Languages
Performance standards to assess skills
01/21/2009
I would be interested in hearing from Chinese teachers about what performance based standards you use to assess your students, particularly in the Elementary school.
Do you start out with Student Outcomes and then create your own assessment activities to assess speaking, writing and reading skills?
Do you keep Portfolios of student's work as an ongoing record of their progress?
Are your assessment techniques performance-based?
I am very keen to hear how teachers are handling the job of assessing and what guidelines you use.
Comments
I am not a teacher of Chinese but have the good fortune to work with many excellent ones. In our immersion program they use portfolios quite effectively as an indicator of their ongoing progress. We are moving more to performance based assessment with clear rubrics which has positive observable results in student progress. The teachers can speak to this much more effectively than can I, but I see the results of their work and am impressed. I am not sure if you are asking for whether these methods are effective or the specifics of how they are used. I can speak the the former, they are effective.
Yes, I agree the use of student portfolios to show progress is an excellent tool.
I have talked in another forum about the "I can" statements I have found used in the UK, which are very much learner-centered and allow students to be engaged in mapping their own progress in studying Chinese.
I am particularly interested in what content standards teachers use in the US.
Are teachers more likely to use the National ACTFL standards or state foreign language standards?