ESOL Research
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Appendix: Examples of formative assessment of ELL students
The examples in this appendix demonstrate both the power of formative assessment in linking stu- dent learning and instruction and the capacities required of teachers to enact effective formative assessment with ELL students. As described in this paper, formative assessment practice can occur along a continuum of different time scales and lev- els of formality. The examples here include both on-the-fly formative assessment practice, in which teachers provide contingent feedback and adjust- ments in the moment, to more planned and for- mal tasks, which teachers use to adjust instruction on a longer time scale. In each case, the teacher elicits evidence of learning in the context of rich instructional tasks and analyzes that information to provide actionable feedback and modifications to instruction that can accelerate student learning. The result is instruction that is more student-cen- tered and responsive to students’ current capabili- ties and what they need to learn next.
Example 1
This example illustrates on-the-fly formative assess- ment. The teacher provides feedback and adjusts instruction in the moment, based on her observations of students and their comments or questions. While responding to a specific comment, she also draws from her prior knowledge of that student, including the student’s capabilities and goals for future learning.
Alice Cohen teaches an English as a Second Language (ESL) class at Ridgewood Intermediate, School 93, in New York City. Although her class con- tains only recent arrivals to the United States, they are very diverse, coming from 12 different coun- tries and representing 10 languages as well as var- ied levels of prior schooling experiences. Although Ms. Cohen keeps in mind individual needs as she plans lessons, she invites all of her students to par- ticipate in the same rich and robust learning experi- ence. As the lesson unfolds, she engages in constant “kid watching” to assess how much each student
is understanding, whether students are misunder- standing something, how far they are from the learning goals she set for the lesson, and where to go next instructionally for individual students, and for the class as a whole.
The current lesson was designed to be a week-long focus on Robert Frost and the poem, The Road Not Taken, with the objective of analyzing metaphor and figurative language in poetry. On the first day students read and discuss a biography of Robert Frost. On the second day they listen to Ms. Cohen as she reads the poem aloud to them, and then they read it silently, working on interrogating the text and writing down their reactions and questions. Notes are shared in groups, and similar and dif- ferent individual reactions are highlighted. On the third day the teacher asks students at each table to read the poem aloud in four voices (she has chunked out the poem meaningfully, retyping each chunk in a different font so that students can take a font each). They are then given the task of con- structing a collaborative poster on one stanza of the poem, with each group working on a different stanza. Each group’s poster is supposed to contain one key quote from the stanza, one original phrase summarizing the spirit of the fragment, one sym- bol, and one picture. As groups work on their post- ers, Ms. Cohen walks around the class, observing what each individual student does and what each group does. She uses her observations to inform where she may go next.
The students who were assigned the first stanza choose their quote, start drawing their picture, and work on their original phrase. While the group’s two boys (S1 & S4) focus more on the drawing, the two girls (S2 & S3) work on writing their own statement:
S2: How about this, “I’m Robert Frost, I’ve got to decide, which path to take, right or wrong.” No, “right or wrong” ruined it. (Begins writing in a note- book.) “I’m Robert Frost...I’m Robert Frost, I have to choose, but it’s difficult for me, Robert Frost, to find the truth.”
S3: I don’t know, write it, write it. Write all of it, then we can fix it.
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S2: “I’m Robert Frost, I have a path to choose. It’s hard for me,”
S3: “Robert Frost,”
S2: “to find the truth.” It’s like a rap.
S3: Let me see (reading from the notebook), “I’m Robert Frost, I have a path to choose,”
S2: “it’s hard for me, Robert Frost, to find the truth.” Like, “truth” and “Frost” kind of go together…
…
Not content with their choice, they keep trying:
S2: Oh, oh! “to choose the good or to choose the wrong.”
S3: Uh, “to choose the right or to choose the wrong.”
S2: Yeah, yeah, “to choose the right or to choose the wrong.”
S3: But he doesn’t know which one is wrong…
S2: Okay, “I’m Robert Frost, I have a path to choose, (writing the new ending) it’s up to me to find the truth.”
S3: Better. I think this one makes more sense and it explains more.
S2: Yeah, but he still needs to choose, “to choose the right or to choose the wrong.”
S3: Wait.
S2: No, no, now it doesn’t make sense, “to choose the right or to choose the wrong.”
S3: It doesn’t make sense because he doesn’t know which one is right, which one is wrong. That’s the point of asking himself which way to go.
