Classroom and Standardized Testing

Retrieved from: http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/school/teststress/

Monitoring training means to keep track of student progress to make instructional decisions and to give students feedback about the performances. Classroom testing is one of the several methods of monitoring learning objectives that also includes questioning in class, monitoring seat work, homework, and study. There is some discussion as to the reliability and validity of testing. On the one hand, some say that the results only apply under the test conditions and so are limited in what they test. On the other hand, others are in favor of standardized testing that places students strictly along a continuum of achievement across a broad student body. These views tie into debates about whether to concentrate more on the learning process or ono the learning outcomes.

Before compiling a test for classroom use, it is necessary to determine what to test and how to test it. Assessment should be based on the content taught in the program. Generally, one may speak of content-based, performance-based, and objectives tests. These all have a different focus. Objectives review information through short answers, true/false questions, matching exercise, and multiple choice questions. This is for when a teacher wishes to find out if a student has attained particular learning experience objectives. Content-based test whether the student has learned the content taught in class. Objective analysis may accomplish this aim, as will essay questions and other methods of the written evaluation. Performance-based test whether the student is able  to perform tasks based on what was studied in class. These include activities like oral exams, communicative tasks, interpretative exercises, and even role plays and public debates.

When compiling classroom test, the teacher needs to decide on the subset of curriculum goals to test for. The following are procedures for constructing good test items:

• The assessment must be directly related to the educational objectives that were carried out during instruction.

• The report should be balanced by function, difficulty, medium of presentation and format.

• The teacher should decide whether to test for knowledge, comprehension, application, synthesis, or evaluation of the concepts covered in class.

Retrieved from:http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/school/teststress/

With the growing use of standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, even us as teachers.  Stimulate the tiredness of mental process of our students. Most critics are very much about children and education they receive, but they think that testing separately the process are not accurately with the learning process.  Is not a secret that this subject can be a valuable teaching tool but how provide information  necessary ones, due to there are more options for performing feedback to teachers, students and institutions?

When administering classroom study, one must decide on the logistics of what to do before, during and after the test. Where will students sit or stand and what will they be allowed to use or have during the test. Teachers will also need to determine the time to allow for students to complete the examination. After the test is completed, the instructor must determined how to assess the performance of students. The question of subjectivity in grading is a matter of some debate in educational circles, so it is essential to develop a grading rubric or rating scale that will allow for some consistency in marking. Once a test has been given and corrected, it may be necessary to evaluated the effectiveness of the test. This may be done informally through conversation with the students or a teacher may objectively analyzed the effectiveness of each subject.

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Teachers are concerned about this standardization of the teaching because may have them think that they encourage teachers to teach students test taking strategies which may have an adverse influence on the essence of education that these teachers can offer. The standardization of education may be a force to consider a close range of topics, rather than examining a broad variety of matters, and they will not learn the most powerful tool that we as a teacher can heritage to our students "critical thinking".

As I mention before and as we saw in this evaluation program there are many ways to test our students, these alternatives we just have to choose the most appropriate for our students needs. Remember that the teachers play an important part, because we interact with them on a daily basis in the classroom and we can speak out about potential problems that they see, we have to considering tests as a supplementing requirement. But that cannot govern our course.

Adolescence: Between Two Worlds

Adolescence begins with puberty, the time when hormones cause the sex organs to mature and secondary sexual characteristics, such as breast for women and beard for men, to appear. This change typically begin between ages 8-14 for girls and between 9-15 for boys. Adolescence is the period between the appearance of these sexual characteristics and, roughly, the end of the teenage years. Teaching young learners can be a challenging process. Adolescents are not children nor are adults.  They are capable of taking care of themselves, yet their role in society is not clear defined. This can result in them being treated both like children and adults. 

Retrieved from: http://menstrupedia.com/articles/puberty/emotional-changes

The adolescent's ability to reason can become dramatically more powerful, but nevertheless be plagued with bias and distortions. The major cognitive development of adolescence, achieved by some bot not all adolescents, is the ability to reason abstractly. Some of the most important psychological changes young people experience are cognitive changes, which involve changes in thinking and learning patterns. They begin to think logically, abstractly, and to reason. This is important to remember when planning lessons as artificial learning situations will hinder these cognitive abilities and will also cause boredom. The ability to reason will also cause them to questions the authority of adults in their lives, and that means us, their English Teacher. Piaget's period of formal operations covers the cognitive achievements of these adolescents. According to Piaget, formal operational thinking allows the person not only to think abstractly, but also to think systematically about abstract concepts and possible scenarios. Moreover, one might speculate that this ability emerges at this time because it depends on the final stages of brain maturation (and the brain does, in fact, continue to develop well into adolescence -Sowell et al., 1999). But thinking is more that using logic or knowing how to grapple with abstractions. Emotion is often involved in our reasoning, and such as processing relies on the lower middle part of the frontal lobes. Evidence suggest that this brain area is not fully maturate during adolescence, and thus emotions do not guide teenager's thinking effectively (Hooper et al., 2004). It is tempting to speculate that this maturational lag may sometimes explain a lack of "common sense" during this stage of life. 

