Administering Assessment

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Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The eight chapter is base on the administering assessment it has to do on how the teachers adminitrate the different invironment related with the aplication of the test in behalf of the students.

These are some considerations prior to test administration:

1. Scheduling Tests: the first consideration a teacher should take in account is that any assessment should be scheduled at a time that allows students to do their best work. Before scheduling a test, check that the date does not concide with special events like assemblies, fire drills, or sports day. 

2. Providing Information to Students: teacher should be as transparent as possible regarding student assessment. Students need to know when exams are scheduled and policies about arriving and departing. They need clear information about what they may and may not bring into the exam such as food and drink, calculators, and so on.

3. Academic Dishonesty: at the beginning of the school year, teacher should describe for the students the acceptable and unacceptable academics behaviors. Because some students may no know what constitutes academic dishonesty, give examples of cheating, plagiarism, and impermisible collaboration.

4. Physical Setting: in general the setting of a test should provide an atmosphere that is conductive to student learning. Accomadate the classroom in should a way that the students may be comfortable.

5. Test Assembly: all tests should be professionally compliled. This means that they should be typed, well formatted, and free of typos. The test should be clearly identified by a cover page with the name of the test, the date it was given, and the time allowed. The test instructions should be clear and concise whether they are given orally or in writing. if you are giving oral instructions, read slowly and clearly, but do not add or elaborate on anything as this will disadvantage students in other classes.

Test Administration also have some steps for teachers to take in consideration when they are applying a test should as: time, administrator's role, and test security.

• Time: tell students how long they have at the beginning of the test, and give them announcements throughout the exam to help them budget their time more effectively.
• Administrator's Role: it is recommended that the teacher maintain a friendly but stern demeanor. Students should know that you will not tolerate cheating or misbehavior during the test.
• Test security: maintaning security is important for any level of testing. Remind students about the test conditions. Rules that you migh want to institute include no talking, no cell phone calls or text messaging, and the correct procedure for asking a question.

   Grading

After the test has been administered, teachers must mark the papers using the answer key prepared at the same time the test was developed. While grading, make sure that guidelines such as writting scales are readily available to the markets. Inform students when their results will be available.

These are some issues in test administration consider as very important when administering assessment and as teachers we should take in account such as: surprise test/pop quizzes, latecomers, incident reports, and accommodations policy.

Things that teacher should remember about administering assessment and also take in consideration:

1. Create a positive attitude toward testing.
2. Be transparent.
3. Prepare policies and procedures well in advance.
4. Explain to students the distinction between teaching versus testing.
5. Refrain from helping students who are having difficulty.
6. Adopt a specials needs assessment policy.
7. Inform students of the consequences of academic dishonesty.
8. Minimeze the opportunities for cheating and plagiarism.

Finally I will say that administering assessment is very important for teachers in all area, the way they developed their test with the different steps that will allow students to achieve their goal and the teacher to know if the ways they are working in the subject the idea is dropting on good ground.

GLOSSARY  

1. Typos:

2.Ringers:

3. Demeanor:

Student Test-Taking Strategies

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Licda Cleopatra Noel D.

The seven chapter of the book Assessing English Language Learners is related to how student can apply test-taking using different strategies that is going to help them achieve their goals in a successful way.

The key to successful test-taking lies in a student's ability to use time wisely and to develop prratical study habits.

Students should make schedules and revise them when necessary and the schedule should be realistic, include a study place, include a daily study time, and allow plenty of preparation time for important assessments.

Students also need to attend classes on a regular basis for the language learning to take place.

There are necessary some good review techniques for students to be prepare for a test and it should include a plan review sessions, take a practice exam, and review with friends. Teachers can help students be more successful on tests by familiarizing them with the language of rubrics or instructions, particularly the cue words or phrases commonly used to give directions for the tasks students encounter; students also need to understand exactly how they are supposed to answer the questions. If they are supposed to select an asnwer, make sure your instructions are lear about how they are to select it.

