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Five for Friday: 5 ways to assess oral communication (face to face)

I am working on a series of blog posts for the summer called Five for Friday. Sorry this one is a little late.

In addition to the digital ways that I assess oral work, I have several informal ways of checking my students’ speaking skills.  I don’t want to stifle emerging communicative skills by taking off points for mistakes, so most of these checks are based on effort rather than accuracy. My grades are weighted, and these informal assessments will be listed under the “participation” category along with the formal assessments I talked about in the previous post.  

Participation seating chart:  My mentor shared this with me my first year of teaching, and I have been using it ever since (thanks Kim!). My seating chart has boxes for each student.  Whenever I call on a student who has his/her hand up, I will give them a tally mark.  I color code each day with different ink color.  If I use green ink on Monday, I can tell with a quick glance if I called on Suzy already or if the tally marks in her box are from a previous day.  I keep this out for my students to see on their way to their seats or as they leave my class so they know how many times their participation has been noted.  At the end of 3 weeks I tally the marks in each box, and then I come up with a scale for each class based on the tally marks.  If I have a small class, those students will have more marks than a larger class will, so I don’t feel that “one scale fits all”, if that makes sense.  Students do not need to be “right” in order to earn a tally mark.  If all students have the same number of tally marks, I have no problem giving them all 10/10 points for that 3 week rotation.  If I have a student who hasn’t participated, I will encourage her to raise her hand, but if she still doesn’t, then her grade will be 6/10 for that rotation. 

Random notecards:  I have my students write their names on 3x5 notecards the first day of class, and throughout the year I will pull out the class set, shuffle the cards, then randomly call on my students to participate.  Like the seating chart, this is a effort grade.  Sometimes the same student card will keep coming up all week, and I am ok with that because it keeps my students engaged, knowing that their name could be pulled even if they were just called on earlier in the week or day.  Every so often I will pull the cards that haven’t come up frequently, shuffle those, and put those at the top of my stack.  These cards are also where I keep track of workbooks/notes that didn’t make it to class or off task behavior.  I now have a record for parent communication, and my students know that they are accountable for bringing their materials to class and staying on task. This grade is a quarter grade.  

Skill checklist: I will use a class roster, and as my students are working with their partners, I will walk around and listen in to their conversations.  I focus on a specific communicative skill subset (ie: direct object pronouns) when I do this type of assessment, and label the skill & the date at the top.  As soon as I hear the student produce or use the specific skill, I will put a check mark on his name in the roster.  I will keep checking for that skill for the rest of the week/lesson.  If I get to the end of my week/lesson, and a specific student hasn’t produced that skill, I will engage that student in conversation with a question or prompt that will hopefully get the student to use the item I am trying to assess.  Depending on what I am listening for the student will earn 2-3 points/skill, and when I have 10-12 points on my roster (for a variety of skill checks), I will post the grade on my digital grade book (students & parents have access to this). 

Conversation check: I use my seating chart as I walk around the classroom listening in to conversations in the target language.  I will give my students a check mark on the side of their box if I hear them talking in the target language.  If I only heard their partner talking, I will come back to visit them later on in the class or the next day.  Once I have heard all my students talk about whatever that conversation prompt was, I will record it on my digital grade book.  This grade is also out of 2-3 points/session.   The only way a student will not earn the full point value, is if he is off task and/or is not using the target language.  I will verbally remind him to speak only in Spanish with a quick “Eric-- español”, and if I hear English again, he will start losing points at that time. 

At the door conversation:  As my students are coming into my class, I do my best to greet them in Spanish, and either ask them a quick question or remark something to them.  I don’t really have any way to record this type of oral communication, but I think it is one of the best to engage my students as soon as they walk in the door, and to get to know them quickly.

 

 

 

App Review: Sock Puppets

I was catching up with my RSS feed, and ran across a Sock Puppet app for iPhones & iPads on The Creative Language Class.  I downloaded the free app immediately, and created the following skit.