A bridge between childhood and adulthood, adolescence is a time of transition. The adolescent must forge a new identity, which emerges as he or she negotiates a new place in the world (Marica, 1993). This negotiation involves not only coming to grips with changing roles in the larger society, which requires obeying new set of rules, but also learning to live with cognitive and biological changes that affect interactions with others in many ways. 

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Some theorist, Freud included, believed that personality stops developing in childhood. But Erik Erikson (1921-1994) proposed three stages of adult psychosocial development, due to effects of maturation and learning on personality and relationship, in addition to five stages of psychosocial development through childhood and adolescence. The adult stages were defined by issues that adults are most likely to confront and need to resolve. 

The culture that these young learners are immersed in has a strong influence on how they will handle biological and psychological changes. Teachers need to be aware that their perception of adolescents in their country may not be the same as in other countries. The expectations and roles of the adolescents will vary from culture to culture, depending on the influence of family, society and socialization (gender roles) Try to discover what your students are interested in; do not assume that their interests will be similar to adolescents from our country. 

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Even as adolescents begin to realize their personal goals and desires, their parents still have a very strong influence on their lives. Your students may or may not be learning English because they want to. Try to understand why your students are learning English. Most often it is because they need to pass an English proficiency examination to attend a secondary or post-secondary educational institution either in their home country. Knowing why your students are learning English will help you plan your lessons.  

Teaching Adolescents: Helpful Hints

• Adolescents, just like children's need to be physically active in the classroom. Plan tasks that incorporate physical activities and different learning styles. 
• Adolescents need to have a firm and fair discipline and need to be rewarded. Have a set of rules for your classroom and use an age appropriate positive reward system.
• Adolescents, just like adults need to ask questions, work in groups/pairs and understand the relevance of activities. Allow your students to questions you and feel like they are in control of what they are learning. 
• Respect any key to understand young people. Be aware and perceptive to the changes they may be going through. 
• The classroom should not be overly restrictive or punitive. Allow your students to express themselves freely. 
• Make sure to address all success in the classroom. Words of encouragement go a long the way to help build self-confidence. 
• Give students the opportunity to apply what they have learn to real-life situations either through role-playing or field trips. 
• Sometimes "power struggles" can be an issue with adolescent students. Do not let this affect your classroom. 

  

  Retrieved from: http://aberssel.blogspot.com/2011/10/step-in-step-up-steps-to-success.html

Changing Educational Paradigms

Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded

An education revolution is needed but it won't happen for a long time. As disheartening the system may be and as dysfunctional it is, it does exactly what it was designed for. I think people need to wake up and open their eyes. People need to become more self sufficient because school won't teach them how to succeed.

Alternatives in assessment

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There is growing recognition that true/ false, multiple choice, and short answer tests do not give a correct picture of what students know and have accomplished. These are primarily measures of memorization and recall and do not always even test comprehension. They certainly do not give students opportunities to demonstrate that they can apply what they have learned or use their knowledge in creative or even just practical ways. Many teachers have long used their own tests involving such hands-on measures as the arts, constructions, dramatizations, and multimedia reports. [1] Brown and Hudson (1998) noted that to speak of alternative assessments is counterproductive because the term implies something new and different that may be "exempt from the requirements of responsible test construction" (p. 657). So they proposed to refer to "alternatives" in assessment instead. Their word is a perfect fit within a model that considers tests as a subset of assessment.

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Tests are highly practical and reliable instruments. They are designed to decrease time and money on the part of test-designer and test-taker, and to be precise in their scoring. Alternatives such as portfolios or conferencing with students on drafts of written work, or observations of learners over time all require considerable time and effort on the part of the teacher and the student. On the other hand, the alternative techniques also offer considerably greater wash back, are higher formative measures, and, because of their authenticity, usually carry higher face validity. [2]

The features of alternatives in assessment:

1. They require students to perform, create, produce or do something.
2. They use real-world context or simulations.  
3. They allow students to be assessed on what they usually do in class 
4. They application tasks that represent meaningful instructional activities 
5. They focus on processes as well as products
6. They tap into higher-level thinking and problem solving skills

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Early in the decade of the 1990s, in a culture of rebellion against the notion that all people and all skills could be measured by traditional tests, that idea was to assemble additional measures of students—portfolios, journals, observations, self-assessments, peer-assessments, and the like—in an attempt to triangulate data about students.

