5 Assesment

robbers would do?”, “In the film, who is your favorite character and why? Who is the ugliest and / or you disliked most?” etc. The answers to this questions take us into writing and/or speaking.

One final type of activity we will introduce in each parable is using the audio of the DVD of the parable without images. Why? As a training for KET. KET (and PET) examinations make audio listening without video. Listening has two parts and in both of them children are asked to select an item out of several. For this reason, we will select a scene from the parable. Children will be told the setting: where it takes place, characters, order in the sequence of events in the story and other details. This introductions can go as follows: “We are going to listen (no watching) a part of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We will listen the innkeeper, his son and two robbers (named Nadab and Kish),

the ones who attacked the man. Robbers are staying at Gaal’s inn. More possible answers than questions are given. Listen carefully and try to guess the answer for each question”:

Example: 0 → C

0 What part were the robbers sitting? A Dead

1 What did they have for dinner? B Delightful

2 How did the robbers pretend to leave those attacked? C corner

3 One robber, Kish, calls Nadab… D soldiers

4 The innkeeper decides to call the…

5 Robbers decide to leave the inn because they do not want

any….. E Fish and chips

F Soup

G trouble

Key: 1→ soup 2→ dead 3→ delightful 4→ soldiers 5→ trouble

5 ASSESMENT

Testing, evaluation and assessment are not quite the same (Vale & Feunteun, 1995). Without diving deep into the differences, for us, assessment is the method and result of finding out what children know and understand about gospel parables and stories as well as certain language objectives as a result of the classroom – teaching – learning process that has taken place during a certain period. When it comes to RE, learning about religion and learning from religion are two aspects to evaluate; the first one account for what a child knows about a parable like the Good Samaritan: does he now who are the characters or the resolutions and moral? Learning from it is more difficult to assess as it includes aspects such as connection to previous personal or known contexts and application to our

days. This requires interpretation, reflection, imagination… that takes us into some subjectivity; nevertheless, it can be bound when consciously and carefully done (Webster, 2010).

Besides, CLIL assessment has specific features and is multidimensional (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010). Do we assess content or language? What tools will be used? How we measure the progress? How can we remove language difficulties from content achieving? What about assessment of pair or group work, especially in speaking activities? And oral reading? The two main questions are what and how of assessment. Planning and assessment are closely related. First is easily answered: since we are

in a CLIL approach, the 4C’s are what we consider for assessment. As for the how, there are many and we must make our own. I personally consider that when assessment if done matters as well.

Answering the previous questions we have chosen portfolio assessment. Some authors present it as an innovation, but I consider it a traditional way of assessment. I remember that during my periods at school this method was already in use. Some teachers called it “el cuaderno”, i.e., a collection of written work during a period of time, sometimes the whole course; usually, it was never the only aspect taken into account.

Portfolio assessment has some benefits (Harmer, 2007). Provides evidence of student efforts and progress; fosters students reflection and revision of own materials and helps them to self-evaluate. Gives them the chance to edit before handing in. But also pitfalls can be pointed out in portfolio assessment. It’s time consuming for teacher and introduces the need of selecting some materials. For this reason, we will ask students to gather all their work over a term and we will assess them by looking at three or four pieces of work over this period and giving a special mark to it. When evaluation day comes, teacher will revise all the work by a student; previously we will ask each pupil to select three or four best pieces of work. These will be given a certain weight of portfolio assessment. The rest will be assigned to completion, order and presentation. Another drawback of portfolio is procrastination, resulting in lack of revision or undone work; but as students will work on their own way inside the classroom, and almost no homework to be done except personal revision of own material, this inconvenience shouldn’t be high. On the other hand, sometimes we do not know if they have been helped by others. I do not think portfolio assessment could be the norm and in fact recent moves in Spain follow those that have already taken place in other countries (Capel, Leask, & Turner, 2005): external assessment of children and schools and public accountability. External assessment is high on the political agenda and there is a pursuit of raising standards and school / system improvement. Assessment, also, influences the way we teach and this project is no exception, as we are constantly looking at content (parables and their message) and language specifications of Cambridge ESOL. Religious Educations does not seem to become a subject for external assessment but when taught from a CLIL approach this comes into stage.

Portfolio on itself will not be enough but we will set written or oral examinations aside. Portfolio cannot be representative of speaking, for example. Together with portfolio, personal notes by teacher

based on classroom observation will be needed; this is what some people call ‘low’ stakes assessment, i.e., “the informal, routine and low-key day-to-day assessment where the results may not be formally recorded” (Capel, Leask, & Turner, 2005:306). Informality, anyway, isn’t at odds with records of achievement in reading (that in most of cases will leave a trace on portfolio), speaking and listening. Writing will be saved in portfolio. Most of speaking activities will have to be assessed on the move, as well as aspects like pronunciation, physical responses to a listening and many other aspects. There are many ways of keeping record of oral reading (accurate reading, substitutions, attempts at words,

self-corrections, insertions, omissions, repetitions, ‘skip and return’…) and speaking activities, and feedback on this tasks by students help them quite a lot. There are even systems for counting ‘errors’ and estimation of accuracy, fluency and other aspects (Taberski, 2000). In our project, some kind of assessment procedures of the everyday routines and tasks of children in the classroom, especially oral reading and speaking, must be introduced.