Category Archives: alternative assessment

Individual Interviews vs. Typical Test

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What I did:

1.  I collaborated with my students to develop a rubric for their understanding of the Chapter 10 content.  The left side lists the four main skills from this chapter and the top shows the criteria necessary to earn each score.

2.  I created a schedule (in a shared Google Sheet) for students to sign up for their 10-minute appointment window.  Most were during class time, but some were before school or during a lunch/break/X-block.

3.  I created a sheet (for myself) with sample questions from each section so that I had questions ready to ask during the interview.  This also allowed me to ask different students different questions.  Students also used this sheet when they assessed themselves at the end because I broke the questions in to sections that matched the topics on the rubric.
4.  I interviewed each student for 7 minutes (with a 3 minute buffer).  During that time, I asked them questions about each topic (not just “Solve this…” but “Why did you do that step?”), students assessed themselves on the rubric, then I assessed them (as they were walking back to get the next student).
Why I did it: 

A few chapters ago, I asked students to make me a video (similar to a Khan Academy video) explaining the concepts we learned in that chapter (exponential expressions).  They did this in place of a typical written test.  The feedback was very positive and since then their ability to simplify exponential expressions has really impressed me.  Whereas a lot of math concepts tend to get forgotten after the chapter ends, these concepts seemed to stick.



PROS of the interview process: 

  1. I watched students hold each other to a higher standard when they were explaining and reviewing the concepts.
  2. The students said that they studied harder/better knowing they would have to explain themselves.
  3. Students were way more involved in the assessment process.
  4. I was finished grading as soon as the interviews were finished–there was nothing to take home!

CONS of the interview process:

  1. I had to limit myself to 7 minutes per student which limited the number of questions I could ask each student.
  2. The timing also limited how long we could spend on any given section.  If a student didn’t understand the concept, I would eventually have to move them along to the next section.
  3. I do not have the same amount of evidence to support my score of the student as I would have on a typical test.  Since the majority of the “work” for this assessment was a conversation (not every problem was worked out) I do not have a lot of evidence to base my score of the student on.  I wrote little notes and the students worked through some problems on paper (and they assessed themselves), but I definitely do not have written evidence to support every score.

Next steps:

I am going to continue with an “alternative assessment” for our last chapter, but my students and I are redesigning it with some changes.  Here are our ideas so far:
  1. Students pair up and assess each other.  This will allow students to have more time in their “interview” since multiple interviews will be going on at one time.
  2. Students will have the opportunity to re-explain a concept for a higher score on the rubric.

Do you have any ideas for us to consider?

Ā”Conduzcamos por la Ciudad!

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I have been taking a course at UC Berkeley for six Saturdays since September, and I finally finished my last course this past Saturday. During these courses, I have begun to move even more away from simply memorizing vocabulary and grammar and truly incorporating the material into real-world applications. 

In Spanish 2, which is a combined Sophomore and Freshman class, students are learning about city vocabulary: streets, signs, turn, go straight, keep going, and also store names: fish market, fruit stand, park, supermarket, bakery, bank etc. I have also heard several of my students chatting about getting their licenses, or taking their permit tests…or failing their license tests.. šŸ™ 
AND THEN I HAD AN EPIPHANY:
I wanted to make city vocabulary as real as possible for my students.
 In groups of 3-5, I had my students open Google Earth and investigate a city in Latin America that they had heard of, or that they were interested in. They basically virtually traveled through all of Latin America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Spain and were able to see street names and people’s houses, and a lot of trees. They also got side tracked and searched for their own houses and Carondelet as well…but back to the assignment. 

