SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone
Join Ben (he/him), Bryan (he/they), and Bill (he/him) as they Gaslight (reflect), Gatekeep (read research), and Girlboss (share successes) language teaching!
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SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone
Ep. 19: SLAyyy Dynamic Assessment
Gaslight
Defining Dynamic Assessment
Examples from Language Teaching
Formative Assessment in the Classroom
How are we responsive in our assessments?
Dynamic Assessment
Girlboss
Successfully and Accountably Collecting Assessment Data
Taking Advantage of Opportunities to Learn
Opening Assessment Conversations Via Reflections
Baking Reflection Into Every Assessment
References
ACTFL OPI
Dylan Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment
STAMP Test
AnneMarie Chase’s Magic Cards
Class Dojo
Text us about how you’ve Gaslit, or Girlbossed your language classroom.
Email us at info@slayyypod.com
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of SLA Second Language Acquisition for everyone. We got Ryan back this week. Yay.
FishRod:We miss a do.
bill:and yeah, miss Brian Sach, we're really glad to have you back. And this week we are going to change things up a little bit. We are going to start with Gatekeep and unlock a new definition maybe for you. So in one of my classes recently, I had to. Incorporate a new assessment strategy into a lesson plan. And I stumbled upon this term dynamic assessment, which once I give you the definition of it think you'll see that this is something that we kind of already do quite a bit. But now you have a name for it. So the. The definition comes from a 2012 article from Ani and a body and di dynamic assessment of L two learner sociocognitive development via Web 2.0. Not gonna go into, into the article, but it had a good definition of what dynamic assessment is. So. Wanted to use this definition here and then just kind of want to talk about how we see this in the classroom, how we've done things similar to dynamic assessment, if not exactly like dynamic assessment, those things have gone well and how how we girl, boss So to start off, here's the definition, and mind you, this is from 2012. So when they say new, not that new. Dynamic assessment is a new approach to assessment, is based on dynamic interaction between the examiner and the examinee in which the examiner mediates the examinee with support in the form of leading questions and prompts. It is the examinee's responsiveness to mediation that provides an indication of their likely future development. Long 2007 Sternberg and. KO 2002 point out that a central tenet of dynamic assessment approach is that it considers abilities to be malleable and flexible rather than fixed. The qualitatively oriented dynamic assessment, addresses learners' problems in a highly flexible way through individualized mediation. So past all of the academic jargony stuff what do we take from that? I.
FishRod:We were talking a little bit pre-recording about how this reminds us of the act full OPI and the format that that takes where the examiner is listening to the responses that are given at the beginning of the exam in order to formulate questions at the right level, at the right at the right content geared to elicit certain samples of language from the examinee. And this is really to kind of put them so they can put their best foot forward. But also responsive to, you know, if they answer it a question at a certain level, that then the examiner can push to the next level and ask a question that would elicit a more advanced sample of language or a superior sample of language, et cetera. And this also just mirrors kind of what we do. I think what we do when we do whole class language teaching and whole class conversation is that we are trying to be responsive to the students in front of us. And that we have a lot of tools at our disposal to make language comprehensible, but also to support interaction and to give us material for further conversation as well.
Bryan:And it's one of those things that really just seems like, well, this is just good teaching. Because
FishRod:I.
Bryan:you know, if you ask a question and students are not able to answer it, and then you just move on to another question that's at the same level, I. I mean, you're not really using the information that you got from the first question to advance the student's learning, which is the whole point of assessment. So it's kind of like to me, like if you are not doing dynamic assessment, I wonder what. you're redoing
FishRod:Mm-hmm.
Bryan:your formative assessments in terms of like questioning in class and things like that? It's easier I think in a lot of ways to envision it in terms of formative assessments and informal assessments rather than, you know, something done at the end of a unit or that needs to be, you know, recorded in a grade book or something like that. Which I suppose there must be some way to do that given, you know, we have a formalized assessment such as the OPI that. And employs that methodology, but I would say probably most teachers aren't. If you are, let us know. I know that I'm not, but yeah, it's just another way to think about like, yeah, how are we using the information that we're gaining from our assessments and to the best benefit of our students.