 

How cute is that! I can see this as another alternative for prepared conversations with partners, or as a way for me to present grammatical topics in a conversation.  I had to mess around with the upload to YouTube for a bit, but part of that had to do with having two YouTube accounts open on my iPad.  You can select the puppets, the background and a few props.  Once the stage is set, you tap on the puppet that you want to talk, and record what it will say.  Once you are done, you save your show and can export it to Facebook or YouTube. You can go into the settings and modify the pitch of each individual puppet also. I'd love to hear about other ideas you have using this app!

Five for Friday: 5 Web 2.0 tools to record oral communication

I am working on a series of blog posts for the summer called Five for Friday.  

Today I want to share my favorite five Web 2.0 tools to record oral communication in the classroom.The biggest shift in oral assessment for my class occurred because of the variety of web 2.0 tools that can be used to record students.  I still believe the best way to practice the language is in person, with a partner or in small groups, but the best way to formally assess a large group of students (at the same time) or gauge their progress is by using the following tools.  Each one will fulfill a different need. 

Google Voice My students use this tool weekly.  They record their homework on it.  I will ask them to record textbook prompted conversations with it occasionally, and I used it on my semester exam this year.  GV is free for me and the students, but does require you to have cell phone connectivity in your classroom.  Most of my students have a cell phone, and GV will also work with a landline, so if a student left their phone at home, they can use our department office phone or borrow a classmate’s.  The voicemail will record up to @90 seconds, and is very clear to listen to, even when all my students are recording at the same time.  You can read about how I set up the oral portion to my final exam here.  

Voicethread My class gets a lot of mileage from Voicethread as well.  There is a little bit of a learning curve so I phase it in over the course of 3-4 weeks.  I expose them to VT by having them do a listening activity with it first.  Then they create accounts & record a comment on another VT.  Finally they will create their own VT for a formal assessment when they describe things they used to do when they were in pre-school.  Several students will use this as a homework option, and more will use it for our “How- to…” presentations.  This tool works for oral work that has been scripted, planned and is more formal in nature. It is also free up to 3 VTs per account, and will require microphones.  One of my students found the Voicethead App on her iPhone easier to navigate & I know there is also an iPad App.

Lingt Language I did not use this website this year, but as I was preparing for an end of school inservice that described it, I regretted not using it.  It is very user friendly for the kids to use.  I ran into a couple of glitches setting up one of my assignments, and found the support to be very helpful.   You provide a prompt for your students like a photo, short movie clip or even questions you want them to hear & respond to.  The student can then record their response and submit using an email address.  They do not need an account.    You will need to have computers & microphones.  The kids can listen to what they said and record again if they need to.  When I used it previously, I figured out I needed to give them a time frame to complete their task, otherwise students will write out & then read their response, and I want to use this more for “off the top of their head” kind of communication.  The really cool feature of Lingt is that you can record or type in feedback for each individual student & send it to their email.  Lingt has a free account you can try out or you can purchase an upgrade.  

Cell phone Record App  If I am not mistaken most smart phones have the capability of being used as a portable recorder.  I know iPhones and iPods have free apps that can be downloaded and used to capture short conversations.  My students have used thses in the past when they have interviewed native Spanish speakers outside of the classroom or interviewed upper level students for a homework assignment.  The student would then send the recording to me via email or depending on the assignment, would play it for me in class. 

Audio Dropbox from CLEAR This is another tool that I have used in the past because it is so easy to use with my students, but I have replaced it with Google Voice.  This could be an option for those classrooms that can’t use cell phones.  The teacher creates a dropbox with a prompt and can embed it on a web site.  Students would then record their responses and type their names to identify themselves.  When I used it a couple years ago, it was not as media rich as Lingt, but it worked well, and it is free.

