Reflection upon implementation of the plan

I was only able to put into practice a few of the assessment activities, as we started the unit a bit later than expected. Here is my reflection of my experience.

--Observation checklist. This has been very useful, but requires a second person to do the recording in order not to interrupt the flow of the activity itself. When the language assistant was not available to do this, I had to plan ahead of time more carefully in order to have the recording materials at hand and to know exactly who and what to ask, so as not to lose time scanning the list for names etc.  Also, with 25 students I can only ask a few each day during the whole-class session, so it may be necessary to do some of this assessing not in whole-class activities, but individually at another time. This is difficult because students at this age are not able to work independently very well so I have to be continuously monitoring and helping and there is not much time for pulling students aside for individual oral assessments, however brief.

--Peer assessment of boardwork. This has worked very well, because when students know they will be asked to check their peers' work, they pay more attention, which helps them learn more as well.

--Group work.activities in class. While this is useful for getting a general picture of how well the class is assimilating the contents, it is less effective to know the extent to which individual students have understood. Since groups are working simultaneously, it is impossible to monitor them all at once, so while a finished product may be correct, we don’t know exactly who has contributed and to what extent.  In some cases, students create their own record of what was done afterward (drawing), which I can then assess, but we don't always have time for this.

One situation that has arisen that complicates assessment is when students are absent from class, and therefore miss activities that I have used for assessment as well as learning. Due to the nature of the activities (it is not written work) there is no good way for them to make up what they have missed, which impacts both the learning and assessment process.

I have not yet administered the written exam, as we have not completed the unit, but I foresee some potential problems based on my experience with other exams. The main problem is that there are students who need a lot of support when doing any type of worksheet or written activity in English, and while they may understand the contents being tested, they have difficulty completing the exam independently. I have tried to minimise this by making the exam tasks as simple and familiar as possible, but I am not sure how it will work out.