FishRod:It reminds me also of the, and this is a, a, a, hold on, maybe see if I can find it really quickly. Maybe I can just paraphrase. I'm gonna give a, I'm gonna paraphrase the definition of formative assessment that I got from Dylan, William which is just activities that we undertake in the class that provide us evidence that will help us. Make a better informed decision of what to do next. So we want, you know, either we are confirmed that we're on the right course and we can continue on with the learning, with the conversation, or that we receive information that our students are not ready for where we are. I. Trying to push for right now and need to backpedal, reteach make some connections more explicit do some, you know, do some further activities to deepen the learning before pushing the students to that next spot. But so anything that gives us that information to make a better informed decision. And it sounds like, based on the definition that you read to us, bill that dynamic assessment is responsive in this way. But perhaps in a more live active setting. Question mark.
bill:Yeah. I, I definitely think, yeah, it's, it's responsive as well. And like we, that came to mind with when you're talking about OPI well. So like I've mentioned before, I've done stamp at school and, the reading and the listening portions of those proficiency tests are, responsive in that. Okay. As you continue to get questions correct at a certain reading level or a certain listening level you keep getting questions. If you're answering, I don't know, like the, how the test actually works on the back end or anything, but say you get like five questions at novice low and you answer all of them correct. Then they're gonna start asking you novice mid questions. But if out of five, maybe you miss one, they'll still push you up to the next level until you, until you no longer are answering consistently at a certain level. And that's kind of how I'm thinking of about this as well. in this assignment that I made, I actually put it into a rubric, which I don't think I would suggest. It was just like, for the purposes of that assignment that I did, I needed to have, like how I was going to, or how, how I or the students were going to evaluate their work or their completion of a task. So, started thinking about it, like what would this ad if it were on a rubric somewhere like but I don't think I would ever, ever, ever put a numerical grade on it. Like if on one end of this spectrum of dynamic assessment it. students can do things completely independently and on the other end, or like towards the center is something like student like teacher gave prompt to remind student of a word, or teacher like circum located to help the student understand something like that.
FishRod:Provided the TPR gesture maybe.
bill:used a TPR gesture. I know that I often start to just like say the letter, like the first letter of the word, like,'cause I'm like, oh, I know you know this. Like, I, like I know that you've processed this a lot, this word a lot. I know that you know how to say this. And so I'll just start with like the first sound of, of the word and. A lot of times not all the time, but students will get the rest of it. Like, yeah, see, like to was in there, like you just needed to pull it out little bit. So they weren't able to do that yet completely on their own, like complete the sentence that they were trying to write or say whatever they were trying to say. but they weren't able to do it completely independently. they had all of the stuff in their head already. So really I was just kind of eliciting what they already know rather than let them just like ask straight out like, I don't know how to say this word and I don't think I know it, and I give up. I think it could be like a self-assessment well, maybe like, which I think we've seen those before. Like, I can do this on my own, I can do this with some help. Like we've seen those kind of self-assessments before. But this is kind of putting it on teacher observation rather of student progression rather than putting it on students. You know, we're our own worst critics, right? So like, I might think I can't do something yet, but the teacher might be confident that I know how to do it. So like, how are they, what? How are they determining the level of support they think I need? Are they just gonna give it to me or do I actually already the thing? I just need a little bit of help. So, yeah. Students are always harder on themselves on self-assessments than I am. cause I see what they do. They just see more they could do.
Bryan:I find that students, my students, because for some reason, even though I tell them this is not where your grade is coming from, they still think that somehow that is. Where their grade is coming from. So they give themselves top marks on every category, even if it literally says like, you know, very simple language, like, you need to provide evidence of X, Y,
bill:Show me the receipts.
Bryan:can't do it. And so, yeah. Which I have that problem
bill:Yeah they're learning. just, they're just youngins
Bryan:Mm-hmm.
bill:still learning that confidence.
Bryan:And it just makes me think too like we just did our state testing and I think the state tests are now di or
bill:Mm-hmm.
Bryan:I'm not sure if dynamic is the right word for it, but like, you know, based on how many questions you get correct, or what kinds of questions you answer correctly, they ask you more difficult questions. And actually when I back, back in the day when I designed our placement test. For world language which is a Google form with reading and listening questions. It's kind of like that, you know, it's like the more you can do, the more questions you get served and then the higher level that places you. So I kind of think in terms of like formal assessment it makes sense for more proficiency assessment rather than performance because it's like, well, I mean, the point of a proficiency assessment is to see what you're able to do independently
bill:Right.
