Final Exams CI Style

Every semester since beginning my teaching with Comprehensible Input journey, I have pondered what and how to assess my students’ proficiency. I know that asking specific grammar details or vocabulary translations defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do… but how do you come up with a good exam that:

1. doesn’t set all your students up to fail and yet is still rigorous,
2. provides assessment for all four skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking), and
3. doesn’t take hours and hours to grade?

Number 3 is crucial for me this year as every class I teach is a dual credit class through USI and ALL my students are taking finals. That’s a lot of sections of finals to grade!

In the past I have used a variety of assessment ideas from Mike Peto and others. I have pulled key vocab out of stories, Movie Talks, Picture Talks, and more and created a new story that students had to answer comprehension questions about. I have also created a speaking prompt where students can choose from three Movie Talks we have done throughout the semester and retell them to me (or answer questions for upper levels). I have read a new story and had them put events in order. And I have given pictures they can choose from to write a new story in the past and include dialogue in the present tense. All of these ideas are good and valid.

But recently I came upon AnneMarie Chase’s Celebration of Knowledge and I really like that idea! It truly simplifies grading and gets right to the heart at what students need to be able to do from a proficiency standpoint.

So, this year…

READING
Level 3 will finish the last chapter of our book Noche de Oro by Kristy Placido and answer comprehension questions. They have a lot of practice with the ebb and flow of the novel, so I am confident they will succeed!

Level 4 will have a text they haven’t seen before but has vocabulary we have used throughout the semester. They, too, will answer comprehension questions.

LISTENING
I found a commercial that links a product we have used in class (a sauce) to the novel (the idea of this commercial comes from the Teacher’s Guide of Noche de Oro). We have actually tasted this sauce in class when I made pinto de gallo and brought it in for students to try at the beginning of the novel. Students will watch the commercial twice and will complete a cloze activity. Then they will complete AnneMarie’s Listening Rubric.

SPEAKING
I am also using AnneMarie’s idea of calling back a few students at a time for the speaking to be more interpersonal. Students can comment off of one another’s responses and hopefully this will lower the pressure to have a perfect answer while increasing the number of chances for responding.

WRITING
I love AnneMarie’s idea of giving students a familiar topic and asking them to write to impress me. I plan to give several options on the exam. For level 4, they will be able to write about immigration, the Spanish Christmas Lottery, or a current news event. For level 3, they can choose to write about pollution in the oceans (thanks to Mar de Plastico by Carrie Toth), the Guatemalan Basureros, or a scene from Noche de Oro.

Boom. Simple and easy to grade. Thanks www.SenoraChase.com!