Sunday, December 2, 2007

Middle School honour roll and adapted ESL audio program

I've come across a new problem that I didn't anticipate. The Grade 6 ESL learners are using audio through their I-pod for most subjects now and experiencing success. Therein lies the problem. Some of them are "reading" grade level material and responding with A responses. (On a rubric getting 3 (fully meeting)). Even when I include reading assessment marks of 1 (minimally meeting) or include their STAR testing mark which is from 3.0 to 4.7, that isn't enough to overshadow the marks they are getting for responding to the big idea, or inferencing or for that matter, any of the reading strategies. While that doesn't create a problem for most subjects because I am going after understanding , it does in Language Arts. On the report card I indicate that they have received an "A" adapted, or a "B" adapted (because they are on audio) but when I figure out honour roll which is based on averages some of them are making the top Honour Roll category (which is calculated on %). These are students with good writing and speaking skills.

One way I've thought of to "solve" this for next term is to put their marks under the "Listening" category instead of the "Reading" category in Easy Grade Pro. Because Listening is only 30% of their mark and reading is 40-45% it should result in a lower grade which may be more indicative of their combined language arts level (they are mostly reading level 3.0 to 4.7). Another way, is that I could "weight" the marks so that the reading assessments are more valuable than their responses (I only do about 2 per term). The problem with this last idea is that I post their marks daily on the web and weighting sometimes takes hindsight.

Any other ideas?

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