Bryan:curriculum and whatever. So it's like. That's an important measure for that kind of thing.
bill:And you just saying that kind of reminded me or kind of pointed out to me like. But that's kind of where the proficiency performance distinction is kind of lying. Like how much, how familiar are you with the topic? cause it's something that we've been doing in class performance versus either Kenya still do this when, from back whenever you learned it, or can you adapt and. Use what you already know in a new situation. So, hmm. Hmm. Have to think about that more. Yeah. I don't know where else I was going next. Oh. so I do have a request from the community. I. If anyone uses Canvas and has played around with Mastery Paths at all, I think could be something where like, or at least this idea of dynamic assessment got me thinking about mastery paths.'cause I think understanding is you set up these different assignments and when students. Achieve whatever this other assignment gets unlocked.'cause that's where they should go next. But if they score less, then it goes back to like a remediation. And I've liked the idea of it, but it seemed like so much work to like try to set that up. cause hate having to make the assignments all the time on, on. The Internet's computer webs things I'm just like, Hey, this is what we're doing. And then I the assignment and put points on it. But,
Bryan:Yeah.
bill:don't build the stuff on the assignment or like,'cause we're doing everything else on paper. You would just have to have everything already printed.
Bryan:Yeah, I mean, it actually sounds like something that I did
bill:Yeah,
Bryan:again, back in the day when I used Classcraft which unfortunately no
bill:I just, I haven't heard that in,
Bryan:to.
bill:that in a while.
Bryan:so in the, it started out as. In the vein of like ClassDojo of like a classroom management PBIS kind of system where you're able to award points for good behavior, whatever. But then they like timed it into like assignments. And so basically they had this feature called quests. And so the whole thing about classcraft is like, it's kind of like a fantasy setting. Like, oh, you're on an adventure of learning and you got your team, which is your classmates, you know the table group that you're with, and like one of you has these whatever. And so it's like the quests were like. of playing into the storytelling aspect of that, but like, kind of, I'm not sure how to put this, but like, making the assignments seem like an adventure. So it's like in order to, you know, progress in the story, you need
bill:Conjugate all these verbs.
Bryan:and, or, or whatever the assignment is. And so like a feature of it was that if like as the feature of the like marker of the quest or like the point. Tech point, whatever. It's like if they pass it, then they can move on to this objective. Or if they don't, they, they can be forced back to do a remedial kind of assessment or whatever. And so I, I have used it for things that were on paper and also things that were fully online and it was really great actually. And I kind of, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, man, that was fun and I wish they still had that, but it doesn't make us anymore. But it also was a lot of work. I'm not gonna lie, so.
FishRod:That's what I'm thinking and like we a little bit pre-recording, we're talking about. Systems to kind of keep track of what sorts of supports are we giving to students in their language use? And we want to be aware of those things so that we can gradually take apart those scaffolds and, you know, watch our students flourish more independently. But that like, kind of like Brian said. Crass cra crass class craft sounds like that you could make a whole world outta that. You could make a whole, you know, class moment out of that. And I can imagine the time investment it took to get set up and then to maintain and then to revisit with every class and kind of learn the language associated with it. And,
bill:Mm-hmm.