Audacity Alright, so this is #6.  I can’t complete this post without mentioning Audacity.  Some teachers love this tool.  I have used this with small groups of students, but I’ll be honest, it has a learning curve, especially if you want the kids to save the file as an MP3.  Part of the issue might be that I don’t find mixing programs to be very intuitive, and I am not comfortable trouble-shooting some of the issues.  Without a doubt it is a very powerful program, and it is free.  I could see students producing very professional podcasts with Audacity.  Here are examples of a podcasts on self-selected topics my students put together a couple years ago.  

What are your favorite tools to record oral communication?

 

Hunger Games: practicing movie/sports vocabulary & subjunctive

First of all a shout out to a new Twitter buddy @srtabarragan, who brought The Creative Language Class blog to my attention with this post on using The Hunger Games in Spanish class.  I wanted to grab some of that Hunger Game energy and use it in my Monday lesson on the subjunctive. 

First I showed them the poster linked in the Creative Language Class blog and had them work with a partner answering questions about what they saw.  If you use Realidades 2, this is a great time to recycle vocabulary from lesson 6A & 6B.

We then saw the trailer in Spanish.  I was surprised to find out how many kids didn't realize how dubbing a movie into another language worked. The actors spoke much too quickly for my Spanish 3 students to understand, but it was a good time to have them practice using context clues to help them comprehend. It's also a good example of language usage at a authentic pace.

I asked my students to write a sentence using the subjunctive to recommend, suggest, insist, etc from either one of the character's point of view to another character in the movie, or from my student to a character or Ms Collins. (You can find an edited list of what they came up with in the PDF at the bottom of the post.)Even the students who had not read/seen the movie were able to come up with something.

Tomorrow we are doing a quick warm up to review subjunctive conjugation with a partner activity based on the sentences they came up. (Also below) The student will first write out their answer & then go over the answers with their partner who will have the "answer key".  They will need to help each other out to understand any mistakes they made.

Download Hunger games student recommendations

Download Los Juegos de Hambre Practica con subjuntivo

I hope you can use some of these materials or lesson plan ideas in your class too!

Oral Assessments

We are finishing up midterm exams, and this is the first year I feel the test has been meaningful for my students.  This year I set the test up to have three parts: an oral assessment, a written assessment and a traditional vocabulary/grammar section.  

The students recorded the oral assessment on Google Voice the last two days of the term, giving me a weekend to start grading them.  They have been practicing story telling all quarter, and I was very pleased by the recordings.    Students have been telling each other stories based on cartoons their peers drew for homework. The day of the test I took 5 different cartoons and shuffled them all in one big pile. Each student received a different cartoon, but it was a cartoon they had previously seen in class.  The students were asked to flip the paper over at the same time, and I gave them two minutes to think about what they were going to say.  All my students called Google Voice at the same time and talked. The story needed to be narrated in the past tense (preterit & imperfect) and was thematically specific to a lesson from this semester.  I told my students they needed to talk for at least 90 seconds.  Most talked for 2-2:30 minutes.  

My rubric is very generous for this assessment, but I strongly believe it needs to work in favor of the language learner, and reward the steps they are taking toward becoming fluent speakers.  I told them that I did not expect perfect grammar.  Out of 140 students I only had 6-8 who had problems using the past tense consistently, and even those students could tell me a story, they just narrated primarily in present tense.  

Although my students are asked to produce & use Spanish in their Spanish 1 & 2 classes, my class is the first time they are assessed orally. Although they have practiced this activity for over 12 weeks, they were still nervous. Although the assessment is far from a natural conversation, I feel it accurately reflected how each student can communicate orally. 

I would like to do more of these types of assessments, but they are very time intensive to grade.  At 2 minutes per student (assuming I don't have to listen twice), that is 280 minutes or 4 hours and 40 minutes.  I will continue to assess my students with Google Voice, but rather than grade all, I will randomly grade the recordings, keeping track of who I have listened to until I get to all of my students... and then start the process over again.

