Assessment tools and agents

Observation of class activities. The finished products, whether collages on posterboard, flashcards stuck on the board under different categories, food packets sorted into plastic rings from the gymnasium, etc. will always be subject to peer assessment, as we check together to decide if students agree with their classmates’ choices.

In one activity, after students have explored the difference between foods that must be kept cold and foods that need not be, they will cut out pictures of food and stick them onto a paper in the correct category: "It goes in the fridge" and "It goes in the cupboard".  The language demands of the activity are minimal, but the finished product will show understanding of the concept. After completion, students check together to see if they are correct, and assess their own work, making any necessary changes.

In another activity, students work in groups to make a collage of foods to be eaten at different mealtimes, and then each group can present their work for peer review. 

After discussing which foods are healthy and how often certain foods should be eaten, they will place food cards in the correct coloured ring: red for those foods that should not be eaten very often; yellow for foods that can be eaten sometimes, and green for foods that should be eaten daily.  Students give each other feedback as the activity is being carried out (peer assessment), and afterward they each complete a chart by drawing different foods in the correct categories.  The teacher will then check the papers to see how individual students have done.

Each of these activities also provide the teacher with an opportunity to observe and gather evidence about how well pupils are assimilating the contents, allowing for the adjustment of teaching when necessary.

Written register/observation checklists will be used to make sure students are capable of producing the language while doing the activity. For example, “I have to cook it.”  “I can eat it raw” as they stick the flashcard on the right side of the board.  Also as a warm-up a few students each day will be asked to identify vocabulary from the flashcards, to be marked down in the checklist. The language assistant and/or the teacher will be in charge of completing the checklist, so this is heteroassessment.

Written exam.  At the completion of the unit, a written exam will be administered. Activities on the exam will be very similar to those carried out in class. Exam tasks include:  drawing foods for the different meals, circling with a different colour according to category (raw or cooked, refrigerator or cupboard),  colouring food pictures according to how often they should be eaten, matching the word with the picture, choosing from a word bank and copying the correct word under a picture.

One difficulty with this type of exam (coloring, circling, drawing, etc) is that it is very easy for students to see at a glance what their classmates have done. They still do not really understand the concept of  “exam,” and they want to help each other, check their answers against a classmate’s etc. In class, they sit at tables of two which cannot be separated, and cheating is very hard to prevent.  

As far as validity and reliability of the exam,  children this young (6 years old) are greatly affected by any number of factors that interfere with their performance and thus with the validity of any assessment. If the class period is at the end of the day, or right after break or physical education class, if they have had a conflict with a classmate prior to the activity, if there is a situation at home that affects them, if they are hungry, tired, bored, etc.

For these reasons, a summative exam is often not a very reliable or valid measure of what students have learnt. We must use it, and attempt to make it as reliable as possible, but it is necessary to complement the assessment with observation of class activities and work in order to have a better idea of what students know and are capable of.

Given the importance of observation, our observation tools and procedures must be carefully considered in order to make them as useful as possible. This means making them very specific (exactly what is to be observed). In the examples above, this means preparing a register with the expected language (vocabulary and structures) for the teacher to mark as the students use it correctly or incorrectly during the activity.