FishRod:They, I was telling Bill and Brian before we recorded that I have used Anne-Marie Chase's system of Magic cards before which is not Magic the Gathering. However, it is also magical. Basically, she keeps an index card for each student in her class with their name on it, and she uses it as a way of randomization for calling on students. So to try to, you know, in the vein of equity sticks or whatever. You know, title, you've given them wherever you are. So pulling kids at random so you're not always calling on the same kids. It also helps with cold calling if you are doing that. And then she records the quality of the student's response directly onto the card so that she has essentially a marker of their performance in class relative to what has been going on in class. So the learning material, so you could do this different ways. You could mark down, you know, like, oh, a plus is for if they answer in more than one sentence, and like a check is if they answer in a sentence, a minus is if they answer in just like a word or a phrase, or you could put a little zero if they are unable to respond or an x if they were just not paying attention and you had to repeat the question. Just as a way to amass lots of data on the students as the quality of their responses, while also, I mean it, again, it serves the randomization. Goal as well. And I have been doing that in previous years. Successfully in that it was useful to me, and I don't know that I was always using it as much as I would want to, as consistently as I would want to. This year I switched to using ClassDojo because I have a little iPad that I take my attendance on that I can also use ClassDojo on to assign points kind of in a similar way and do randomization in the same way and, you know, build groups really quickly. And, and it has, its all those little tools essentially built in. And I was like, ha ha. Technology. But I'm finding that I'm doing less of the magic card sort of assessment and I have kind of less of a written down on paper version of the quality of unsupported student responses because I have been hesitant to use my iPad just'cause I. Find that I want to look at my students more rather than looking at the iPad, it's like it's so real that we live in a world where like if a screen is present, like your eyes are gonna go to the screen. And I don't wanna fall down like the toilet of just being on the iPad the whole time. My students are like, make fun of me, and they call me a sticky iPad baby. Like a, a baby that's like given a sticky iPad to like be diverted in its attention so that way it doesn't ruin family dinner or whatever. And so they just call me sticky iPad baby. Just as an aside enough about me. But you know, I already, like, I already am aware that like our students have problems with devices themselves, and my school has implemented a cell phone policy. That makes it so that cell phone use during class time is like completely prohibited to the point of taking phones away, be a campus supervisor and like all sorts of stuff. So like we're being fairly hardcore with them about screen time and about being conscious about it. And I, I think as a millennial adult am trying to be conscious of my own screen time as well. So all that to say is that I have this useful tool. Like I essentially moved the paper thing digital. And then I'm just not using it anymore.'cause I don't want to because I just don't, I wanna be looking at my students and make a decision in the moment who I want to ask the questions to. So I'm, I'm reflecting that I enjoyed that system for the randomization aspect and for the lots of. Semi quantitative qualitative data that I was taking on student responses. I kind of had, you know, like, oh, this con student is pretty consistently responding with just words in class. I wonder if there's a way to push them. Or at least, you know, most of my students are responding in sentences. How can I get them to elaborate a little bit more? I missed that aspect of it. And so I'm reflecting now that like, in order to be perhaps more dynamic in my assessment I need to have a quick at a glance like. Of where the students are in these like spontaneous conversations that I can then use as kind of the springboard for what comes next.
bill:Yeah. And, and for me, like recent, I think I mentioned this before, like one of our values at school is intellectual engagement. And like if I, I don't know, I'm starting to be at with like. Grad school stuff. I'm becoming more and more data minded, I suppose. And I want to have, like if I'm going to, if I'm gonna make a claim that they're not engaging intellectually, like, here's here, here you are. Like so I don't know. I feel like I have to support every single thing, every single decision. I'm gonna cut this out. That was a personal, personal thing. But think it would be nice to have. At least said at a glance, like not that it's their grade, but like, are they doing what they need to, to get the most out of class? and, you know, participation looks different for different people. And I'm not necessarily talking about participation I'm talking about like like are they. Jotting things down when they've got ideas. Even if they don't wanna speak'em out. Are they trying to, when I ask like to do like a little turn and talk am I hearing them speak like off topic in English, which is also a behavior thing, but like, are you taking advantage of every opportunity to succeed. So that was just an aside. But like when they are off topic, they're not taking advantage of, opportunities to practice revisiting the language that we've already used in class and that that's gonna have an impact on performance later. I.
Bryan:Yeah, I, I guess I'm kind of hearing like using. A system to track student behaviors in class, I guess, so that you can intervene in terms of like, are they on task or are they, you know, taking advantage of the opportunities you give them to practice.
bill:Yeah.
Bryan:But I guess kind of in my mind, I was seeing dynamic assessment as more of
bill:Yeah. I, I, I lost the,
Bryan:they
bill:yeah, I lost the, I lost the plot in there. I went off on a tangent.
Bryan:That's okay. It happens to all of us probably.
bill:yeah, so it is like about the mediation that they need.
