viernes, 10 de diciembre de 2010

REFLECTION OF THE FIRST UNIT BY: MAYTE MURUA

REFLECTION OF THE FIRST UNIT
In my opinion, I found this specific unit very useful, because I never imagined that many things had to be considered when we (as teachers) are going to assess the students. I have to say that most of the concepts or things were absolutely new to me, but I think that the first chapter of the book had exactly what a teacher has to know about informal assessment, because it is very simple, but at the same time, very useful.
What did I learn? I learned that informal and formal assessments have to complement each other; as teachers, we have to give the adequate weight, so the students can feel comfortable and don’t feel pressured. I guess that one way of deciding how much percentage to give to each point would be considering the students’ opinions, that way, they can decide if they want a higher percentage for the test, or if they want to give more weight to the homework or the attendance. Another important thing that I learnt is that formal assessment can only be done through a test, while, o               n the contrary, informal assessment measures the learners’ progress through the teacher’s observations and comments, like in the class activities. Personally, I would give the informal assessment more weight, because I believe that this kind of assessment can provide a much more accurate measurement of the performance or knowledge that the students have acquired through the course, unlike the formal assessment, which is harder for the students, because they are summited to pressure and nervousness and both factors influence greatly, in a non- positive way, the student’s grade. And especially when learning a second language, learners must be kept motivated. So I think that it is great to assess students through the informal way, especially when we are working with productive skills in a freer way. But besides the four skills, I also found out that we have to consider non-linguistic aspects, like the attendance, the cooperativeness, the attitude towards the class, the teachers, or the classmates: but I think that these aspects shouldn’t have much weight on the student’s final grade, because for most of the students, it is more difficult to complete activities or tasks about the skills, and on the other hand, things like attitude or participation should be easier.
I also learnt that the most important part of the assessing process is the feedback that we are going to provide to the students. What I think that would be very difficult is to assess personally a large group of students, let’s say 30 or more, because it would be very time consuming. We have to correct our students when needed, but we also need to encourage and praise them, so they can keep trying to learn the language and don’t get demotivated.
Another thing that I found really useful, was to define the specific objectives for each skill or aspect that will be assessed through the unit, and I think that these information should be given to the students so they can organize themselves and know, beforehand, which grade they are going to get, depending on the amount of activities that they completed.
I would say that everything that I learnt in this unit is extremely useful, and absolutely everything can be applied in a classroom. Therefore, I have to say that it is an extended and time consuming process, especially when designing the criteria for the bands and when selecting the percentage of the aspects that are going to be assessed. I guess that this process and the application of this knowledge varies depending on the student’s level and age; for example, I don’t think that it is necessary to do a bunch of bands and criteria when teaching kindergarteners, and it would be unnecessary to try to assess them formally; in this case, it is better if the teacher tries to focus on assessing them depending on the participation of the class activities, which should be dynamic and fun.

1 comentario:

  1. Hello girls,
    Thank you for the reflections. They show that the topics for the firts unit seen in the class and that you studied in the book were clearly understood. i am glad you find them interesting and useful.

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