Language Assessment Reflections

What specific choices did you make when creating your own language assessment? What did you choose to assess (e.g. what component(s) of language)? What did you find out through the administration process and as a result of your assessment about the learner?

I wanted to make sure my assessment wasn’t intimidating or scary. My students are really young so I didn’t want my assessment to feel like a test. I usually will meet one on one with each of my students during Montessori time. The students can come to me when they choose as long as everyone sees me at least once a week. I decided to do my assessment during this time because they are already used to having this one on one interaction with me at this time. I still let the students come to me when they were ready and once I only had a couple more students I asked if they wanted to come talk to me giving them the choice if they didn’t want to come but all of them wanted to so I finished my whole class in three days. I took a lot of inspiration from the ‘On Educating Culturally Sustaining Teachers’ article when designing my assessment as well as several comments made during our VC. I wanted to ensure a couple things.

1. That the assessment was scary.

2. That the assessment didn’t feel obligatory.

3. Ensuring the language used in the assessment was appropriate for the age of the student assessed and 4. That the content of the assessment was material I personally had taught them to ensure fairness.

I chose to assess my students on their knowledge of the alphabet. Because I am at a Montessori school, my classes are mixed age, so I designed three modifications of the exam. I decided to split my class in two major groups by age and ability.

For the older group (Ages 4-6) I had them identify the letter name, letter sound presented on wooden alphabet tiles with sandpaper letters in case they want to trace the letter as they say the name and sound and had them write the letter on a small LCD board. This assesses them on the reading, speaking, and writing language domains.

Script for the older kids:

“Hello (name of student) how are you?”

“Ready?”

“What is it?”

“What does (letter name) say?” (Repeat ‘What is it?’ and ‘What does (letter name) say?’ for each letter)

If a student didn’t know the letter or said the letter name or sound incorrectly, I would say the correct letter name and sound and had the student repeat with me while tracing on the sandpaper letter tile.

*Give student LCD board

“Can you write (letter name) please?”

If a student wrote it incorrectly I showed them the sandpaper letter tile, traced it, held their hand to trace it, had them trace it themselves then write it on the LCD board again.

For the younger group, I just had them identify the letter name and sound for the letters presented to them using the sandpaper and wood alphabet tiles. For my very young students (2-3 years old) I would only assess letters A-G letter names and sounds. This assessed their reading and speaking domains.

Script for the younger kids:

“Hello (name of student) how are you?”

“Ready?”

“What is it?”

“What does (letter name) say?” (Repeat ‘What is it?’ and ‘What does (letter name) say?’ for each letter)

If a student didn’t know the letter or said the letter name or sound incorrectly, I would say the correct letter name and sound and had the student repeat with me while tracing on the sandpaper letter tile.

During the assessment, I took note of the letters missed of each student. I then compiled this data into a spreadsheet. The young group had columns for name and sound for each letter while the big group had three columns for each letter to accommodate for writing. I found that many students struggled with the same letters. Many young students forgot the name of H and I. There was also a lot of confusion between M and N. For the older group, most students could correctly identify all the letter names and sounds. Some students wrote B, E, F and J backwards though. After seeing these data all laid out, I know which letters I can focus on more during class and which students to pay attention to whenever we’re working on letters.