I have attached my audio reflection! For some reason it only let me record 2 minute segments so there are two recordings attached!
Hi Prerna!
It's really great to hear about your field placement experiences and to compare them with what I’ve been seeing at Pan American. I really appreciate you bringing up the García chapter's section about how giving tests in a student's native language can give educators a better understanding of where the student is at. Something I’ve really loved about being placed in a dual-language school this semester is getting to observe a learning environment where students classified as ELLs often have opportunities to be assessed in both their L1 and L2. My teacher was showing me the testing results of one student who tested at an end-of-year 2nd grade level for reading in Spanish, and at an end-of-year kindergarten level for reading in English. While these tests are by no means the only way that students should be assessed, this has really had me thinking about the discussion we had in class about how important it is to consider what exactly you want to assess as a teacher. For example, if you are doing a unit on adding and subtracting fractions, do you just want to assess a student's ability to solve equations with this topic? If so, maybe it is best to give an assessment in the language that the student is most comfortable with. Or are you trying to assess the student's understanding of English vocabulary related to this math topic? Then, giving an assessment entirely in another language would likely not be the most appropriate. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how we should assess students as teachers. What matters is being intentional about how we assess students and ensuring that our assessments align with the specific learning goals we want to measure.
It's really great to hear about your field placement experiences and to compare them with what I’ve been seeing at Pan American. I really appreciate you bringing up the García chapter's section about how giving tests in a student's native language can give educators a better understanding of where the student is at. Something I’ve really loved about being placed in a dual-language school this semester is getting to observe a learning environment where students classified as ELLs often have opportunities to be assessed in both their L1 and L2. My teacher was showing me the testing results of one student who tested at an end-of-year 2nd grade level for reading in Spanish, and at an end-of-year kindergarten level for reading in English. While these tests are by no means the only way that students should be assessed, this has really had me thinking about the discussion we had in class about how important it is to consider what exactly you want to assess as a teacher. For example, if you are doing a unit on adding and subtracting fractions, do you just want to assess a student's ability to solve equations with this topic? If so, maybe it is best to give an assessment in the language that the student is most comfortable with. Or are you trying to assess the student's understanding of English vocabulary related to this math topic? Then, giving an assessment entirely in another language would likely not be the most appropriate. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how we should assess students as teachers. What matters is being intentional about how we assess students and ensuring that our assessments align with the specific learning goals we want to measure.