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[1] School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-Assessment ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/Assessment%20Alternati

ves/index.html

[2] Brown, J.D. and Hudson, T. (1998). The alternatives in language assessment. TESOL Quarterly 32, 653–75.

Portfolios

“Research shows that portfolios place additional demands on teachers and students as well as on ... resources” (Burke, Fogarty & Belgrad, 1994, p.9). This statement highlights the need for teachers, lecturers, and students, who are using portfolios for the first time, to be aware of the needs that will be made of them. Apart from the time required to learn about the portfolio assessment method, lecturers have indicated the time-consuming nature of providing formative feedback and the difficulty of collecting and storing portfolios. It has been described as an expensive and time-consuming assessment method (Jones, 1994; Wolf, 1991; Perkins & Gelfer, 1993).

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of students work that demostrates students' efforts, progress and achievement in given areas. (Genesee and Upshur, 1996) 

Portfolio assessment has a strong element of self-evaluation and feedback – both for teachers and students. Educators must understand the powerful benefits to student and teacher education from the process of portfolio assessment as they plan a strategy for its successful implementation. A portfolio is merely a tool for assessment, in a more holistic student-centered approach to education. The portfolio becomes the location of the student’s work; their reflection through writing and student/teacher discussion on the work demonstrates whether the desired outcomes for teaching and learning process have been accomplished or not.

Gottlieb (1995) suggested a developmental scheme for considering the nature and purpose of portfolios, using the acronym CRADLE to designate six possible attributes of a portfolio:

•Collecting: an expression of students' lives and identities.

•Reflecting: thinking about experiences and activities.

•Assessing: evaluating quality and development over time.

•Documenting: demonstrating student achievement.

•Linking: connecting student and teacher, parent, community, and peer

•Evaluating: generating responsible outcomes.

A taste of hell

It is a sublime fragrance that attracts one's, and at the same time, it smells. All of us can use it to save people or to destroy them, to bring to life or to kill their soul. It is one and only has one constant: it transforms anyone who exerts it. Supreme Authority; in other words power, is a vital force, which penetrate the arteries of those who have it; it dictate to flesh and bones as well as turn upside down its masters, completely, has carte blanch. Although, power is a vital factor proper to man life. Us cannot conceive an established society without a source of authority that orientates the people; Power itself is not unique predicament, its difficult relationship with human beings, its presence is not exclusive problem, but its provocations, to which mankind without even trying succumbs. It is necessary to set up some rules and mechanisms in order to control its outcomes, something that should be done through education and nothing else with knowledge, the idea of power will be significant; the capacity to change, and this capacity is inside every one of us.

Judas Iscariot sells down the river Jesus for coin of the realm; maybe it is the reason why a world of does the same thing in a certain point of this life. As educators, Almighty Dollar is controlling the last vestige of dignity, identity and social responsibility; students are the martyrs of those economical arrangements that we are doing with the executive sides. Somebody would ask about the way that I call this I would say human trafficking, not taking into account that detrimental it could be, we are trafficking with their grey matter. Educators are condemning us to the eternal slavery of these parties, which are giving birth to the human race without dreams, without a life project, including each and every this behind the scenes that they hint. The above-mentioned are taking possession of the last throb of the heart, even worst one's last sight. In the pedagogy of the oppressed, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) describes the education as a narrative. The relationship between students and teachers, this person put up an argument, plays out according to a script much like that of a play. In this script, the teachers and narrators holding all the facts and the students are empty receptacles to be filled up with the facts. For Freire, the dilemma with this model is that the plot written by those with political and economic power for the purpose of perpetuating oppressive social modus Operandi. The only way to end the tyranny is to rewrite the scenario and construct a different narrative, of what it means to engaged in education[1].

Being in the tight line between the genuine and wicked confuses us when thou are a child in a school. Students take place examined with the perspective of those who neglect, what is the importance of lifeless object; numbers and letters interfere with your in classrooms, with the exception of thy self does not be familiar with their utility. All of us do not imagine the infinite greatness hidden inside them; without may concern you with too much information, learners are a delight in and luxuriate in each moment there. Might be more than a few people do not acquire too much academic knowledge, but they become well versed in how to live in a society. As educators, we cannot play hide and seek from this tangible existence. There are no other possibilities to provide color to our community; it has now. We have to chance the perception of education as soon we get away from our turmoil; we have to give to critical-thinking a room for debate, give them a possibility to think differently. Furthermore, I consider that going to school is just one of our multiple experiences as social beings has to complete and that only knowledge are schools located.

