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 using specific behaviors that can be observed? (Hmmm…starting to sound a lot like the Evil Danielson […]
Archive for the ‘Assessment’ Category
ACTFL proficiency standards and thematic FIGS units
Posted by Terry Waltz on July 7th, 2016
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, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, Distinguished — which was recently misspelled humorously on Facebook as […]
Posted in Assessment, Outside Forces 
Comments Off on ACTFL proficiency standards and thematic FIGS unitsTPRS: Review should be redundant
Posted by Terry Waltz on December 15th, 2015
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 review is redundant. We teach to mastery the first time around. I think this “old-time” tenet of […]
Review for TPRS Exam
Posted by Terry Waltz on December 14th, 2015
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 chapter and answer questions in English and they will write an original story using […]
The Potato Peel of Progress
Posted by Terry Waltz on November 2nd, 2015
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? A child takes 10,000 hours of […]
Life Experience and Authentic Tasks in the Language Classroom
Posted by Terry Waltz on January 8th, 2015
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 inquire about renting an apartment in a city in […]
Posted in Assessment, General 
Tags: authentic tasks, experience, Output Comments Off on Life Experience and Authentic Tasks in the Language Classroom