Getting to Know You
INTRODUCTION
I
teach LINC (CLB levels 3-4-5) which is an ongoing language program. My students
are senior women. This means that students can join the class any time and
leave the class whenever they are progressed to the other level. So there is no
beginning and no end of the program.
When
a new student comes to the class, I introduce myself and ask every student to
introduce herself to the new classmate. They have had a lot of practice to do
that during the school year.
It is
a kind of welcome given by all of us. Then I think that the new student feels
better and is ready to introduce herself. This is the first step but not the
end of the story.
PBLA –Portfolio Based Language Assessment
The
first entry of the portfolio is the autobiography of the student. On that piece
of paper, she has written some information about herself. There is no format
and no content frame. Students write whatever they want about themselves. So
the portfolio is the property of the student. It can be confidential if the
student does not want to share it. However, a lot of students are happy to
share the information with their peers. It is not very convenient for students
to open the portfolios of their peers and read their stories. Now I intend to
create electronic portfolios. The following task is an example of the
electronic portfolio.
Speaking Task for Assessment
I am
planning a speaking task “Getting to Know You”. It is an interesting and
interactive topic. Students are going to demonstrate their language competencies:
How can they interact socially & share information? In other words, it
shows how able they are to use bits and pieces of language to communicate in
different social environments. I would use a voicethread for this activity.
This
will be a follow up activity after the topic: “Introduce Yourself” that we did
in the class.
I have
prepared a snapshot of a number of cropped images the students are supposed to
talk about in this activity. For example, a picture of Toronto suggests the
question: How long have you been in Canada/Toronto? A picture of an English
book suggests: How long have you studied English? So the instruction is that
each student should talk about these topics.
The Activity:
The
instructor will be the first to start talking about herself. Students will be
encouraged to post their pictures.
Criteria for Assessment & Criteria
for Success
Students
will have a chart prepared by the instructor to use for their assessment. The
criteria for success is scoring.
Self-assessment
– the student can listen to her introduction and edit to make it better.
Peer
assessment – students can listen to their peer’s voice and make oral comments
based on the assessment chart.
Then
the teacher will listen to them and make the final (oral) comments using the
chart, for example, she will mention certain things that students did not, but she
will not repeat students’ comments. This assessment will be aligned to the
corresponding CLBs.
