My grading in the "Lehreroffice"

So what I did in the Lehreroffice is the following:

I grouped the grades that they already have into projects or Units. So the first project was reading the Rainbow Serpent Story, the next was Unit 1 incl. the tests from the teaching material and the vocabulary test I made myself. The questions will be a project too, but we've only had on test so far - same thing with the "Wonder"-listening comprehension...

I try to compare the weight of those projects and came up with the number 5 for a whole Unit.

• So for the Rainbow Serpent I thought that this was a rather big project but not as big as the whole Unit 1 was so it got a 4. I entered the grades in the "Lehreroffice" once as a speaking test with the weighting 3 and once as a reading test with the weighting 1 = 4. Most of what I graded was their fluency, accuracy and pronunciation but without really understanding the text (reading comprehension) they would not have been able to answer the questions they were asked after reading... So they did understand the text as well. That's why I gave the reading the weighing 1 even though it was mainly a speaking test.

• For Unit 1 I weighted the vocabulary test just with 1 and the two tests out of the teaching material with 2 each = 5. Why I did that? Because I don't think that the grade of a vocabulary test says much about understanding the unit nor the actual language skills. It's just a question of effort and cramming... You can do great in vocabulary test without being able to say one sentence correctly AND you can do very poor in vocabulary test and still participate in conversations. For all three test in Unit 1 I also gave reading grades, because I think that even if it is a listening comprehension, the kids can only tick the right answer if they were able to read and understand the statement they had to judge. Same thing for the much and many questions. If they had not been able to read and understand the given answer, they would not have been able to write a decent question. Well of course the kids only get the one grade but I made this difference for me to be able get some information out of this "Lehreroffice" that I can use for the report cards where I'll have to grade all four skills.

• And then there are just bits and pieces of other stuff that I tested, like the good morning conversations, the aim of speaking English and raising the flag on the pole etc. I just gave it a 1 for right now because they are not real projects.

There is one more thing about those questions that I have realised... There is one boy in this class, he speaks English pretty well but I don't think he would ever sit down and study for a test... When I handed out the last tests he made a comment such as: "Oh I love how you do these tests Mrs. Kündig"... Well yes, he did pretty well in those tests. Not brilliant but obviously better than before. And then there are others. Kids that are pretty good in cramming something even though their use of English is not good at all...

My way of teaching is more about understanding and using the language than cramming for a test and that's good for some but maybe bad (when it comes to the grades) for others... But isn't this what language learning is all about? To be able to use it?

Reflection about the last four tests

Vocabulary test
So the vocabulary test was definitely pretty easy for the class. 5 out of 16 got all of it right and made 100%. The lowest was 74%. I got some funny answers in the gap fill though I let them count if they were in correct English. If they used flour instead of sugar to make it sweeter, I took half a point off because it just did not make sense. So the kids could get almost all the point even if they didn't give the answers the way I had intended. But there was just one way to get all gaps filled with a decent word, so if they chose a wrong word somewhere they got stuck at some point.

Listening Comprehension test
Well this was a given test out of the teaching material Young World and it was a discussion of three kids about baking pancakes for a breakfast at school. It had a given grading scheme and the kids got grades between 5.5 and 3.5. The average was 4.57... The statements were kind of tricky and in some was one part right but one part wrong and the "was not in the text" has caused some difficulties too. I have to be honest. I thought, that they had become used to understanding spoken texts by now, since I only speak English with them and since they were listening actively and passively to a similar text. I always want them to do great in tests but only 6 out of 17 were above the 5 which means "good". 9 were between 4 and 5 and two were below 4.

I have wondered about those lower grades a lot and asked myself what I should have done differently to prepare them in a better way, but maybe I just cannot expect every child to be perfect all the time and I have to live with those kind of grades too. I'll definitely do more of those listening comprehensions with the book I'm reading to them in German. I wanted to do this anyway but I just didn't find the time but I'll prepare some over the holidays.

Question test
I don't know maybe I'm not realistic enough but I really thought, that my question test was pretty easy and that the kids were well prepared for it but the results showed me how wrong I was... The maximum someone reached was 29 out of 36 points. There were questions like

• Do you crazy?
• Do you are crazy?
• Does she can dance?
• Wants he more? 
• and many like this...

So I realised pretty quickly that I had to work on that again. As I entered the result into the "Lehreroffice" I got an average of a little below 4 which is not sufficient at all. The highest grade would have been a 4.75. So I took the 29 points and made that the 6 (highest grade)... That way I had a range of grades between 6 and 4 and an average of 4.9... When I handed back those tests, I explained the class that there will be more of those question tests and that then they needed to get more questions right for these grades... By thinking about it now, I could have given the best a 5.5 because I don't really think that 29 out of 36 points really deserves a 6 but now the grades are made...

Unit 1 - Much and Many test
This was a test out of the teaching material Young World and it was about formulating questions with how much and how many. Well this one had a given grading scheme too. And here they got a range of grades between 6 and 3.25 thought only one grade was below the 4. The average was 4.95. AND about in 2 out of 3 mistakes they mixed up the much and many. They got most questions right and this showed me that working on those questions was not completely worthless. There were still a few kids that forgot the "do" in all their questions but most of them got those easy questions right.