I would strongly encourage language teachers to include some form of oral assessment for their students.  I really believe it brings together everything they have been working on and reinforces the importance of speaking. 

 

 

Student created storytelling prompts

I love any kind of story, and I enjoy using stories in my classroom.  This year I wanted to move the storytelling responsibility to my students.  One of my homework options is for kids to create a cartoon using the lesson’s vocabulary.  They can use an online site like Goanimate or they can draw it on unlined paper.  Initially I only had a couple of students who would turn these in, but the more we use cartoons in class, the more students are doing as a homework option.

As cute as the Goanimate cartoons turn out, my favorite are still the paper ones.  I find they are very versatile.  My favorite way to use them is for partner storytelling.  I will set the timer to 5-8 minutes and have partners take turns narrating the events in the cartoon.  Sometimes, I will turn that activity into an assessment by having them call into GoogleVoice after a quick run through with their peer, and re-tell the story individually.  Sometimes I will use the cartoons to practice asking and answering questions.  For our semester exam this year, I used different cartoons as writing prompts for the written preterit vs imperfect assessment.

I have purchased several storytelling cartoon books, but none have been as effective as what my students are producing.  The vocabulary in their cartoons is specific to what they have learned or are currently learning, and even the kids who draw stick figures come up with some creative stories that are perfect to use in a partner conversation.  The students who are drawing the cartoons are also reinforcing their vocabulary knowledge.  Many label items or provide a basic dialogue in the target language.   My students like seeing their cartoon used in class, and their classmates provide an authentic audience for their drawing & storytelling.

Here are a couple of examples:

Dana S - Realidades 2: 5B Accident & Injury & Body parts topic

Paige W - Realidades 2 6A: Sporting event vocabulary

 

A little World Cup in the middle of winter

As I look out my window at the snow falling, I realize how long ago the World Cup took place, but I still want to share a lesson plan that uses this event.  Our textbook has a thematic unit on competition and sporting events, and I wanted to pull some authentic material to practice the vocabulary.  I was very surprised that only a handful of students watched or really knew anything about the World Cup, but most were familiar with Waka Waka, the 2010 World Cup theme song by Shakira and Freshlyground. 

After explaining some key vocabulary in the lyrics that were not a part of my students’ working vocabulary, the students listened to the song in Spanish and completed a cloze exercise.  Partners then worked together to figure out what the lyrics were saying.   Together we went over some of the lyrics that were harder to figure out. For homework students  went to Zachary Jones' site to view the official video in English.  I printed out the song in English so that the students could compare it to the Spanish version as they watched the video.

In class the next day, partners discussed and described what they saw in the video. We then talked about how similar images or ideas in the song were expressed differently in each version of the song.  For example, the Spanish version said “Quítate el polvo, ponte de pie y vuelves al ruedo”, and the English version said “Pick yourself up, and dust yourself off and back in the saddle”.  The picking yourself up & dusting yourself was almost a word for word translation, but vuelves al ruedo and back in the saddle require cultural and idiomatic knowledge to make sense. I then asked my students to find other lyrics that had similar meaning, but the language used was different.  

As my students move toward intermediate language proficiency, I hope to be able to come back to some of these examples when they run into idiomatic expressions or try to translate language literally.  This kind of lesson plan is my favorite kind because there is so much going on, but it flows in a very organic manner.  My students are practicing the lesson’s vocabulary, analyzing language, listening & reading authentic materials and enjoying the music all at the same time. 

 

 

Increasing oral proficiency through partner conversations

After seeing my students in action with each other or with guest students on Skype, I realized they needed help figuring out how to extend a conversation in Spanish.  Let’s face it, some students (and adults) have problems conversing in their native language, especially with people they don’t know very well.  I have worked out a process that helps develop these skills, and I’d like to describe it to you. 

My Spanish III students have been working on this skill set for a quarter, and I am very proud of the progress they are making.   Like anything else, the more they practice the better they get.   I started them out with 5-6 open ended questions that used the vocabulary they were working on.  I challenged them to only talk in Spanish for 4 minutes.  I figured this was very doable for them.  I wanted to give them a sense of accomplishment and not frustration with the first round.  

