2 Quick and Easy Informal Assessments for ELL Students

Two Quick and Easy Informal Assessments for ELL Students

As a teacher, it’s essential to evaluate your English Language Learner (ELL) students regularly. Doing so helps you determine which areas of language acquisition your students need to improve on and how well they’re progressing over time. Although you can use many formal methods to assess your students’ skills, informal assessments are often practical, fast, and efficient. In this article, we’ll discuss two quick and easy informal assessments you can use with your ELL students.

1. Think Aloud

Think aloud is an ideal assessment method to measure students’ reading, listening, and comprehension skills. To use this method, ask your students to read a passage or listen to a piece of dialogue. As they read or listen, they should think out loud and explain their thoughts, reactions, and understanding of the text. Encourage your students to explain what they’re thinking in detail, even if it seems off-topic initially. This technique gives you insight into how your ELL students’ mind works while reading and what they’re having difficulty understanding.

This method allows you to evaluate both their language proficiency and their ability to infer meaning from text-specific and outside their prior knowledge. It allows you to understand how well they can identify relationships between events, understand vocabulary in context, and draw conclusions from the text. This method helps determine whether your students’ language difficulties stem from skills acquisition or lack of content knowledge.

2. Show What You Know

“Show What You Know” is an informal assessment method that evaluates your students’ knowledge and understanding of a specific concept. To use this method, ask your ELL students to show what they know about a particular topic or concept you’ve taught. They can demonstrate their understanding by drawing pictures, writing a short paragraph, or even recording a video explaining the concept.

This assessment method is especially critical for students who may struggle with traditional testing formats. It is also an opportunity for students to express what they know in contexts that are more natural to them, such as drawing or creating something. Ensure that you explicitly explain the details of the task, so students know precisely what’s expected of them. You can use this assessment format to evaluate many different language areas, including their writing, speaking, listening, and comprehension skills.

Conclusion

These two informal assessment techniques can be used to monitor ELL students’ progress toward language acquisition goals and foster a deeper understanding of their comprehension and knowledge. “Think Aloud” evaluates the students’ comprehension and inferential reading abilities by asking them to think aloud while reading, and “Show What You Know” assesses their application of concepts by encouraging them to share their understandings through creative methods. These assessment methods provide a window into your student’s comprehension and retention of language, enabling you to make informed decisions about your instruction. In conclusion, incorporating high-quality and comprehensive informal assessments like these can lead to measurable student growth and academic achievement.

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