I'll post a separate post about how I put those grades in the "Lehreroffice" and how I weighted them.

17th of December 2015 - English without me :-)

This afternoon the class had a relief teacher and she asked me if I had an idea what she could do with them. In pretty much all other subjects we finished a theme so I told her that she could let them work on their presentations. So very quickly I wrote on the blackboard:

ATTENTION!

animal presentation - German text including:

• Welcome to my presentation...
• If you have any questions...
• Here you see that...
• On this picture you see that...

Write the text exactly how you would present it...

On the 18th I went through the class list and asked how far they had gotten. Most have started their German text. Some are finished with their German text. One has already translated one sentence in English... I just wanted to know from where we will start after the holiday.

14th of December 2015 - Focus on formulating questions

To anticipate this... Today was not my day...

All weekend long I tried to figure out, how I could give those kids a simple guidance on how to formulate questions, since what I had done so far was definitely not enough. I'll write about those test shortly.

So I came up with this flow chart. Actually I just wanted a simple chart like: "Auxiliary verb - yes or no?" But then so many thoughts came to my mind like:

• If the "to have" is uses as an main verb it still gets the "to do"...
• If the "to be" is used as a main verb there is only one verb in the question... 

So I kind of packed all those exceptions in this flow chart which turned out to be a mistake...

So here's the lesson...
I handed out the flow charts (I laminated one for each kid) and realised pretty quickly, that it was too complicated. While we went through it, I started realising, that the kids had no idea how they could ever use the "have" as auxiliary verb because they didn't know the present perfect yet... So I should not have put this whole step with the "have" in the flow chart at all... The step with the "be without verb-ing" was not really formulated too well... And they will get to know the past tense in Unit 3 so they don't know this neither... I should have clarified all this before making this exercise... I prepared lots of statements and I wanted them to use their flow chart to find the right way to formulate the questions.

So here is the worksheet...  There are 30 statements totally mixed... We went through the first ones together but I felt that I had lost most of them completely. I actually had in mind to do some questions with them going through the flow chart step by step and then put them in groups so that the stronger ones could work with the weaker ones and explain them why to go which direction but out of my 17 students only 1 got it. The rest was lost...

So I told them to forget about the flow chart and started going through the list very quickly like a drill... I said "You are working - which is the verb?" - I didn't even want them to raise their hands, I just wanted quick replies. The answer was "are" - "Auxiliary verb, yes or no?" - "Yes" - "So what word will we start our question with?" - The first time I went through this drill, the answers were given very cautiously and just this one guy was really following me... "ARE you..." So I wrote "Are you..." on the OHP (I had a transparency which I was working with)
Then second sentence: "Eddy plays basketball. - which is the verb?" - "plays" - "Auxiliary verb, yes or no?" - "no" - "So how will we start our question?" - "Does Eddy play..." - (Well their answer was Does Eddy plays... So that's the next one I'll have to work on..."

Around question 5 many of them finally cheered up and did this drill with me... As we came to question 8 really most of them were there and many of them made comments like... Oh... it's so easy??? - Yes it is!!! I felt terrible for making something as easy as that so complicated for them... But I was relieved that this whole nightmare turned out to become something good.

There are so many things I should have done differently but I'm glad that I have realised this now... I will do this after the break and I'm sure they'll understand. First of all I changed the flow chart. I took out all the useless things they don't need to worry about yet. I just put some auxiliary verbs on the list and I deleted the "have", may, might and shall and I gave them some examples. I left the past tense on it because, this will be an issue in the next unit but I will tell them not to worry about it yet.

Then I will do more drills, but with the same case... So lots and lots of questions, they just have to add the "to do" and then lots and lots with auxiliary verbs and then lots with 3rd person singular to get rid of that second "s" in the sentence. I'll do this after the holidays to start a lesson before we work on out animals. Each time with a different case. And once they got them all, I can start mixing the cases...

And when we come to unit 3 and discuss the past then I'll do the question again with the past even if it's not the aim of the unit.

So this was definitely not my best lesson but I learnt a lot and it made me realise what I'll have to do.

 

10th of December 2015 - Aims of the presentation

The double lesson of German I actually had in mind for the class to work on their German texts turned out to be just one because the school had a Christmas concert rehearsal after the break.

I handed out "the aims of thispresentation" and a checklist about how to do this and I went through it with the class, so they understood how this was meant. It was funny because as we read through the aims I saw some eyes that could not believe that they were ever going to make this... And then we read through the checklist and I told them, that this was going to be a mixture of their reading project, in which all of them did great and the shopping for a school camp text, which most of them knew by heart after listening passively to the text for a while and they felt a lot more comfortable with this whole project.

Well there was just a little time left for them to work on their texts and I asked them to do another ABC-list before they started. I walked through the class and so many of them showed me how much more they were able to put on their lists now, they had done some research about the animal.

Since tomorrow we were going to be on an excursion to the "Technorama" the next and last English lesson was going to be Monday. Well I actually wanted them to work on the translation of their texts on Monday but we didn't get as far as I hoped we would. So I changed plans and I'll postpone this presentation theme till after the holidays. I just asked them to get all the required information on a piece of paper by Thursday. I won't work on that on Thursday but at least I know they'll be as far after the holiday. Monday I'll work on question forms again and maybe a grammar theme of Unit 2.