Reflection Unit 2

When I first started this course, I though assessment was going to be a difficult subject, specially because I thought it was going to be hard to differentiate between assess and test. However, while the course goes by, this terms become easy to understand and I like that i become more involved with them and I can't wait to use them in my classes!

Through this unit I learned that “Informal Assessment” gives an idea of being a “non reliable” or unattended assessment, but this idea is so far from reality since Informal Assessment is a system of observation and collection of data, and not merely the teacher’s opinion about students’ performance. So in order to carry out an effective informal assessment, the teacher has to decide what he/she wants to assess, taking into consideration both linguistic and non-linguistics aspects present in a language class environment. Once the teacher knows what to assess, a clear criteria for assessing must be established, this way the same criteria will be applied for all the students in a normal class situation. An effective way to do this is by creating bands or rubrics, which can help the teacher to know what the students are expected to achieve in a certain activity, as well as what grades or points the students are going to get according to the level they reach during performing that activity.

It was interesting to know that creating rubrics is not an easy task since the teacher has to establish from the beginning the performance goals of the activities that the students do at classroom. In other words, the teacher has to let know the students what is the best way of demonstrating competence in a given activity, and obviously, what is the worst way to do it. The teacher needs to select those activities carefully, so they can be included in the assessment plan either informally or formally and focused on helping students to develop the expected competencies daily.