At the end of the 4 minutes, we came back as a class and I randomly picked one student (Student A).  I asked the whole class to come up with follow up questions based on the student’s response.    Each student earned a participation point for their follow up question. Student A continued to answer her classmates’ questions until the class ran out of questions or I could sense discomfort in Student A.  It went something like this: (I’ll give the example in English)

Teacher: Do you know how to drive?

Student A: I know how to drive.

Student 1: What car do you drive? --> I drive a Corolla.

Student 2: What color is the car? --> It is blue.

Student 3: Do you drive to school? --> Yes, I drive to school.

Student 4: Do you bring someone to school? --> I bring my friend.

Student 5: What is your friend’s name? --> Her name is Sarah.

Student 6: Where does she live? --> She lives on Oak street.

Student 7: Is she nice? --> She is very nice.

Etc, etc

Once the class had exhausted their questions, we counted to see how many questions were asked from the original prompt “Do you know how to drive?”  My most outgoing class  spent over 6 minutes asking follow up questions that started from the initial prompt I had given them.  Once the individual students saw the class modeling how to extend the conversation, they were better prepared for the next conversation round.

I extended their talk time by 1 or 2 minutes for the second “round”.  I explained to them that the goal wasn’t to “finish” asking their partners the prompt questions.  Their goal was to ask as many follow up questions as they could.  If they didn’t get to question 4 or 5, but they were talking the entire time, that was fine by me.  I also let them know that they could go wherever the conversation took them, as long as the follow up questions made sense. “She lives on Oak street”  should not be followed up with “What did you do Friday night?”.  On the other hand, “Did you go out with her Friday?” makes conversational sense and will change the direction of the conversation if that is the student’s goal.  The follow up questions should demonstrate that the student has heard and understood what their partner has said.  The questions should not be random or disjointed. 

I keep a timer going when they are working with their partners and I mix their partners up.  Sometimes they pick their partners. Sometimes they work with the student that sits next to them.  Sometimes I randomly pair them up. They speak longer when they are working with someone they know, but I want them to practice talking with a variety of students.  I also make sure I am moving all over the classroom when they are doing this activity. 

So far, most of my students have respected the “Sólo español”, and only lapse into English unintentionally.  I do call out kids that use English, and if a set of partners is having a hard time speaking to each other I will stay with them & model conversational questions, until I think that the students can take over, or the kids are tired of having me hanging around and are willing to talk in Spanish to get me moving :)  

My student know that they will have a class reward when they can talk in Spanish for 30 minutes with their partners.  This has been a big motivator for most kids.  A couple of my classes are begging me to let them try to talk for 30 minutes today!! I think many could, but for now I want each practice session to end with a sense of “I could go on for 2-3 more minutes!”, and not rush the students who are still working on mastering this activity and skill set. 

 

 

Voicethread tutorial

Sam, a student reporter for our school newspaper,  asked me to name my favorite Web 2.0 applications for an article on technology last year.  Google Voice, Google Docs and Voicethread were the first tools that came to mind.  In this series of blog posts, I want to show how versatile these tools are for the World Language classroom, and why teaching your students to use them will have a big payoff all year long. 

Voicethread

One of the most versatile tools for a language classroom is Voicethread.  It is very easy to use and you will find some very nice resources on their web page. Since I last visited their resources page I see they have added PDF documents as well as short Voicethreads that explain how to use this tool.

My students will be working on a Voicethread project, and I will be presenting to a group of World Language teachers at an inservice this week.  I thought I'd create a quick presentation to get everyone started, and I wanted to share it on my blog as well.  

Voicethread is easy to use, but sometimes finding what you need takes a little bit of practice.  Hopefully this presentation will cover some of the basic trouble shooting issues you might have as you start working on a project. You can find the presentation at the bottom of this post.