FishRod:I've been thinking about while you were talking to about. That assessment? I don't know, maybe sometimes I think of it as like, and maybe a lot of this fall into the trap of thinking it as something that produces a grade essentially, that like, you know, we produce an evaluation, a score or something. But I think that it also, in order for it to be most effective for the student in moving their learning forward, also needs to be in conversation with them. And so, you know, talking about. You know, talking about Bill's thoughts of, you know, are the students using their time best for learning? Are they applying themselves as, as you know, as much as we hope that they can? I think that any assessment that we do should also maybe be partnered with, you know, a reflective assessment by the student of themselves and then try to square those things next to each other. Communicate to the students somehow efficiently. You know, this is what I saw while the student is saying, you know, this is what I saw myself do. And trying to meet in the middle, so that way we can talk about, you know, like, Hey, yeah, you are. You know, I noticed you're switching to English in moments that I would want you to stick, stick in German. Can you next time, if you are uncertain what to say, can you, I don't know, raise your hand or something or, you know, provide some sort of out or, you know, rely on your bank of useful phrases or ask a, you know, unrelated question just to keep the conversation going. Something like that. Because again, like we, we don't want it to be something that we just do to students. We also want them to build the self-awareness and the self-efficacy to, in those moments kind of evaluate. Like, I'm feeling lost, I'm feeling stuck, and so what can I do? And if they, you know, some students just have that bank of strategies and either just go, oh, well the teacher clearly doesn't want me chatting in English, so I'm just not gonna talk. And then other students are like. Oh, I don't know what to do, so I'm just gonna tell my partner I don't know what to do. And then whatever happens after that is between, you know, us and God, I guess. And so, you know, then, then things get wild and crazy. So, yeah, I think that any assessment activity that we do as the teachers, if we're assessing in the interpretive mode, if we're assessing in the interpersonal mode, et cetera need to be paired with some sort of student reflection. And if you're struggling with how to find a structure for that sort of thing, as I. I was gonna say was, but maybe, certainly always am is like, how do I provide that structure myself? If you wanna make it easier on yourself? There's a fantastic book called The Roadmap to Reflection by Kimberly CLE Davis and Tiffany Dalton Lopez. That has reflections specific to world language teaching that just sentence frames or, you know, multiple choice things that the students can fill out as a way to reflect. And they tie in. Two, the different skills of reading and listening and speaking and writing. But they can also tie into kind of bigger conversations that we would want to have with our students. Goal setting, future you know, like future orientation, self-efficacy self-confidence pride things that we want students to build in their learning as like language learners. But again, we have to open those conversations through the assessment. Like, this is what you can do. Which helps hopefully build their identity as a language learner and language user. But then also starting to get them think about where, where they're going next and you know, take a moment to bask in the goodness of what they did, but, you know, build that footpath kind of to the next step.
bill:I think we might have someone who's really good at making sure students have reflections their learning here, Brian.
Bryan:Is that me? I was gonna say like if you, if you go back to the, the Latin root of the word assessment, it comes from asari and Latin teachers don't drag me. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but it means to sit beside. So as a teacher giving an assessment, it's not really about. Generating a number. It's about, you know, sitting behind and guiding the student to learn from the experience actually. And so on that note of reflection, I actually use a lot of materials from the roadmap to reflection. I have students. Write a reflective essay on their their language acquisition experience throughout the semester at the end of each semester. So they have to, you know, look back at their prior assessments and other work they've done in class and follow, you know answer those reflection questions that are not only about their growth in the language itself, but also like. Their perseverance and pride and all those fun things that you mentioned. And the first time I did that, I was so struck by the, like, quality or I guess the value of what students were being made to. Write about and think about that. I made it like 10% of my students' grades. So 90% comes from actual language performance and 10% is the reflection that they do and, and, and other things that they do throughout the semester, like keeping a journal and things like that, that I can't get into it. And maybe a different episode, but yeah, I thought it was that important that it needs to be like that's actually what they do for their final in my class because they do IPAs integrated performance assessments. To generate that 90%, but like by the end of the semester it's like, tired. They're tired, like we need something else to do. So that's what they do during the final period. And I, it's again, so valuable that I've kept it and we do it every year and students are really used to like going throughout that, going through that process and that they start thinking about like, oh yeah, I can keep, I should keep this because I want to write about it later. And. You know it's been really, really helpful, I think, because oftentimes, like as teachers who teach for proficiency and, you know we, in language acquisition, we might find that students are not always metacognitively aware of the progress that they're making in our classes. And by asking them to reflect on these kinds of questions and formalize it, you know by turning something into the teacher, that's a way of kind of. Having them notice it, like, oh yeah, I have actually made a lot of progress and you know, here's the proof.
bill:Love that. That's great.
