shaylamullaney_journal_one

Section 1 <<Back to EDC 452 home page

Shayla Mullaney 2/7/09 EDC 452 Assessment Journal 1 At my placement on Thursday, in my sixth grade ESL classroom, I was able to observe a form of assessment during their Science lesson about smog and acid rain. They took turns reading this chapter out loud and then individually had to answer questions having to do with the content from the chapter. The assessment was five short answer questions. I am in a new placement this semester and am just getting to know the students. Science is a very interesting topic for an ESL classroom because of the variety of different comprehension levels but was surprised at the results of the assessments. I made assumptions about certain students, thinking maybe because their oral skills were lacking, then maybe so were their comprehension skills. However, I was proved very wrong. One of my students who I prejudged to need extra help, wrote an impressive response to why photochemical smog is more prevalent in the summer than winter. He described that photo means light, and there is more light in the summer due to the tilt of the earth and therefore, photochemical smog is more prevalent in the summer. I found this type of assessment very effective. It helped me to look past accents and oral communication difficulties and understand the level of comprehension of each student. They were able to tell me what they know. The only problem with short answer assessments, are that since the students are only telling me what they do know, I have to assume if they left something out of their writing, that they don’t know it. Opposed to a multiple choice test that would show me if they didn’t understand because they would have answered incorrectly.