Learner Assessment
The students will be graded on 1 – 4 scale, with 4 being excellent achievement of grade level expectations in accordance with the Alberta Program of Studies for Spanish Language Arts Outcomes (Calgary Board of Education, 2014, Updated June 4). The Stems include comprehension, speaking, reading and writing (Calgary Board of Education, 2014, May 7).
Throughout the project students will receive written feedback and grades for their work. This formative assessment will allow them to revise their work. Before receiving teacher feedback, students will also be asked to self-assess using the same grading scale and stems. This will open up areas for discussion and highlight areas of strength and growth.
Green et al. argued that formative assessment will help move the project along in a productive way and will give light to grammatical errors that need revision (p. 319). They referred to several “products of thinking, such as storyboards, brainstorming materials, and unedited video footage (p. 315)” that a teacher can use for formative and summative assessment.
Butvilofsky and Sparrow argue that bilingual biliterate students cannot be evaluated the same way as monolingual students. Monolingual English rubrics based on English rhetoric should not be translated in order to provide a template to evaluate Spanish writing. Doing so does not take into account the full range of skills a bilingual student has and how they use that knowledge across both languages in order to express themselves. Teachers in bilingual programs need to properly and fairly evaluate their students’ biliterate abilities using a holistic bilingual rubric that represents and fits their bilingual context. This study has brought to light the need for teacher training of authentic Spanish literacy instruction (p. 391). Teachers need to change the lens through which they view student writing in order to develop and honour the bilingual biliterate individual. We need to move away from monolingual English rhetoric to a holistic bilingualism (p. 385).
There is a need to adopt a holistic bilingual approach in order to evaluate students’ biliteracy as evident in the process and production of their vidcasts using the Spanish Language Arts stems from the Calgary Board of Education K – 9 report cards.
Gutiérrez (2012) article, in combination with Butvilofsky and Sparrow (2012) holistic evaluation of the emergent bilingual students’ biliterate writing, takes the evaluation of student output one step further. When evaluating student work, the teacher needs to be able to identify if they are grading the students’ implicit or explicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge of L2 is the “intuitive and procedural knowledge that is normally accessed automatically in fluent performance and that cannot be verbalize” (p. 21). Explicit knowledge of L2 is the “conscious and declarative knowledge of L2 that is accessed during controlled processing and that can be potentially verbalized” (p. 21).
Considering the fact that the majority of the grade two students in the Canadian school only have a maximum of two years of experience in the program, it is expected that the majority of their knowledge of Spanish should be explicit and not implicit and that evaluations of their work should be based on their demonstration of explicit knowledge.
The effectiveness of this project will be evaluated on whether it has increased student confidence and skill in oral communication, on its ease of use for both learner and teacher, and its ability to build community in the classroom and with those overseas.
The students will be graded on 1 – 4 scale, with 4 being excellent achievement of grade level expectations in accordance with the Alberta Program of Studies for Spanish Language Arts Outcomes (Calgary Board of Education, 2014, Updated June 4). The Stems include comprehension, speaking, reading and writing (Calgary Board of Education, 2014, May 7).
Throughout the project students will receive written feedback and grades for their work. This formative assessment will allow them to revise their work. Before receiving teacher feedback, students will also be asked to self-assess using the same grading scale and stems. This will open up areas for discussion and highlight areas of strength and growth.
Green et al. argued that formative assessment will help move the project along in a productive way and will give light to grammatical errors that need revision (p. 319). They referred to several “products of thinking, such as storyboards, brainstorming materials, and unedited video footage (p. 315)” that a teacher can use for formative and summative assessment.
Butvilofsky and Sparrow argue that bilingual biliterate students cannot be evaluated the same way as monolingual students. Monolingual English rubrics based on English rhetoric should not be translated in order to provide a template to evaluate Spanish writing. Doing so does not take into account the full range of skills a bilingual student has and how they use that knowledge across both languages in order to express themselves. Teachers in bilingual programs need to properly and fairly evaluate their students’ biliterate abilities using a holistic bilingual rubric that represents and fits their bilingual context. This study has brought to light the need for teacher training of authentic Spanish literacy instruction (p. 391). Teachers need to change the lens through which they view student writing in order to develop and honour the bilingual biliterate individual. We need to move away from monolingual English rhetoric to a holistic bilingualism (p. 385).
There is a need to adopt a holistic bilingual approach in order to evaluate students’ biliteracy as evident in the process and production of their vidcasts using the Spanish Language Arts stems from the Calgary Board of Education K – 9 report cards.
Gutiérrez (2012) article, in combination with Butvilofsky and Sparrow (2012) holistic evaluation of the emergent bilingual students’ biliterate writing, takes the evaluation of student output one step further. When evaluating student work, the teacher needs to be able to identify if they are grading the students’ implicit or explicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge of L2 is the “intuitive and procedural knowledge that is normally accessed automatically in fluent performance and that cannot be verbalize” (p. 21). Explicit knowledge of L2 is the “conscious and declarative knowledge of L2 that is accessed during controlled processing and that can be potentially verbalized” (p. 21).
Considering the fact that the majority of the grade two students in the Canadian school only have a maximum of two years of experience in the program, it is expected that the majority of their knowledge of Spanish should be explicit and not implicit and that evaluations of their work should be based on their demonstration of explicit knowledge.
The effectiveness of this project will be evaluated on whether it has increased student confidence and skill in oral communication, on its ease of use for both learner and teacher, and its ability to build community in the classroom and with those overseas.