My assessment has recently shaped up to be that I have 5 test grades in each quarter. We have a high school policy that except in math, tests form 50% of the student’s grade, and daily grades the other 50%. So test grades are pretty important, and I’ve been accused of not having enough tests in a quarter before. This is because I hate paper tests. It’s so hard for me to really assess what was going on in the student’s head, communicatively, and assign a number value to it. But it’s a requirement, so I suck it up. And figured out a way around it, sort of.
One test grade per quarter is a grammar-based test. (A Spanish 1 example is discussed in this post.)
One test grade is the accumulation of the semi-daily story quizzes. (These are six-to-twelve point quizzes given at the beginning of class to assess their comprehension of a. the question b. the story and c. their notes on the story.)
One test grade is their in-class participation (how much they listen, watch, talk, and focus).
One test grade is a communicative project.
And one test grade is a story test. I write a story using as much target vocabulary and features as my creativity will produce, ask a bunch of questions about it, and take that for a test grade.
The second quarter story test in Spanish 1 can be found here. It’s about two kids who aren’t at school because it’s summer, so they decide to play for three hours in the water with their very clean dog, LJ. Then LJ is not so clean, so mom gets mad and LJ ends up in the bath. Everyone lives happily ever after, LOL.
I’ll post Spanish 2 and 3 story tests soon.
