books for teachers. Oxford.
Webgraphy:
University
of reading (UK)