FishRod:And if, if, if people are listening to this being like spilled beans, like what sort of questions are you asking? I think even something as simple as providing like a three question. I have like these quarter sheets that I can print on demand and just then just cut them up into four and then pass'em out to kids and that they can answer the questions is like something I enjoyed about reading, writing, speaking, listening today, I have noticed improvement in my reading, writing, speaking, listening today because. What, and I wonder if in the future I can, whatever it is. Even just that it kind of helps build the, the pride in what they've done today. The kind of like awareness of improvement as well. Again, like sometimes our classes can feel like just talking, which, because it's the means and the end of language acquisition, like we are so fine with, but as students who are. You know, put in a school system that emphasizes products and end grades and things like that, it can feel disorienting and kind of, you know, pointless even. You know, we can give them that, that inner sense of momentum that helps hopefully make them, you know, lifelong language learners and kind of gives them the sense that like every little bit that you do counts for something. It counts for your acquisition, it counts for your future ability to use the language. And so even those three questions, you can apply them to kind of any. Any mode you like and that that can do a lot to build that, that internal momentum and start that conversation with you as the instructor about, yeah. I have noticed that you're using more full sentences class. I have noticed that you're doing better to tune out distractions. I have noticed that, you know, those sorts of things can be good moments of affirmation and confirmation between the teacher and the learner.
bill:And I think that's kinda like another thing that I was thinking about with Dynamic, dynamic Assessment is that it's ongoing, like nonstop. it doesn't have to be like, it can, like in the context, in the definition, it was about like an assessment, but like if we were. Always informally assessing our students you know, whether it's with like Annmarie Chase's card magic cards, or if it's on a clipboard that you keep, I think one of my, like big takeaways is like, me, I think it would be beneficial to have some sort of running tab of like. This is where students are like, like you said, like have some, have little symbols like plus because they answered in a full sentence or Just like that gives me something to look at and be even more specific with my feedback when it comes time to Feedback on an assessment or something. Like if I say, Hey, I noticed that in your speaking assessment, you did this, this, and this. I'm noticing in class this, this, and this. So let's try to like build that part, build up the not formal assessment interactions. To see if that'll help out on the to see if that'll help out on the formal assessment, like some comments that I've given before and include things like I, like I see you, you to talk, for example, wanted to talk about what time someone woke up and whatever it is. And we talk about this all the time on like during weekend chat. Like what time did you wake up this morning? Oh, he woke up at this time. She they woke up at this time. so that is a place where you could like really lean into like pick up that phrase, that vocabulary. So it's just like, which I guess that's more on me too, but like. Because I lead that discussion. but also just these are the things I'm, no, like, these are the things that maybe you could pay more attention to, but that, yeah, I'm getting back to just like regular assessment, or regular like ideas of assessment. Like, this is what you did, this is what you can do to improve. So. I don't know. Now I've, I've circled back on myself. I think
Bryan:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think these are all good things to think about.
bill:Just helps me be more reflective, I guess.
Bryan:guess. Yeah. Like really what I would say to those listening, like if you're wondering like what to take away from this, just like think about like what are you using your interactions and assessments of students for, like, are you doing anything with that? And you know, can you think of ways that you can use the information you're gaining to push students further? And I again, like, I feel that this is something that like. Good teachers just intuitively do. But like we, it does help to be able to describe, you know, those things that, you know, what good teaching looks like.
