Monday, October 27, 2008

Making Assessment Practices Valid for indigenous American Students by Sharon Nelson-Barber and Elise Trumbull

This reading focuses on how research can find ways to aid in making assessment valid for indigenous American students. It is clear that NCLBA has placed indigenous students with assessments that are quite challenging due to cultural context. Research showed that cultural elements found by Demmert will help to improve the academic performances of indigenous learners. It was found that using local knowledge and culture in the curriculum and using the funds of knowledge help the students to succeed with work and assessments in school. Back in the days, children observed and learned from their parents, grandparents, and close relatives through cultural activities. They learned from hearing stories and family experiences. And children practiced those cultural activities by interacting through play and pretending. It is true that tasks were learned at home throughout the seasons. One learned by trial and error and when a task was accepted by elders and parents, the individual became aware of his or her successful performances. Elders and parents used to observe the natural abilities and characteristics of young children to foresee their future performances and successes.

Who Is Given Tests in What Language by Whom, When, and Where? The Need for Probabilistic Views of Language in the Testing of English Language Learners

A third grade ELL Yup'ik student was given a standardized test in math by a
Caucasian third grade teacher in the late 1950's in a boarding school. This student's first language was Yup'ik and was in the third year of learning a second language. Test results were unknown. Then two generations later an ELL student was tested in the third grade in reading, writing, and math by a local native teacher in 2006 in the student's hometown. The student's L1 was local English dialect and Yup'ik as L2. However, the test results were proficient in reading, writing and math. But a little more than half the third grade test results were below proficient. Programs like SES are offered for all students to improve in reading, writing, and math. In the reading for ELL testing, I take it that Torgerson's discussion on deterministic models in testing does not fit the ELL testing. Whereas the probabalistic models would most likely fit in with the ELL testing. Solano-Flores had listed the good "would be" processes for ELL students. When will the ELL student processes become a reality?

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Language Assessment Process: A "Multiplism" Perspective by Shohamy and Inbar

From this reading, I sensed that "multiplism" is a process of conducting language assessment for each phase beginning with the multiple purposes of assessment. Teachers can choose any multiple method of assessment depending on the design of the test. An examiner can have multiple ways of designing items and tasks and administer assessment in multiple ways. There are many criteria to determine language quality. The final phases include the multiple ways of interpreting results and reporting results. Among all these phases, the validity and reliability are present in the processes of language assessment procedures. What I liked about this chapter is that it showed many concepts in assessment. These can help us with language assessments as we develop our classroom documents for our students and other teachers.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Ch.2 Designing Authentic Assessment

This chapter focuses on different types of authentic assessment, scoring guides, and how to use designing, developing, and using authentic assessemnt. The book addresses that validity and reliability are both important for the quality of assessments. Other concerning issues like purpose of assessment, fairnes, and grading are explained and clarified in the chapter. These are the steps teachers can use in designing authentic assessment, which can help to improve teaching to the students.One time I took part in the early stages of making assessment for Yup'ik levels in our district. We as a team (native teachers and bilingual instructors) helped build standards for Yup'ik levels one through seven for teaching and assessment. After several months of interval meetings and revisions by the team and the district, we the bilingual instructors had a new and better design of authentic assessment to teach and to test. This new change helped the instructors to improve their teaching and learning. What we are lacking are student workbooks that go with the authentic assessments. We make our own teaching materials for the Yup'ik levels.