S2: How about, “I gotta choose now, or I might be”
S3: I think this one’s better.
S2: Okay, how about this, “I might choose one, but I might be wrong.”
S3: Yeah. Write it, write it fast. “I might choose one, but I might be wrong.”
S2: (writing) Keep repeating it.
S3: “I might choose right, but I might be wrong.”
S2: “I’m Robert Frost, I have a path to choose. I might choose the right, but I might be” (puzzled)
S3: “wrong.”
S3: (pointing to notebook) This is good until this part. We have to think up of the ending.
S2: “I might choose the right, but I might be…” Only “wrong” goes there. (frustrated)
S3: Where’s the dictionary? (S2 leaves group)
S2: Yeah.
…
The boys have finished their illustration and become interested in the problem of completing the original quote. As the four students work together, Ms. Cohen is brought into the group by one of the students.
S4: Rhyme something with “right” instead of “wrong.”
S3: I know.
S1: And it gotta rhyme. (S2 has gone to look for the teacher.)
S3: (Teacher joins the group, S2 has explained the problem to her.) We think that after the “right” part, it’s right, but we don’t know.
S2: (reading) “I’m Robert Frost, I have a path to choose. I might choose the right, but it might be …”
T: “but it might be wrong.”
S3: But it doesn’t rhyme.
T: You want it to rhyme?
S2: Yeah.
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T: Why don’t you use a homophone?
S1: “I might choose the right road so I can write.”
S3: (smiling) “I might choose the right that might help me write.”
This example shows valuable instances of on-the-fly formative assessment, in which Ms. Cohen provides a suggestion based on her observations and knowl- edge of students that supports the group in success- fully completing the task. Ms. Cohen has observed, without interrupting, the first part of the discus- sion. She knows the students in this team under- stand what they need to do, they get the key idea of the poem’s first stanza, and their decisions on the quote and picture to be drawn demonstrate their understanding and struggles with making their lan- guage increasingly more precise. She then decides to move to observe and assess other groups’ actions. When she is called by S2 to help the team with their impasse, it becomes clear to her that the group has misinterpreted that their phrase must rhyme. She sees that students are keen on their interpretation of the task, which increases its complexity. Rather than disappointing the students by saying that their statement does not need to rhyme, she acts contin- gently by bringing in a concept the students stud- ied before—homophones. After one boy suggests an answer, S3 polishes it for the poster. During the presentation to the whole class, which is shared by all, it is S4 who explains to the class, “We decided to use a homophone.”
Ms. Cohen’s careful observation of students’ actions serves as formative assessment data that she inter- prets in order to act contingently and provide feed- back that supports the students in completing the academic task. Her observations tell her that stu- dents understand and enjoy using rhyme, that they are developing linguistic perseverance (they check the dictionary; they try hard; when everything fails, they look for the teacher’s help), and that they can bring forth resources learned in past classes. She realizes that metalinguistic knowledge (their objec- tive knowledge about language) fosters their auton- omy, and more importantly, rather than giving them the answer, she formulates a question that will get
students to get the answer themselves. In addition to this in-the-moment feedback she has provided, she now knows how she is going to introduce in the next class other metalinguistic concepts, such as figurative language and metaphor.
Example 2
This example illustrates formative assessment on a longer time scale, as the teacher adjusts instruction over the course of a unit. The teacher has planned a rich instructional task that will allow her to see what students understand about the content they are study- ing and how they are able to articulate that under- standing in written English. In analyzing students’ writing, she realizes that they need to solidify their understanding of the subject matter but also need support developing the disciplinary language to show their conceptual understandings. The class develops criteria for the genre they are learning, which stu- dents use to self- and peer-assess, generating feedback that they will use to revise their writing. In this way, the example highlights how formative assessment can support students to develop autonomy and self- regulation as learners.
This is a fourth- and fifth-grade bilingual class in which all of the students are Spanish speakers and have been designated as ELL students. The class is currently studying electricity and magnetism using the FOSS science curriculum developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science. Central to the FOSS curriculum are a series of hands-on activities and investigations through which students build their understanding of electricity by creating and manipu- lating different types of circuits and electromagnets. The teacher has adapted the science unit to serve as a venue for language and literacy development as well.
