by Terry Waltz | Aug 9, 2016 | Assessment, General
So lately everyone’s excited about the “DEA” — the Daily Engagement Assessment. Engagement is crucial to language acquisition, right? And how can the teacher know if the students are engaged unless they show that they are engaged, by responding...
by Terry Waltz | Jul 7, 2016 | Assessment, Outside Forces
As in, does one give rise to the other? I’m sitting in a workshop about the ACTFL standards. The task before the trainees is to place certain functionalities, content and control of language or comprehensibility into each level of ACTFL proficiency (Novice,...
by Terry Waltz | Dec 15, 2015 | Assessment, Methods
OK, this is intended to be very, very gentle, but after seeing a number of conventionally excellent — and yet very “not really highest possible quality input based” — review suggestions out there of late: The whole point behind TPRS is that...
by Terry Waltz | Dec 14, 2015 | Assessment
On a teachers’ list, someone recently asked (paraphrased): How can I help students review vocabulary for our semester exam? I create a story (this year I’m narrating a video), they will listen and answer multiple choice questions. They will read a novel...
by Terry Waltz | Nov 2, 2015 | Assessment, General
On a teacher email list, this question was posed: With the discussion on free writes and why grading them is detrimental, I have been thinking about tracking student progress. I know I can track the number of words, but what other sorts of things do you track and how?...
by Terry Waltz | Jan 8, 2015 | Assessment, General
There was recently a discussion about other things on a mailing list, and a teacher gave some examples of types of assessment being used. One thing stuck out in my mind: a task that required students to make a “phone call” (to an online service) and...
