NEWS FROM THE CLASSROOM

Weighing the Pig Doesn’t Help it Grow Faster

News from the Middle School classroom

January 29, 2022

Wait…what does weighing a pig have to do with learning Spanish? Well, feeding a pig nutritious food helps it grow faster, but weighing it more often does not. Instead, weighing the pig often can make both the owner and the pig nervous. In the same way, to acquire a language, we need more nutritious food, or input that we understand, but being assessed more often doesn’t make us acquire the language any faster.

Acquiring a language is a long, somewhat unpredictable process. Some students acquire the ability to read quickly first, while others seem to hear and understand more quickly. Some write or speak more quickly, but others take their time, just as small children learn their first language at different speeds. 

What we do know is that in all these cases, we understand or create in words, or chunks of words, first. Next we understand longer phrases and sentences, then more complex sentences, then paragraphs, and finally entire longer pieces of text. During all this time, we are also expanding our vocabulary and many other variables of language, from syntax to nuance, from appropriate expressions of familiarity to intonation. Language has many parts, and it’s impossible to focus on just one, whether in order to acquire it or to test it. On top of that, our personal strengths, emotional states and weaknesses can support or hinder our ability to perform well at any moment. 

The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language recommends teachers spend the majority of a class communicating in the language of acquisition in such a way that students comprehend. Teachers constantly check for understanding, differentiating among students who are likely to be at varying abilities. Luckily, when students understand the message that is being communicated, their brains are working at a level appropriate for them. Thus, one student might be understanding just the ideas, but not understanding every word exactly. That student is starting to acquire the vocabulary. A student on the other end of the scale is drinking in the grammar and forming patterns that will help guide communication through speech and writing. 

Smashdoodles

So how do we assess in a class where learners levels are mixed, but we hope to keep all moving forward? First of all, assessment is relatively rare. We remember it is just a snapshot in time, but we look for that ability to comprehend or produce language at different levels. A recent example in our fifth-grade Spanish class was the assignment of a limited Smashdoodle. Having finished a short novel, students found the sentences for each of five chapters that they thought most important in that chapter, as well as critical vocabulary words. They illustrated the sentences and words in drawings. The assignment allowed the teacher to walk around the classroom, helping students who needed help to decide on sentences, watching and commenting on what students drew, and noting which students needed to copy sentences carefully, as well as which students could write more freely on their own. It’s an assessment that offered a lot of information over a couple of days.

Another quick snapshot is a listening assessment like one in the 6-8th grade recently. Students listened to a story, marked true/false facts about the story at various levels of complexity. They also drew pictures of the story to demonstrate understanding, and then used those pictures for a quick write. Even if students didn’t get all the true/false answers correct, their pictures showed both what they had understood what they were not quite ready to reach for. The writing samples showed what students were ready to communicate in the language. 

We don’t need to repeat such assessments regularly, because the level will change only slowly. We don’t need to weigh a pig more often, and we can see language growth only over a period of time. 

What we do need is to offer students input at their level, and that is why PNA students get regular marks for working on one of two educational sites for 15-25 minutes every weekend. Knowing where they are and getting the input at their level is critical for them to grow and appreciate their successes. These marks are not based on what their individual scores are in the program, but instead on whether they do the work on a regular basis as assigned, and whether they report on their learning briefly. The extra experience will later be reflected in their language gains, but it will take consistent, comprehensible input and student comfort and focus during lessons to make the difference. 

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