In the weeks leading up to this example, students have created circuits to power light bulbs and motors. At the same time, the class has used the con- tent as an opportunity to develop their competence with one genre of science writing: instructions. Students have orally given each other instructions to create different kinds of circuits and have written instructions. Based on her observations of students’
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work with circuits and their written instructions, the teacher has concluded that the students have a strong procedural understanding of electrical cir- cuits. That is, they know how to design and build circuits that function. However, she also wants stu- dents to understand that a circuit involves the flow of electricity and that it requires a closed connec- tion that allows the electricity to travel through a complete pathway.
She adapts an activity from FOSS in which stu- dents are presented with six pictures of complete and incomplete circuits. The students must apply their experience with circuits thus far to determine which of the options shown in the pictures will work to illuminate a light bulb. Although the curriculum intends the activity to be an individual assessment, the teacher uses it as an instructional activity to address both content and language goals and as part of a formative assessment process. First, she gives students time to look at the images individually and consider which will or will not work. Students then pair up and discuss the circuits with a partner, com- ing to consensus about which will and will not work. If students have different opinions, they are asked to explain and provide reasons to convince their part- ner. The class then comes back together to discuss each picture. The teacher explains that now they will write explanations of why one of the circuits does not work and how it can be fixed. In this writ- ing, students are asked to give some directions and
are asked to explain, which is a different function of science writing. She expects that students’ prior oral explanations, in pairs and in the whole-class discussion, will support their writing. To provide an example of what she expects, the teacher also mod- els writing an explanation for one of the incomplete circuits. Students then write their own paragraphs. At the end of the class, she collects their writing to consider their current state of learning. Students are not done with their study of electricity, and they have just begun to work on explanations. Therefore, her analysis of students’ writing will inform the activities she plans for the coming days.
Table 1 includes two examples of what students write for this task, showing the kind of informa- tion the teacher analyzes in a formative assess- ment process to inform future instruction. Both students, Nicolás and Miguel, write about a draw- ing labeled “Picture 1,” and both are Intermediate level ELL students in fifth grade. Before analyz- ing the two examples, it is important to consider the genre students are producing or approximat- ing. They have been asked to produce writing that both explains and gives instructions, as they are to explain why the circuit does not work and direct the reader on how to correct it so that it does work. Derewianka (1990) provides a helpful analysis of many genres that elementary school students are expected to read and write across the curricu- lum, including instructions and explanations.
TABLE 1: Writing samples
Nicolás Miguel
In this paragraph, I am going to tell you how to make the light bulb turn on. What wrong is that you need to get one more wire because if the other wire is missing the electricity of the battery will not go around to make the light bulb turn on. Instead of get the other wire and put it in the other side of the battery and the light bulb too. Also, see if it turn on if it does is called a circuit because it makes the electricity go like a circle.
In this paragraph, I will tell you what is the problem on Picture 1. Picture 1 is not going to work because it has one wire, instead of use only one wire you need 2 wire’s. Then when you have a other wire instead of connected with other wire connected separate and connected to the other clip of the battery holder and also connected the other side from the wire and connected to the clip from the lightbulb holder and the lightbulb may work.
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Table 2 summarizes the purposes, text organiza- tion, and language features of these particular two genres: instructions and explanations.
In terms of the science content, both students cor- rectly diagnose the problem with the drawing and explain how to fix it to make a complete, closed circuit. Nicolás has given more indication that he understands that electricity involves an elec- tric current flowing around a complete circuit. He explains, “because if the other wire is missing the electricity of the battery will not go around to make the light bulb turn on.” At the end he also explains that if it turns on, it “is called a circuit because it makes the electricity go like a circle.” Therefore, it appears that he understands that in a circuit the electricity flows in a circle and that the
TABLE 2: Instructions and explanations
Genre Instructions Explanations
Purpose To tell someone how to make or do something
To give an account of how something works or reasons for some phenomenon
Text organization
• Focus is on a sequence of actions.
• Structure usually consists of goals, materials, and method.
• Text may also include comments on the usefulness, significance, danger, fun, etc., of the activity.
• Headings, subheadings, numbers, diagrams, photos, etc., often are used for clarity.
• Focus is on process.
• Usually is a statement about the phenomenon in question to position the reader, followed by an explanation of how or why something occurs.
Language features
• Reader is referred to in a general way (one/you) or not at all.
• Linking words to do with time.
• Mainly action verbs.
• Tense is timeless.
• Detailed factual description of participants (shape, size, color, amount, etc.).
• Detailed information on how, where, and when actions should be done.
• Written directions are explicit and self- sufficient (unlike oral directions where context is shared).
• Generalized non-human participants.
