When it comes to talking about assessment tools in our schools, we generally speak about activities whether oral or written ones:
paragraph writing - gap filling - sentence reordering - idea expanding -
mistake correcting and the like ...
But one of the very efficient assessment tools is the PORTFOLIO.
When I use the word assessment I mean the LEARNERS' PORTFOLIO because THE TEACHERS' PORTFOLIO is another story we can deal with soon. learn more about the Language Portfolio :
GUIDELINES FOR PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT IN TEACHING ENGLISH we discussed during a meeting supervised by Mr. Bentouaty Mussa, Inspector of English, Biskra and initiator of the PORTFOLIO in the wilaya:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkc33jb_62cbchpstr
Read this adapted interesting article:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkc33jb_64cjtbvzcq
Learners' portfolios are simply collections/selections of the pupils' achievements and activities they finalize under the supervision and the permanent teacher's watch: to help, guide,advise,accept,decline,add,correct...
Some practical steps that can be followed:
1- Talk to the learners about the portfolio, its objectives, its format... I used arabic to introduce this and it worked.
2- Prepare a Portfolio cover which is just a model, pupils can use any cover they like and find suitable to their taste provided that it carries the name of school, subject, title, teacher, learner, year... Have a look at the one I suggested to my pupils:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkc33jb_58gd3898jq
3- I showed them a sample of a table of contents. They are free to design theirs. This table includes all that can be added with the title and page.
4- I started with the letters of the alphabet for MS1: pupils wrote them in different shapes and colours and tried to learn them. Then they wrote a short paragraph in which they introduced themselves with photos if they wanted to. Followed a page of pictures and photos of flags, currencies, school items... then lists of countries and nationalities. Learners could choose except for the paragraph, that was what I imposed.
They did well and had supplementary knowledge dealing with File One they could never do in class.
Best wishes
Mohamed07
Habba
Ouled-Djellal.