Assessment Plan

The classroom has 13 students who are in an ESL classroom and speak Spanish as their

first language. The biggest learning need that these students have that we address in this class is

their need to learn English in a sheltered environment. None of the students have chronic

behavioral or attendance issues.

Since the students are still learning English and are classified as being very low in their

proficiency levels, my informal assessment will use a lot of universal visuals that I know they

will understand. When I explain an assignment, task, activity, project, etc. I will smile and put

my thumb up in the air and say, good, we understand? And then I will follow that up with a

confused look on my face, a thumbs down, and say, Im confused, I dont understand. After

doing this enough times, I will eventually only have to do thumbs up and say yes? or a thumbs

down and say no, because students will be trained on the thumbs up and thumbs down. I will

incorporate this into the lesson by doing it after I explain the plan.

This informal assessment will compliment the formal assessments I do of grading their

end of the unit tests. By ensuring that students understand the homework and assignments that

we do throughout the unit, they will learn the material better and thus, do better on their tests.

However, should the students do poorly on the formal assessment, then Ill know what area to go

back to and reteach for the students. If Im re-teaching, Ill be sure to do the thumbs up/down

check in for frequently throughout the lesson, in order to diagnosis where students are confused

within that concept.

The learning of the students will be impacted by preventing problems before they occur,

as well as creating a guide for me to know where to best meet students. The problems that Im
preventing is confusion when students are doing the assignment. When I explain an assignment

through a I do, we do, you do, and then ask the class if they understand what theyre doing, and

re-explain areas that the students need, they will be able to focus on their assignment with less

confusion and more time spent on the task. Furthermore, creating a guide for me to know where

to best meet students comes from their formal and summative assessment. This will have the

impact of increasing student learning because Ill be able to better scaffold and address their

learning needs through data.

These assessment plans address diversity because the thumbs up/down is a universal

visual and once the students become trained on consistently doing the thumbs up/down, they will

be able to tell me if they are understanding or not without having to speak. Furthermore, during

my summative assessments, I will be able to know the diverse learning gaps in students

understanding of the concepts and will be able to go back and re-teach areas or offer more

support to the students who need them.

If my assessments were not working, I would begin giving students a pre-test of the unit

and then judging their learning gaps from there. So rather than a summative assessment it would

be more of a formative assessment. I know teachers usually do this at the beginning of the year

of the to gage where students are at in their understanding of the whole class content, but I would

break it down and make it more specific for each unit. As far as the thumbs up/down assessment,

I would begin using incentives such as candy or praise to the students who participate in the

thumbs up/down activity.