7th Week

 

Today is the 14^th of December. The last week of classes of this year. The objectives for today are: Assessment and Evaluation. Key ideas and resources.

To create my whole framework of knowledge about this topic, I have been written down some key ideas that help me to reflect about it and structure better the evaluation of our unit:

- We should be coherent. In our unit, we need to look to objectives and competences and evaluate with comprehension and coherency if they have been achieved. “We should evaluate the way we teach”.

- If we promote critical thinking, evaluation should not be at the end but during the process.

But, what is the difference between Assessment and Evaluation?

Assement refers to the process. Its purpose is to increase quality. It can be adaptable, reformulated so we can improve the weaknesses detetected.

In the other hand, evaluation refers to judge or identify areas of improvement. What it has been detected in the assessment, is evaluated in this stage. It is done at the end and it follows the curriculum statements. It test what is has been done.

Strategies for collecting data.

1. Observe.

Observations need to be both, formal and informal. What do we can/should observe?

-      Attitudes

-      Strategies

-      Attention to task/independence

-      Interaction

-      Concepts/understanding

2. Recording/organizing observational data.

 

The way we include our students in their evaluation determinates how much power we give them into their learning process. Progressively it is needed to make them independent about what and how do they learn, given freedom in order to make their learning process powerful and meaningful.

 

Today is the 15^th of December. Can we appreciate that there are less than three weeks to finish the year? I can not believe it!

In today’s lecture we began the class by overviewing the new files of Unit 7. First, we have seen some rubrics of evaluation activities like writing or a poster that seems like a good reference to have in mind at the moment of creating our unit. Later on we have seen the Language Passport of CEF. There we can find examples of portfolios and evaluations we can consider using it also.

Then we have seen two video tutorials about how to use Socrative (Socrative), which is a tool to create quizzes and evaluate knowledge of our students. If it seems to me as a very intuitive platform that brings you the opportunity of creating lots of quizzes in a very engaging, practical and individual’s way. I mean, as long as you can edit it and set in the way you consider, it can be greatly adapted to your class level, interests, and needs.

For the next hour of class we were allowed to work in groups and play with the app. My partner and I started creating one that might be useful for our unit:  

https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/53756282

Today is the 16^th of December of 2020, my last class of the year because tomorrow I will start to work in the Christmas campaign of my actual job, perfumery promoter. That is why I am so enthusiasm today and I am totally ready for what Dolores has prepared for us today.

The objectives of today were:

1.       Considering the feedback from groups yesterday on their Teaching Units, today we will work on.

2.       Strategies and ideas for differentiated learning, mixed-abilities, and attention to diversity (multi-level curriculum).

Random notes:

·       Strategies: Know, understand, and do ® useful way to break down learning objectives, because sometimes they are so open to interpretation.

 

·       Table: define objectives also to adapt to every student’s level. Also, multiple intelligences has to be taken into account. With this breaking down of objectives we can assure every capacity to work on, and it has to be illustrated in the unit.

Another way to categorize activities is Bloom’s Taxonomy. We can adapt it for level of complication, for example.

 

·       Tiered assignments: are a series of tasks.

 

·       Scaffolding: Core task, modified task and extended task. They are different modalities of the same activity so we can give every student the one that adapts better to their level, potential, knowledge, or desire.

 

Ideas to be prepared for diversity. Examples of 4 skills.

Reading comprehension:

-      Bring two similar texts to class instead of one, so they can choose.

-      Include different types of questions.

-      Do not give them the same activity.

-      If a student finish early, ask them to prepare more questions for their classmates.

Listening comprehension

-      Divide the class in two groups: some having access to audio and video, for example.

Writing comprehension

-      Do not write the same type of texts neither length.

-      Different options of topics to write about. Something related to their interest experiences.

-      Collective or group writing.

-      Describe images.

-      Create a classroom magazine or newspaper.

Speaking

-      Choose a topic that might create a debate.

-      Do not correct their mistakes, put fluency first.

-      Record them. Give them the chance to record at home.

 

Once we have seen all, Dolores asked us to create a modified version of one of our activities from the lesson plan, to put in practice what we have seen today. So my team partner and I made this one:

Activity: Create a letter to Santa.