Self-Sought Professional Development

For my personal professional development activity, I signed up with the FLTeach listserv. I have only recently signed up, so I have not received a lot of information. I wanted to look for something regarding assessment because I am really interested in assessing a foreign language classroom; I feel that it is a weakness of mine. I do great with formative assessments throughout each class, but final assessments are where I lack skill. However,  I did find an interesting post about an end of the unit assessment from a Spanish teacher who teaches in Florida. It has to do with an assessment activity that she created for a second year Spanish class in which the students go through a faux Spanish Market using their skills in vocabulary and grammar to communicate with the teacher at different stations. Students are able to talk about food, preferences, money, and characteristics of people and things at a variety of different stations in order to assess their knowledge. I thought this was an excellent idea because it puts the student in a situation that they could use in real life. They must communicate in order to order and pay for their food, and they must make idle conversation with the person to whom they are talking (the teacher). Students could use this in their real lives if they went to a Spanish market in the city, like for her class, Miami or another heavily Hispanic populated city. I could definitely see myself using this as a form of assessment for students, and I could explain the importance of it with regards to the Grand Rapids community.

What I was most interested with, though, was how the teacher graded the students on their knowledge. I thought that this would be very hard to grade because almost all of what the students are doing is based on oral output and comprehension. The teacher accounted for this and also had the students complete a smaller-written portion beforehand. The teacher emphasized that the writing portion would be more of a longer, creative piece. It seemed like a lot of work for the students to do, but really if the students just studied the material and wrote a page or so, they would have a good grade for the final. The teacher didn't specify too much as to what the writing piece entailed, but I assume that it would include concise and specific instructions to assess the students. For the Spanish Market activity, the students will be guided through the dialogue so that they are hitting at all of the main points that are covered in the assessment.

Overall, I think that I would use this in a class, but maybe just as a "fun" day and not for assessment unless I could plan way ahead of time. By planning ahead, I could really figure out how I am going to assess the students, and I will be able to ask them specific questions to help elicit their knowledge of the given unit. I am curious as to what other educators think about this type of assessment and its benefit compared to the standard norm of written exams.