The aim of this lesson is to create a vocabulary that describes emotion that will help pre-students express themselves in both languages and to bring into focus the conceptual clues falling under both natural and literary settings.
Materials needed:
Construction cardboard cut into circular shapes (about 6” in diameter) - 4 per child
Plastic straw pipes – 4 per child
Adhesive
Color crayons
Vocabulary: joyful, gloomy, shocked, smiles, moods, eyes, appearance, mouth, tear.
Lesson:
Before starting the lesson make 4 emotion masks out of construction paper and plastic straw pipes. Make out a tale in which different emotions are faced by the character. These emotions need not to be explanatory in nature in the tale as long you make mention them during side remarks and class discussion during the concept,
Alongside every emotion introduction in the tale the corresponding mask is held up. Make elaborate everything you are doing i.e. “Class, Mike is holding up the gloomy face mask because the little bear in the tale is sad. See how the gloomy face mask has a mouth that is upside down? Can you make a resembling mouth?”
After the tale is over, have the students go to the art center to make their own masks (joyful, gloomy, and shocked).
Let the adhesives for the masks dry and do other activities or free play
Afterwards, gather around for another story time. Distribute the masks the students have made and when a character in the tale is emotional; ask the students to, lift up the masks they think fits with the character’s feeling. Choose a student and ask why they picked that mask (they won’t usually be able to explain, it is ok). Encourage everyone’s response.
Make summary of the tale by using new vocabulary, encouraging choral answers from everyone, lifting up the masks and using the facial expressions that match the new words the students have learnt.
Alternative Assessments
Alternative assessments are those that allow teachers to follow the ongoing process of their student more regularly. Using this mode, teachers get to address students’ specific problem sections, and solve them earlier instead of later.
There are three commonly used alternative assessments; Performance oriented assessment, Criterion-referenced assessment, and Norm-referenced assessment. Both the techniques use the common classroom activities to measure growth toward curricular targets and objectives.
Performance-Based Assessments
These performance based assessments tend to be based on classroom instruction and daily challenges. It can be used to assess English Language Learners’ proficiency and academic achievement through presentations, demonstration, portfolios, oral reports and written assignments. Teachers can use observation checklist and scoring rubrics to evaluate the students and grade them.
This type of assessment does not provide single answers but promote a wide range of responses so the student performances should be based on the teacher’s judgment. Some examples of commonly used activity types tailored for assessing reading or speaking:
Response should be to ‘what’ and ‘where’ questions
Ask for or make clarifications
Portfolio Assessments
These assessments are a practical way of assessing students work throughout the entire year. This is a kind of method you can systematically pick description record of students’ work over time that reflect development toward the achievement of specific objectives. Portfolios contain sample work, information, and evaluations that assist as pointers for student performance.
Pieces of articles of written student work, such as tales, completed forms, exercise papers, and descriptions.
Audio tapes of oral work, i.e. presentations, role playing, or an oral account of a trip.
Descriptions of the teacher on student accomplishments, such as performance on oral tasks.
Checklists, formal test data and rating sheets.
The student’s portfolio including checklists or summary papers of tasks and performances can help in making instructional decisions and report consistently and reliably. Checklists can also assist in collecting similar kind of data for each student.
There are a few ways in the portfolio process in which your ELLs can have an active role;
Samples of students work and reflection on their own growth over time can be selected
You can desire to meet with English Language learners to develop their objectives and standards
The students in class as whole or in groups can create their own rubrics.
Norm-Referenced Measure
It is an assessment or a test that is designed to provide that result in performance measure interpretable in terms of the students understanding in a particular group. This type of assessment is most important when one wishes to make comparisons across large numbers of students or decisions regarding the placement and advancement of a student. These assessments are designed to compare students. Most of the achievement Norm-Referenced Tests are those that multiple choice while some include open ended, short-answer questions. The questions mainly reflect nationally taught information rather than necessarily the local curriculum.
Criterion-Referenced Measures
This type of assessment is one that provides the measure of attainment of understanding that is defined in terms of a clear and unlimited range of study tasks. It is mostly used for swift assessment of the content and skill learned by students from a particular unit of segment covered. This assessment measure the performance of a student against a concept or objective other than another student.
In this case the bell curve tends to be skewed to the right, since every student is expected to perform exemplary in their studies. This type of assessment helps eliminate competition amongst students and improves cooperation among them.
Special education cases often use reading materials with both the vocabulary and phonics that are controlled, reducing the text’s meaningfulness. This is a challenge to teachers of English language learners on when referral is appropriate or how the student should be evaluated. Teachers screening ELLs for learning difficulties to remember that some characters that may be considered learning disability may be similar to linguistic behaviors also resemble linguistic behaviors of those students trying to learn a second language or differences in the culture and values of students. Learning of the language and its disabilities are due to factors intrinsic to the learner such as brain impairment, whilst the second language learning difficulties are mainly extrinsic to the student.
References
Brantley, D. K. (2007). Instructional assessment of English language learners in the K-8 classroom. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Ferlazzo, L., & Hull-Sypnieski, K. (2012). The ESL/ELL teacher's survival guide: Ready-to-use strategies, tools, and activities for teaching English language learners of all levels. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Haver, J. J. (2013). English for the children: Mandated by the people, skewed by politicians and special interests.