Both dignity and virtue, which have within an ace of fade away from the right side of the earth, are latent in honest men, but they succumb to the mediocrity of those who govern our communities. They will never be true leaders, but criminals. I feel remorse for all the blood we had sacrificed, aside from I bear in mind there will be a true to life, one with hope and honesty. All those who follow tyrant leaders are as despicable as those people are. Those are traitors of their societies that are why I despise them.

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[1] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. [New York]: Herder and Herder, 1970.

Speaking and Listening skills

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As mention in the last entry, English language teachers can assess progress in language or skill acquisition and usage. There are four key language skills that the students will acquire: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The order in which these are list coincides with the class of skill acquisition and the instruction. One cannot learn how to read before learning how to speak. It is crucial when developing lesson plans always keep this sequence in mind, to allow the most natural progression in language attainment.  Language skills are grouped into the categories of receptive / productive or oral / written.  In this entry,  we will focus on listening (Receptive and oral) and speaking (Productive and oral).

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Listening is an active process in which the listeners select and interpret information (visual and auditory) and relate this information to what they already know. During the process of listening,  we are subject to the following steps: receive an aural stimulus, convert it into words, attach meaning into words, relate the message to past experiences and choose a proper response. Why is it necessary to teach listening? ‘Listening has used significantly more that any other language skill in daily life. We can expect to listen twice as much as we talk, four times as much as we understand, and five times as much as we write (Rivers, 1981). Therefore, an urgent reason for teaching listening skills is because listening is the basis for communication. 

On the other hand, speaking skills are closely related to the listening skills. In conjunction, listening and speaking can be taught as communication skills. Meaningful communication is a very challenging skill for the students as they often feel that they understand their teacher and peers but have trouble communicating outside of the classroom. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to present to students patterns of real interactions. According to the British linguist D.A Wilkins (Rogers and Richards, 2001, 154): the communicative approach stressed for the real communication in the classroom so that the students are inspired to develop their language system, not just proving them the opportunity to practice what they already know. Students will learn the language by struggling to communicate and the teacher will help them by motivating them to work with the language. As stated earlier, effective communication (listening and speaking) is the number one reason that most of your students take English lessons. Even though your students, especially the adult ones, understand how useful and valuable this communication is, motivation may still be a challenge for the teacher.  

Types of Listening and Speaking activities 

Listening activities and Speaking activities in the classroom. 

H.D.Brown (2007) offers a simplified list of micro-skills and macro-skills (for conversational listening). The macro-skills isolate those skills that relate to the discourse level of organization while those that remain at the sentence level continue to be called micro-skills. [1] 

	Speaking	Listening
Micro skills	Refers to producing the small chunks of language (phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, phrasal units)	Attending to the smaller bits and chunks of language, in more of bottom-up process
Macro skills	Imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements; fluency, discourse, style, cohesion	Focusing on the larger elements involved in a top-down approach

In spite of the two models of listening and speaking are identified: the bottom-up and the top-down processing models. For example, bottom-up strategies are based on the language found in the discourse and include listening for details, recognition of related ideas, and word order patterns. The top-down strategies are based on the listener's background knowledge of the topic and include listening for the main idea, forecasting the outcomes, and summarize the discourse. 

For EFL/ESL students,  both approaches are needed when teaching listening skills. (Nunan, 1997).

In the same way,  there are particularly aspects of the spoken language that can influence the listening process and comprehension. H.D. Brown (1991) presents a comprehensive list of these factors:

What makes listening difficult?

To conclude, listening and speaking are difficult skills to master, specially for non-native speakers because of the differences between written and spoken language. As a language teacher, we aim to train to all students to become effective communicators, so active communication skills must consider incorporating other linguistic skills such as stress and intonation and morphosyntax. Instead of making use of activities that acquire repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical patterns, activities that required learners to negotiate meaning and interact with the world listening and speaking is more that coding and decoding information. Nevertheless, since speaking and listening are so closely intertwined, we must pay attention to challenges students face when listening to authentic discourse.  Listening and speaking includes: paying attention (eye-contact), understanding (reflect what they just heard) and responding (give feedback either verbal or written).

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[1] "Receptive Teaching Skills. Brown ,( n.d.) Web. 7 June 2013 <http://fabitateacher.blogspot.com/>.

[2] Preparing Listening Questions: Assessing Listening Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ingilish.com/preparing_listening_questions.htm