Focus of Assessment and Effective Correction

Session         : Focus of Assessment and Effective Correction

Group            : 1

Time               : 09.00-10.30

Date               : 15 October 2014

Tutor              : Chris Gleeson

REPORT:

The designing of assessments are parts and parcel in the process of teaching and learning. Assessment in the context of CLIL demands teachers to have clear and thorough understanding of what they are assessing. Teacher have to be precise whether the assessments were designed to check students’ language knowledge, content of the subject matter or both the language and the content of the subject matter. The process of preparing assessments for a CLIL-based classroom should be focusing on students’ cognitive, practical and communication skills. 

Today’s session was conducted by Chris where we started off the session with plenary discussion on types of assessments that we have carried out in the classroom. Next he distributed the worksheet on this topic. In Task One, we were asked to identify some samples of assessment questions according to each focus. In groups of three or four, we have to take turns to throw the dice to select which question we have to answer. The assigned task was aimed to check our understanding of the focus of assessment, whether it is content based, language-based or content and language-based assessments. This exercise indirectly helped us to better understand the process of designing clear and precise instructions for the students.

The session then continued with the discussion of Task Two, where the objective of this task was to understand the Key Concepts of CLIL and in the CLIL classroom. For this particular task, we had the chance to explore and understand on how to design instructions for the classroom that focus on the three important skills in CLIL assessment – communication, cognition and practical skills. We were introduced about the importance of teaching the students to select information (cognitive skills), how to demonstrate (practical) and to communicate (communication skills) for their learning.

The final task, Task Three which is “Effective Error Correction” where we have to read the statements and decide whether we agreed or disagreed with the statements. The statements were on how teacher should asses and make correction to his or her students.

To sum up the lesson, Chris explained that there are three Key Concepts of the CLIL classroom; communicative, cognitive and practical skills. He also suggested that there were practical methods to deal with mistakes done by the students in class; teacher correction, peer correction and self-correction. We cannot simply blame the students when there are mistakes in their assessment. We have to make them view the mistakes in a positive way. We should also use indicators like gestures to indicate the mistakes or get other learners to correct the mistakes. This will help boost students’ confidence level.

REFLECTION

Overall, the class was very interesting and we learned to assess students in various ways. During the plenary session, we discussed on types of assessments that we have carried out in our classroom. This lesson exposed us to the focus on assessment which tell us what aspects to look at when delivering assessment to our students. From the discussion, we knew that the preparation of the assessment for our students should be asses in term of whether it is content based, language-based or content and language-based assessments. The exercise that we had done during the lesson helped us to understand the process of designing clear and precise instructions for the students.

As for the three important skills in CLIL assessment – communication, cognitive and practical skills, students should be introduced to understand on how they will be tested by providing them with clear and precise instructions.

 “Effective Error Correction” is where we learn from our mistakes through experiencing it and how did we manage to overcome it during learning process. The correction techniques for students’ mistakes in English Language Classroom change depending on whether the activity is for fluency or accuracy. The teacher should choose the best way to correct the students’ mistakes.

RECOMMENDATION

As teacher, we need to be clear of which assessment that suitable for our students. The class could be more interesting if we could make the students to mingle around and collaborate with other students. 

On the other hand, we think that we could use peer-correction and self-correction activity with our students to promote autonomous learning. We feel that students will be less depending on their teachers if we could get them started this techniques at an early stage.

From our point of view, educators should inculcate more cognitive and practical skills for our students by providing them with differentiation in assessment and tasks.