As far as how I use Voicethread in class...

One of the most basic uses is for vocabulary practice.  A student will write sentences using their new vocabulary, and pair the oral work with an image.  They usually email me the link.  I will then post them to our class Ning for other students to view.

As I mentioned before, my students will be working on their first in class Voicethread project this week. They will be putting together vocabulary and the imperfect tense when they narrate a series of photos about their childhood.  They will tell me what toys they used to play with, who they would play with, what they use to eat and any special traditions their family had as they were growing up.  

Once the individual student puts together this project and publishes it, her classmates will be able to comment on her presentation and compare & contrast their childhood with hers.  This will be the follow up activity.  This also gives each student an authentic audience for their work. 

Voicethread is a great collaborative tool, so I will assign group work with this tool.  My favorite one so far was the collaborative project that Leigh Murrell's classes in California and my own classes in Ohio worked on.  You can read about that project here. 

These are just three uses for Voicethread.  Project for this tool are unlimited.  I would love to hear how you use Voicethread in your classrooms.  Please don't hesitate to share your plans for Voicethread with me.

 

Google Voice Redux

Sam, a student reporter for our school newspaper,  asked me to name my favorite Web 2.0 applications for an article on technology last year.  Google Voice, Google Docs and Voicethread were the first tools that came to mind.  In this series of blog posts, I want to show how versatile these tools are for the World Language classroom, and why teaching your students to use them will have a big payoff all year long. 

Google Voice

Google Voice doesn’t have a learning curve for your students.  You simply explain your assignment, give your students your Google Voice phone number, and have the students call in.  In January, I mentioned how I used Google Voice for individual assessments and partner work.  I have added some variations on these activities since that post. 

My students practice pronouncing vocabulary terms for homework.  They will call in and repeat the vocabulary.  Although this is a very basic assignment, it helps me figure out what words I need to emphasis and practice from a pronunciation perspective.  

Another homework assignment my students can chose to do is to call Google Voice and re-define a vocabulary term in Spanish.  I will then download the call and use it as a listening activity in class to practice or to review for a quiz.  Please listen to Ali’s example to hear how this works.

Download 1af5b8702b57969f24f8884e4a353e875363165c

My students take partner activities a lot more seriously when they have to record the activity on Google Voice.  Skits and dialogues are done on Google Voice on a regular basis, because I save so much class time by having all partners perform at once. I will then grade the assignment during my planning bell, when I can fully concentrate on assessing my students’ oral work, and not be distracted by classroom management issues.  

From time to time, I also have students call in some of the textbook’s pair work.   They are much more concerned about doing the activity well when it will be recorded than when I am informally walking around the room listening to them. 

My student’s enjoy hearing each other more than the book’s listening activities, so when I have a very strong oral activity, I will also download it, and create listening comprehension questions about what the student said in their recording.  

This year I am using the “add contact name” to their phone number.  When I log in to my Google Voice account I can  tell exactly who called and at what time.  I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner.  If you haven’t set this up yet, it is quite simple.  Right by the phone number that called in is a blue “Add”.  Click on it and enter your student’s name.  Every time that student calls you from that phone, you will see his name by his message. 

Another reason why I am such a Google Voice fan, is that I can give my students direct feedback by texting them (if they call from their cell phones).  If the activity is done in front of class, I tend to give my students positive feedback, because speaking in front of peers in a Spanish can be intimidating.  However, it a student is repeating the same mistake over and over on a Google Voice message, I can simply send a quick text from my computer, and give the student constructive feedback without embarrassing her in front of her peers.

This year I want to finding ways to use Google Voice for informal and unscripted conversation practice.  There is a 2:30 minute limit on each call, so I haven’t successfully come up with an activity that gives my students the think time they need at this level to record a spontaneous exchange.  If you have any suggestions, please share!  I’m always looking for creative and efficient ways to assess speaking skills.