Daily, Informal Assessment

1. Daily, Informal Assessment and how it works.

2. Formative and Summative Assessments and their functions. What is summative assessment? What is formative assessment? Why are summative assessments useful? Why are formative assessments useful?

3. Formative Assessments When do we use them? When have you used formative assessments before? Formative Assessments

4. Peer Dynamics in a comprehension check Students may give false answers if the comprehension check is not measurable. Students may be reluctant to admit that they don’t understand the material. Peer pressure comes from other students. Students desire to be perceived as the brightest—or at least not the dullest. Isolationism and the distaste for “slowing down the class” occurs in classes. Students may desire to move forward and not review material.

5. Measurability What it means and what its function is What is measurability? Why is it important to measure our students’ comprehension checks? Which of these is a better measurement of students’ comprehension: A thumbs-up and thumbs-down comprehension check A cloze exercise

6. Measureable Checks Quizzes Cloze exercises Think-Pair-Summarize Writing exercises Think-Pair-Question Question and answer session Written and verbal summaries Peer explanations Notebook checks Think-Pair-Share

7. Measureable Checks What other measureable checks do you know? Write three ways that you can check your students during class.

8. Timing The When and the Why of comprehension checks When should you conduct a comprehension check? Why did you choose that particular time? Is it necessary to schedule a comprehension check into your lesson? How frequently should formative testing be offered? What is a good “rule of thumb” to use to determine when to offerformative testing?

9. Student Learning Outcomes and how they influence formative assessments What are student learning outcomes? How do we write student learning outcomes properly? What is the relationship between SLOs and formative assessment? How do our short-term goals influence our long-term goals? Lesson planning, scheduling, and sequencing = small, medium, and large

10. The Grand Design the CEF and Socratic Seminars What is happening in the field of TESOL in other cities, states, and countries? What is the discourse in the field that you are in? What is the Common European Framework and why is it important? How does the CEF relate back to formative assessments? Inspiring creativity, imagination, and intellectual growth through formative assessment: the Socratic Seminar!

11. Higher Order Thinking Formative assessment, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Socratic Seminars

12. Socratic Seminars and Formative Assessment Open ended questions about the English language material, e.g.:In which situations do you think you will use this new verb tense? • Providing texts with ambiguous or controversial endings, e.g.: O’ Henry stories (available at AmericanEnglish.state.gov) • Ask students to summarize the story (formative assessment opportunity) • Ask students to discuss why the author ended the story in that fashion • Ask students to write their own endings Questions about whether “mastery” of English is possible.

13. Practical Examples “What are we doing?” vs. “Do you understand?” Review and summary: how, when, why to formatively assess? The teacher’s dual role as administrator and educator How does your student benefit? How do you benefit?

14. Contact David Murphy English Language Fellow ELFPachuca@Gmail.com 722 553 5049