1º Meeting

  CLIL- AN INTRODUCTION BY DO COYLE

I've found this video really interesting and I want to share it with you as an introduction to the approach that is mentioned in our diseño curricular. 

What do you think?

In a warm morning of February at 8 o'clock, we started the course at “Nacional” school. At that day, we also returned from holidays and began working at our schools (too many things for the first day after holidays). A bit sleepy and distracted, we were asked to do the first activity: “complete the first two columns of the chart for ‘evaluación’”.

WHAT I KNOW	WHAT I WANT TO KNOW	WHAT I LEARNED
- Assessment is included in evaluación. - There’s a formal assessment, an informal assessment and a self- assessment. - Its principles are: Validity Reliability Practical - It involves a process and its product. - It’s important to see what sts know and change when something doesn’t work.	- How to assess in a fair way. - I want to learn creative tools to assess my sts.

In this meeting, I've also learnt about the learning objectives of the 'diseño curricular'. Now I know how to include them in my annual planning.


Bloom's taxonomy was the third point that was developed.
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour important in learning. This categorized and ordered thinking skills and objectives. His taxonomy follows the thinking process. You can not understand a concept if you do not first remember it, similarly you can not apply knowledge and concepts if you do not understand them. It is a continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). They are arranged below in increasing order, from lower order to higher order.
During the 1990's a new group of cognitive psychologists, lead by Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom), updated the taxonomy to reflect relevance to 21st century work. The two graphics show the revised and original Taxonomy. Note the change from nouns to verbs associated with each level.




                 
             Old version                                      New version


I found very interesting a list of key verbs that we, teachers, should consider when we plan our classes. This will help us to recognize the thinking skills we are working with.

Remembering - Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding
Understanding - Interpreting, Summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
Analysing - Comparing, organising, deconstructing, Attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating
Evaluating - Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, Experimenting, judging, testing, Detecting,                
Monitoring                                            
                                                     Creating - designing, constructing, planning, 
                                                     producing, inventing, devising, making.


In this class we also reflect on test purpose. Fulcher in his book Testing and Assessment in Context mentions what Carroll (1961:314) states: 'The purpose of language testing is always to render information to aid in making intelligent decisions about possible courses of action'. There are different types of tests according to their purposes:
- Achievement
-Aptitude
-Diagnosis
-Placement
-Proficiency
I want to add that test are also relevant to motivate learners to study and fix and integrate contents.

This class was really useful because I've leant something new: 

• ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING: it gives teachers information to modify and differentiate teaching and learning activities. It can be said that it is formative assessment. Teachers can use the information to provide feedback to students to help them advance their learning.

• ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING: it focusses on students and emphasizes assessment as a process of metacognition (knowledge of one’s own thought processes) for students. Assessment as learning emerges from the idea that learning is not just a matter of transferring ideas from someone who is knowledgeable to someone who is not, but is an active process of cognitive restructuring that occurs when individuals interact with new ideas. Within this view of learning, students are the critical connectors between assessment and learning. For students to be actively engaged in creating their own understanding, they must learn to be critical assessors who make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and use it for new learning. 

• ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING: it refers to strategies designed to confirm what students know, demonstrate whether or not they have met curriculum outcomes or the goals of their individualized programs, or to certify proficiency and make decisions about students’ future programs or placements. It is designed to provide evidence of achievement to parents, other educators, the students themselves, and sometimes to outside groups.

After this, I have to analyse an assessment task "Take a last look" and answer the questions in the grid. These were my conclusions:

	ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING	ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING	ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING
WHY ASSESS?	To get information about they learning skills.	For sts to critically reflect on their ability to manage a text.	To measure their proficiency.
ASSESS WHAT?	Each st’s progress and learning needs in relation to reading comprehension.	Each st’s thinking about his learning to understand the text.	Appliance of contents taught.
WHAT METHODS?	Questionnaire which includes prior knowledge, examples, etc.	Use of strategies to elicit st’s learning and metacognitive processes.	Questionnaire.
ENSURING QUALITY	-Being accurate and consistent in instructions. - having clear expectations. - providing enough opportunities for sts to use all the strategies and knowledge.	Challenging his thinking.	Providing enough opportunities for sts to use all the strategies and knowledge.
USING THE INFORMATION	To know where each st is, what he knows.	To know how they learn and the way they assess themselves.	To know how well they have achieved the learning goals.