bill:And to just be,
Bryan:I
bill:Conscious of the reflection that we're doing.'cause I think if, you said, like we, we do do this all the time, like. That's why this topic was interesting to me because I'm like, oh, this is something that I do and I have like some words to describe it now. And now that I can like talk about like the whole process, I can leverage it better because I'm understanding what's going on in real time and. I can be like, oh, yep. Like that's a piece that's some data to inform my teaching now. And then, and the one more thing that I wanted to kind of like, I don't know, toss around the idea of dynamic assessment being qualitative rather than quantitative. So it's about like observation, not just like a number of. Like number Correct. On a test or something, which I think, you know, our use of proficiency rubrics or proficiency inspired rubrics, kind of already does. Like we are forced to put. Qualitative information on, you know,'cause like language doesn't have just right and wrong answers unless it is like just a fill in the blank a vocab quiz or something like that. There's no right or wrong answers. And I mean, I see that being a struggle for students as well, like someone who might, they might perceive as. Doing worse in class because how when they speak up, they make mistakes. when it comes time to perform, it's not about how often you are, right? It's not, or it's not about how often you have spoken, quote unquote correctly. There are a bunch of other things that go into play with it. So like. If you've got a huge amount of vocabulary and you're like using really descriptive language, but you've got some subject verb agreement issues, and I see a perfect perfectly written sentence, but it doesn't have very. Like, I don't know, specific vocabulary to what we're talking about or whatever, like, you know, those, not to say they even out, but like there's so many things that go into assessing language more than just right and wrong. And able to show that is really. It's and it's hard for students to understand. I, I mean, like, I know you did a great job with you, like, you know, did your whole study on getting students to understand your so like we know what's possible. I just need to go re-listen.
Bryan:Yeah. And I think like. I actually do bake in reflections to all of my assessments as well. Like after, like all my students know, like after they do a writing, after they do speaking, they have to, they have to do a reflection. It's like part of it. And so I find that like, really that's where the sweet spot is for pushing them because you know, like for example, like I have like a self-assessment rubric that they can use and like. Like a, a sheet that like describes different levels of performance just broadly in whatever mode we're focusing on. And students can look at that and kind of identify where they currently are and like see just clearly like what the next steps are for them. And like, again, they have to justify where they're at. And so making them think about that over and over again, I find. Has been a lot more helpful than just like handing back a number and like they look at it and throw it in the
bill:Yeah. Ben, you got any final thoughts?
FishRod:No, but I think I dunno, it, it, this conversation just reminds me to, I. Build in that sort of metacognitive awareness of how a language acquisition works, again, because it is so unusual compared to a subject matter. And that can be just through these little reflections.
bill:Mm-hmm.
FishRod:that we throw at students on the regular to keep them accountable also to themselves and to, you know, to help reinforce the habits of language learning that we, we know they need. They need to be paying attention, they need to be responding to questions, they need to be looking at the things that we're doing to support visually. And hopefully that these, you know, can increase this sort of self-regulatory behavior. And kind of the awareness that. Yeah, I dunno. Sometimes kids just need to know that they're doing it right. Like, like, yes, you are, you are increasing your language skill today because we had a conversation about this. And that will help increase your language skill. So this has kind of been just, you know, another, another reminder for me to stay, stay looking at my students, you know, not at the iPad. And ask them questions afterwards about how it went and what their experience was so that we can keep growing together.
bill:Yeah.
Bryan:So something I've been kind of toying with that you just made me think of it rather than necessarily I. Including like, you know, some kind of quantitative measure of like how much mediation a student needed to perform a a task. I've thought about the idea of somehow including like just the, how much a student has grown in terms of like paying attention to their own reflections that they're making from one unit to the next. Like, have they. Like, okay, they made the observation. Have they applied it? You know, have they done something to improve because like every student has room to improve and, you know you might have had the experience of having a heritage speaker or someone who's, you know, gone to immersion school, you know, has some kind of advanced level over everyone else in your room. And they may meet all of your targets for the course quite easily, but that doesn't mean they don't have room to grow. And so I've been thinking of like. Could there be a way to incorporate that somehow into a grade? You know, it's like I have my standards, I know what they want, what I want them to do, and they know what they need to do. could there be a small part that's like, have you grown? You know, like I, I don't know. It's kind of interesting to think about and I haven't quite figured out how to do it, but.
bill:Yeah, it's a tough one. Well next week or next episode will be our. 20th episode. And after that we're gonna go on summer break. But for next episode we're just gonna do summer reflection of our own. talk about how we've gaslit gate kept and girl bust this, this school year, this past. Double digits worth of podcast episodes. We would love to hear from you on how you have gaslit, gatekeep and girl bossed this year in your language classroom as well, so you can email that to info@slaypod.com. Bye.
FishRod:Hi.
