Assessment
March 24, 2015
Do you sometimes feel like we’re working in an all-or-nothing profession? I’m not sure if it’s an artifact of social media, of tweets and blog posts designed to be punchy and petite at the same time. I’m not sure if it’s a desire to be the next big thing, the acronym everyone’s talking about. I […]
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March 10, 2015
I’ve been hearing a flurry of comments, great ones, directing teachers to not get so distracted by the 90% TL goal that they forget to make sure they’re speaking comprehensibly. I’m sure you’ve seen and/or committed, as have I, one of these common unfortunate practices: speaking in target language and being super proud of it… except […]
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March 2, 2015
Anatomy of a novice question
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If you’ve been through ACTFL’s Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) or Modified Oral Proficiency Interview (MOPI) training (I have not), perhaps you can help me clarify an issue when assessing novices. When talking to teachers about what a novice can and can’t do, I’ve heard teachers make this comment: But that’s a question, right? And novices […]
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January 30, 2015
For the original myths post, click here. You can also view all of the myths posts. This, my eleventh post on myths I believe make us ineffective in the world language classroom, is about saying we’re assessing something without actually asking students to do it. 11. A multiple-choice question counts as a valid assessment of […]
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December 18, 2014
Again, I skipped #6 and we’ll get to it later, and you’ve already seen #4 because it was part one of the post also including #8. So here we have the third most-popular post of 2014, the one offering up a more user-friendly version of my choice-in-homework project, along with several adaptations from amazing colleagues. […]
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December 2, 2014
Welcome to the 2014 “Best of Musicuentos” series. In the month of December I do not post much new material as I enjoy the season with my family, but rather I re-post the top ten posts of the year, in case you want to re-read, or in case you’ve joined us this year and didn’t […]
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November 8, 2014
Since I had my precious Cottrell-itos on my trip to the annual conference of the Indiana Foreign Language Teacher’s Association, I didn’t get to spend as much time involved in the conference as I would have liked to, but I did greatly enjoy the time I did have. I reconnected with “old” friends, made new […]
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October 30, 2014
After I get a question repeated to me a certain number of times via Twitter, comments, or emails, I know it’s time for a blog post. The Great Dilemma If you have never had to consider how students in your TCI (teaching with comprehensible input) class will fit in a program that forces grammar-heavy common […]
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August 26, 2014
When I posted last year about my latest update on the Elige tu propia aventura homework choice activity, the post quickly became one of the top 10 of the year. Accordingly, I frequently receive requests for my list of options and how I divided them into a point system. The problem is that I was experimenting […]
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May 23, 2014
I just taught my last class for the foreseeable future and what a sweet handful of minutes it was. I decided to revisit the Photopeach final this year, after having not done it for 2 years because of babies arriving at the end of the school year. I’ve blogged about Photopeach and this particular project […]
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May 7, 2014
4 ways to tweak the exit ticket
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When I first heard about the exit ticket, I thought it was a great idea. It seemed like a way to keep myself accountable to assess every student, and it seemed like a way to keep students accountable to do something to show me they’d learned what I’d taught. It also seemed like a decent […]
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March 4, 2014
I’ve gotten this question several times lately and it’s made me remember I sort of blogged on that when I wrote about taking the leap to standards-based assessment but I should go into it a little more. So, you’re ready to move to proficiency-based assessment and standards-based grading, but if you’re assessment is focused on […]
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