Hi Kiki and others involved,
I find this to be a tough question, and one that our department/school is looking into. I agree with the previous replies, and think those resources are great. Being a WIDA state is a great resource, especially with the CAN-DO statements. We've begun identifying students' scores and giving them to the teachers, along with CAN-DO statements, to help our general education teachers have an idea of how they can accommodate the language learners in their classrooms.
Other thoughts...the grading system, especially for high school, can be a landmine. At this level, those GPAs are supposed to indicate college readiness, mastery of a skill, and so on. In reality, they oftentimes do not, and this really trips up the students later on. As teachers, we expect that if a student receives a B from a science course, that it means most of the content was mastered. However, oftentimes I find that teachers will give a struggling student a higher grade that reflects more "effort" than "mastery." I also see that for English learners the grades sometimes reflect their use of English, and not their mastery of content.
We are looking at going more into a grading rubric that reflects mastery of content (standards-based) within our department. This is something that we are still feeling out, so I can only give you vague parameters. I know many others have already done this, so perhaps they can chime in? With this system, though, the hope is that we can relax some of the deadlines and focus more on whether the students have learned the content, and ways that they can show this mastery. I'm going to pilot some of the material this coming quarter, and already I can see that this is going to be a lot more involved, on the teacher's part, in the beginning. I'm not too excited about that, as many of us know the workload of being a K-12 teacher. My hope, though, in the end is that it will give my lower English-level learners more time and ways to show me they understand the content courses, which is the end game.
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Jana Moore, Ph.D.
ELL Coordinator
Moanalua High School
Hawaii
jemoore82@yahoo.com808-258-8145
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Original Message:
Sent: 14-10-2018 13:40
From: Karen Stanley
Subject: Grading High School Newcomers
I came into this discussion late, so I may have missed something important.
The community college system in my state is moving towards "multiple measures." One thing that this means is that the college placement test will no longer be used, and that (at my college) students with a 2.8 average in high school will qualify to go directly into the first semester of college composition.
I'm wondering how students who receive a US high school diploma with grades based on content knowledge but not English proficiency will fare if they are dropped (my choice of verb) into college composition. I already see students who were given credit for 3 years of high school in their first language, then did essentially sheltered content for one year (often speaking their first language with many fellow students for much of the day), then leave with a US high school diploma and a high grade point. Since we are still using a placement test, they may place into an eight-week "developmental" reading/comp class designed for native speakers and find themselves lost. The teachers for those classes also feel they have inadequate background or time to support NNSs in their classes. (Others end up in college composition and also find themselves lost.)
Some students are, indeed, ready for college composition. But of those that aren't, the lucky ones find their way to our Academic ESL classes. However, there's no guarantee that anyone will even inform them of our existence.
Karen
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Karen Stanley
Professor, Academic ESL
Central Piedmont Community College
Charlotte, NC USA
karen.stanley@cpcc.edu
Original Message:
Sent: 13-10-2018 02:21
From: Brian Seilstad
Subject: Grading High School Newcomers
Hi there.
I echo what has been said here, particularly Dr. Short's comment and would just add that bilingual options and supports for assessing content knowledge are legal and practical options. Many content tests have bilingual versions that can be used for students, either solely in the home language or in a bilingual mode (i.e. home language next to English). Students can respond in their home language or with as much English as they know or even in both. Assessing this requires a view of second language acquisition and translanguaging that might take some development in a school or district but is nevertheless a powerful way to engage learners, encourage them, and ultimately assign them the grades and credit they should deserve for the content knowledge they have at the time of assessment.
Unfortunately, based on my own reading of the evidence about newcomers, which includes Dr. Short's critical work in this area, bilingual supports or programs are not well integrated with newcomer programs or support of adolescent newcomers in general. This is true even for languages with quite a lot of resources available for learning and assessment, such as Spanish, and is certainly the case for less commonly taught languages (in the U.S.). However, I've observed that this can be worked through with flexible school or district policies, hiring good bi/multilingual teachers or paraprofessionals, and the allocation of resources to find and/or develop home language materials with the proper content knowledge.
And just to address the elephant in the room--using these methods is not to obscure the importance of learning English! That remains a key goal in every U.S. context I know of. However, it is about supporting students by using direct methods to engage their home language knowledge, giving them appropriate credit for that, which, we hope, will be an encouragement to stay engaged with school and the English language learning and new content knowledge they are developing.
All the best as you continue to work with this critical group of students!
Best,
Brian Seilstad, Ph.D.
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Brian Seilstad
United States
Original Message:
Sent: 11-10-2018 08:35
From: Aggeliki Alimonos
Subject: Grading High School Newcomers
Hello colleagues,
I work in a large district with many older Newcomers (we define a newcomer as English proficiency below 1.9 on WIDA ACCESS and being in the U.S. 1-2 years). We are looking for alternative ways to assign grades to newcomers students in their content classrooms. What I hear from content teachers is that if a Newcomer works hard and completes modified assignments and modified assessments and the teacher gives them an 'A,' the following year the content teachers will look at the A and determine that student mastered grade level content (which may be true, but at a modified level).
We have created a rubric based on the WIDA performance definitions for teachers to use, but wanted to know what other school districts have in place to assign end of term grades for Newcomer students.
Thank you,
Kiki Alimonos
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Aggeliki Alimonos
Buncombe County Schools
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