Teachers should train students in effective strategies for the various skills areas to be tested. Important activities should be demonstrated to students during classroom activities. Spend time analyzing the particular skills that your students will encounter on standardized exams and then build strategies for these skills as part of classroom instruction. When you introduce new vocabulary that includes phrasal verbs, collocations, or idioms, point out that these words occur together and if one is missing, it is important to look at all of the words surrounding the gap before making an answer choice. When the teacher consider the development of good test-taking skills as synonymous with good learning skills, it is easy to integrate them into his/her classes.

Strategize Your Exam Plan

It is said that when teacher plan what will happen on exam day and not leaving anything to chance she or he will build on students' confidence and reduces anxiety. It includes the following:

1. Mechanics: students feel better prepared if they have the mechanical aspects of taking an exam well in hand. They should arrive early at the designated exam room  and find a seat.
2. Procedures: if one section is given first, such as the listening portion of English exams, the students should focus attention on this section.
3. Time Management: an important consideration in effective test-taking is time management. Teachers can assist students with time management by alerting them to time remaining in the exam. If the teacher gives exams with separate timings for each skill, time management may be easier.

Each test should be part of the everall learning experience. If a student experienced a problem as a direct result of a test-taking skill, point that out so it doesn't happen again. Each exam students take should help them do better on the next one.

Teachers can promote learner autonomy through self-assessment. Self-assessment plays a central role in student monitoing of progress in a language program. It refers to the student's evaluation of his or her own performaance at various points in a course. An advantage of self-assessment is that student awareness of outcomes and progress is enhanced.

According to Oscarson (1989) there are five reasons that self-assessment can be beneficial to language learning:

1. Self-assessment truly promotes learning, it gives learners training in evaluation, which results in benefits to the learning process.
2. It gives both students and teachers a raised level of awareness of perceived levels of abilities.
3. It is highly motivating in terms of goal orientation.
4. Through the use of self-assessment methodologies, the range of assessment techniques is expanded in the classroom.
5. Practicing self-assessment, the students partipate in their own evaluation.   

 Self-assessment Techniques and Procedures

There are many ways or techniques to develop a self-assesment such as: students progress cards, rating scales, checklists, and questionnaires, learner diaries and dialogue journals, videotapesstudents-designed test, and learner-centered assessment.

What should a teaccher remember about student test-taking skills:

• Students test-taking skills are really good learning skills.
• Build skill strategies in the classroom.
• Spend time on reading and following instructions.
• Familiarize students with a wide range of formats.
• Promote and reward good planning.
• Discuss and practice timing issues.
• Provide students with helpful feedback. 

GLOSSARY

1. Uneven:

2. Plateaus:

3. Alloted:

4. Bogged:

5. Rate

The Advantages of Rubrics.

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 Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

As teachers of English as a Second Language it is necessary to understand what is a rubric, that is the reason way we define it as a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score.

Also we can say that is an authentic assessment tool used to measure students' work. Rubrics can be created for any content area, once we developed a rubric they can be modified easily for various grade levels.

It is important to use rubrics in our daily ESL work and why do we use them, many experts believe that rubrics improve students' end products and therefore increase learning. When students receive rubrics beforehand, they understand how they wil be evaluated and can prepare accordingly.

There are many advantages to using rubrics:

• Teachers can increase the quality of their direct instruction by providing focus, emphasis, and attention to particular details as a model for students.
• Students have explicit guidelines regarding teacher expectations.
• Students can use rubrics as a tool to develop their abilities.
• Teachers can reuse rubrics for various activities.

The rubrics can be analytic and holistic, but what is the difference between analytic and holistic rubrics? The analytic rubrics identify and assess components of a finished product and the holistic rubrics assess students work as a whole.

1. Neither the analytic nor the holistic rubrics is better than the other one.

2. Consider your students and grader(s) when deciding which type to use.

3. For modeling, present to your students anchor products or exemples of products at various levels of development.

What is a weighted rubrics?

A weighted rubrics is an analytic rubric in which certain concepts are judged more heavily than others. Some advantages of this kind of rubric is that it permits a clearly communication, also it focuses on specific aspects of a project.

Finally I will say that weighted rubrics are useful for explicitly describing to students and parents what concepts take priority over others for certain activities.