• Time relationships (first, then, finally).
• Cause-and-effect relationships (if/then, so, as a consequence).
• Mainly action verbs.
• Some passives.
• Timeless present tense.
Source: Compliled from Derewianka, 1990
battery is the source of electricity in the circuit. In contrast, Miguel does not provide an explanation of why it does or doesn’t work, but does provide more specific directions for how to correctly con- struct a circuit.
In terms of organization, both begin with an orien- tation that positions the reader and states the goal of the paragraph. Neither student uses subheadings to organize his piece, but both follow a temporal sequence of actions. They use generalized par- ticipants and refer to the reader in general terms as well (as “you” or by using command form). In addition, both students provide specific informa- tion about where and when the reader should take actions. For example, Nicolás directs the reader to put the wire “on the other side of the battery
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and the light bulb too.” Miguel describes how the reader should connect the second wire “separate” from the other wire. He also explains which clips the wire should go into, directing the reader to put them in the “other clip” and the “other side,” mean- ing the clips not currently used by the first wire. Both students use specific referents to make their directions explicit to a non-present reader, though making sense of the directions requires referring to Picture 1.
Their use of transitional phrases parallels the dif- ferences we noted earlier in the content of their writing. Nicolás uses three different kinds of tran- sitional phrases: cause and effect (because, if ), contrastive (what wrong, instead of ), and additive (also). He uses cause and effect phrases to support his explanation of why the circuit does not work and why the complete circuit would work. His con- trastive phrases are tools to contrast the incom- plete circuit with one that will function. Miguel, on the other hand, does not use any cause and effect transitions, but does use instead to contrast the incomplete circuit with what the reader should do (“instead of use only one wire you need 2 wire’s”). Unlike Nicolás, Miguel uses sequential transitions (then, when you…), which support his giving of instructions.
Both students use timeless present tense with some future tense in the introductory sentence. Miguel writes the word connected several times, but it appears he means to say connect it, rather than use past tense. He also uses conditional tense at the end (may work), though the tentativeness expressed is perhaps inappropriate for the genre. Both students use mostly action verbs, though the range of the verbs is somewhat limited (make, need, get, turn on, put, see, use, connect, and work).
Based on going through this kind of analysis of the written responses from these and other students, the teacher decides that not all students have a strong grasp of the concept of circuits, or at least are not yet able to communicate their understand- ing in scientific terms. Some students, like Nicolás, appear to have a stronger grasp, but others either
do not or, at least, did not communicate it given the task. Students like Miguel may have a stronger con- ceptual grasp than one would assume on the basis of reading their writing. The task may have not been clear to them, or they may need additional support using English to explain the scientific concept. While the scientific content and language demands of this particularly activity were intentionally inter- linked, the teacher could have elected to engage stu- dents in a task that separates the linguistic from science content demands in order to better identify the possible sources of student struggles with this topic (e.g., whether such struggles are related to content, language, or clarity of task).
Highly interactive and well-structured classes— where all students are active and moving con- tinuously into higher degrees of intellectual autonomy—provide fertile ground for formative assessment. In this type of environment, teachers can observe students in action, working collabora- tively through a series of well-designed lessons and assignments. The kinds of assessment activities described above are well suited to revealing stu- dents’ misconceptions and gaps in knowledge, and the teacher now has considerable data upon which to plan further instruction.
To address students’ science and language develop- ment, the teacher decides to expand her work on scientific explanations over the next several days. She finds several examples of explanations in the science textbook that the class will read and ana- lyze. Reading and working with these examples is intended to support students’ science and language learning. The examples will provide students with more information about electricity and how it func- tions, which they may not have been able to learn from hands-on activities. Analyzing these models should support students’ use of richer scientific lan- guage, including a broader range of action verbs. The class will also focus on the kinds of transitional phrases authors use with the goal of expanding stu- dents’ use of cause and effect phrases and sequential phrases. These are formulaic phrases that students can borrow to structure their own scientific writ- ing, and that become generative over time as they
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are appropriated and used when they are needed.
After reading several models, the class will develop
criteria for scientific explanations. The teacher will
model how to use these criteria to assess an exam-
ple explanation she has written. They will then look
back at their initial writing of the explanations and
self-assess, with or without involvement of a peer.
Finally, individually, students will use this feedback
to revise and expand their original explanations.
Through this process, students will have gained
tools to evaluate and revise their own academic
writing, fostering their autonomy as learners.