Once students became excited about looking at cities through Google Earth, I had them pick a city and try to replicate it in the most basic from onto butcher paper. Some students drew Cartagena in Colombia, others drew cities in Mexico and Puerto Rico. 
They drew streets, and labeled the street names and round abouts etc.
Next, they researched common shops based on the vocabulary that they could find in or around the city. They were able to make cultural comparisons and realize that there is a CROCS store here in the US, but also in Colombia,  and the students were surprised to see this. They labeled their stores with the Spanish word, for example: pescaderĆ­a for fish market, and they labeled the name of the market. 
Next students, learned the “nosotros” commands “Let’s drive” “Let’s go” and they also practiced their informal commands as well. Once they were relatively comfortable with their commands, students finished coloring their maps.
When the maps were complete, each group received a “Hot Wheels” car that I had gone out and purchased. They got to pick their cars: the truck, the garbage truck, the race car, and they were excited to drive their cars.
Students took turns filming each other giving one another directions using commands and listening and “driving” their cars according to the directions their peer was giving them to get from one place to another. Students had a blast doing this activity and they were able to integrate culture, grammar, and vocabulary into a fun, innovative, creative project in a group.
What surprised me the most, is that students went completely off script and started to spontaneously incorporate vocabulary from earlier chapters. They decided to make their cars have accidents and they needed to go to the hospital because the driver had an injury. Hospital and injury vocabulary happened way back in chapter 1, however students were still able to recollect the information and use it in an unrehearsed in a spontaneous way to make a story with their maps. This is what pleased me the most. As a language teacher, my goal is to have my students produce the language as spontaneously and unscripted as possible, and they became excited to create their own individual scenarios spontaneously.
Overall, I enjoyed this assignment, and so did my students. I got a lot of great feedback that they were able to use real-world applications in class. 1 week later, I quickly quizzed students on the vocabulary and the commands, and they were all able to produce accurate answers without having studied before.
Here is a sample video:

Alternative Assessment

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Chapter 7 in our Algebra 1 textbooks is all about exponents and exponent rules.  It is super dry (lots of rote memorization), but critical to their success in future math chapters and classes.  So I decided to try something a little different because I wanted my students to be able to fully understand and explain these exponent rules, not just regurgitate them on a typical test.  As I often do in class, I referenced my favorite Einstein quote, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” and decided to ask the students to explain the rules to me–via video.  The expectation was that they would explain why the exponent rules work, not just show me that they work.

Not quite sure the best way to do this, I attended Joan’s lunch demo of screencasting (such perfect timing!) and she really helped me get the ball rolling.  We found a great app (ShowMe) to record videos with, but when the time came to submit these videos, there were quite a few issues.  The biggest being that most of these videos are 5-10 minutes long and few platforms have the capacity to store that amount of content.  We are still working through this part of it.

I haven’t made it through all of the submissions yet, but so far they have been amazing.  Allowing the students to prove their understanding in a creative way really helped me see them in a different light … and we don’t even need to get into the brain science that supports using both “sides” of your brain in a math classroom.  The creativity of this one in particular blew me away:

Chapter 7 Alternative Assessment Student Sample
*It is over 7 minutes long so you obviously do not need to watch all of it, but the creativity comes across right away.

Even after all of the logistical snafus, the feedback from the students was very positive:

Almost 70% said that this type of assessment helped them understand these concepts more than if they had taken a traditional test.

8 fold path

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As my senior World Religion students have begun to discover different ways of seeing the world I asked them to put the principals of the Buddhist 8-fold path into their own worldview.  They were assigned to explain the 8-fold path in images from their own life.  

In Buddhism, the 8-fold path is the practical instructions to help individual Buddhists understand the suffering in the world and to aid them in reaching nirvana/enlightenment.  In lieu of a traditional essay or test I challenged my students to adapt the 8-fold path in their own view through photos, drawings and other images.  For many of my students this was the first time that they had been assigned a photo essay.  I was not sure what to expect and I knew it could be an assignment that the students would not take seriously, or that they would not see the value.  It is always a small risk to assign a new project or style of assessment.  I worry what the students feedback will be and if they will actually understand the point of the assignment.  In this case, I wanted them to understand that religious principles can be universal, and by thinking about the Buddhist 8-fold path and adapting the ideas in one’s own words and in one’s own life that the concepts would stick.  I was pleased to discover that this happened.  My students came to understand that spiritual ideas can transcend specific religions. My classes told me that they loved looking through their own photo archives and discussing their viewpoints with their friends and family.  Many searched for pictures from their childhood and they went on many emotional journeys.  A few students commented that they really appreciated the push to sort through pictures and memories as they prepare for what is next. All of these were unintended results and incredibly encouraging to continue to try something different in assessments.  
Most students chose to submit their project digitally.  I had given them the option of creating a visual as well.  The photo above is one of my favorite student creations.