Classroom New Year's Resolution: Quick Daily Assessments With GradeCam!

The new year is fast upon us, and having a little break gives me some time to reflect and think about goals for the coming year. I think that it's important to focus on only 1-3 goals, otherwise it just gets to be too much and none of them get done. So, when I think about if there's only one change that I can make, what would that change be?

I've been learning a lot from other teachers around me, and particularly from Ben Slavic's TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) and CI (Comprehensible Input) Professional Learning Community. One of the gems that I've culled is assigning a student to be the quiz writer for the day. He or she then writes 10-12 True/False statements during the course of the class based on whatever our discussion may be. The nice thing about this is that it keeps students accountable to the content of our discussions, while also allowing the class to be flexible and not entirely tied down to any preconceived plan if so desired. Also, it's a great way to review content at the end of the class, and if it's done on a daily (or at least close to daily) basis it keeps both the students and me aware of how much they're understanding. 

So, how will it actually work in practice? First of all, I will explain to my class the purpose of this. Secondly, I will explain what the Quiz Writer will do and then pick a student to be the quiz writer for the day. The last 10 minutes or so of class I will collect the quiz from the Quiz Writer and do one of two things. Option number one is to have students get out a blank sheet of paper and write their names and the numbers 1-10 (or 1-8 if you want it to be a bit shorter) on it. Option number two is to use GradeCam. For this you need to set up an account (for quizzes of up to 10 questions it's entirely free, and their's a free trial period as well) for yourself, and create a class with your students' names. You can then print out multiple choice sheets (A through D) of 8-10 questions each. I will assign 2-3 students to pass out the sheets because their is one sheet for each student with their names on it. (You can print multiple sheets per page so that it uses less paper.) I would probably go with option number one as more of an informal assessment on Mondays and Tuesdays, and option number two for more formal assessments during block (Wed./Thur.) and Fridays. 

Once students have either a sheet of paper or the GradeCam sheets I will read aloud the 8-10 questions that the Quiz Writer has written. That way I can quickly correct any grammatical errors, and it also assures that students are paying attention to spoken French. I will read through each phrase three times. Once they are complete I will either have them trade with a partner, who will grade them, or just have them hand them in. I will then go through each phrase one at a time and ask the class whether it is true or false, and have them respond together. If it seems like they are unclear or if I hear some students who respond incorrectly I can either explain it to them or ask a student from the class to explain it and/or translate it. 

If I chose to use GradeCam then all I have to do is take the Quiz Writer's quiz and quickly enter in the answers into a new quiz in GradeCam. I can then take each of their sheets and, using my computer webcam I can put the sheet in front of the camera and it will instantly tabulate their grade! And, it doesn't end there. If you are using an electronic gradebook (as we do) you can then open up your electronic gradebook, create the new assignment, click on the first student, and then hit the F8 key. It will then instantly enter in the grades for you! It's a beautiful sight to see! Not only does this help take away some of the really boring and repetitive parts of teaching, but it also gives students (as well as myself and their parents) some very quick feedback on how they're doing. It's a fantastic idea that I am actually looking forward to implementing in the new year!

Just get on the bike and ride!

I went to a training yesterday, and this is an analogy that really stuck out to me. Think back to how you learned (or are presently learning) in school. When I think back to my foreign language classes in high school and at the university a lot of what I remember is trying to memorize an almost endless amount of vocabulary lists, conjugating verbs, and doing lots and lots of book exercises. Don't get me wrong, we also played games, had short conversations, read, watched videos, and other fun and interesting things, but it still seemed like the emphasis was on memorizing, practicing, and then regurgitating what we had (hopefully) taken in. Now, I don't think that my teachers and professors necessarily meant any harm by this, but you kind of have to wonder just how effective this method (or methods) is when each year fewer and fewer students continued in the program, and many felt unsuccessful. How many people have you heard say, "I just can't learn a foreign language."? Perhaps it's not them. Perhaps it's the method.

I truly believe that a lot of the problem here is that much of this learning has been focused on learning about the language, and not simply learning by using the language. Now we're getting to the analogy that I ran across yesterday. Imagine that you want to learn how to ride a bike. For some reason you never got around to it. So, one way is to go get a book about how to ride a bike. You go buy a book, read it from cover to cover, take notes, quiz yourself, and maybe even watch some videos of people riding bikes. You learn everything you can about how to ride a bike.

In scenario two, you decide to just go get a bike, and ask a friend who already knows how to ride a bike to help you out. Your friend encourages you and shows you how it's done. Perhaps you even start with some training wheels so you can begin to get the feel for it without having to fall too much. But, eventually you take those training wheels off and you ride just a little bit by yourself (with a push from your friend), and you fall down. You get up, wipe yourself off, and try again. This time you go a little bit further before you fall down, but once again you get back up and get back on your bike.

Just imagine that you have two people. One person tries out the first option for a year, and the other person tries out the second option for a year. You could even extrapolate this out to four years or more. At the end of that time period you had both of them get on a bike and show you what they had learned. What do you think the results would be? Who do you think would be better able to ride a bike?

Unfortunately, a lot of the learning that has taken place in our schools is more about learning about things, instead of actually learning by doing. I think this is particularly poignant in foreign language teaching. I have even been guilty of teaching in this way as well. I have tried to teach my students to think about the language, which oftentimes just gets in the way of actually being able to use the language. Now, perhaps at a more advanced level it may be appropriate to teach about the language (or maybe not- how many of you really have to think about how English works at a conscious  level to be able to use the language well?), but considering the small amount of time that we have with students as it is, teaching about the language is of limited value if I really want them to be able to learn to use the language. It's time to turn over a new leaf!!! It's time to just get on the bike and ride!