Encouraging Academic Skills in ESL: Grade Tracking

After a harrowing day, one can crawl in a hole and hope to die or try to make it better for the next time.

At my school, teachers have a fast turn around.  Final exams are done one day and the next report cards are to be handed to the school.  This happens monthly.  So the turn around is quick, the learning curve is high for students and teachers.

This last Friday was a little rough.  We always have had teachers give the report cards directly to the students.  This can be a great time to give feedback and even congratulate the people who passed and are moving on to bigger and better things.  But for the students who didn't do well, this is a time to place blame and confront the teacher one on one about the reasons they need to repeat the class.

The tricks for dealing with the upset students are many: remind them that learning any language takes time, that it has nothing to do with intelligence, it takes some people longer to acquire English, etc. In a perfect world you move on and council the student the specifics to improve and succeed next month.

In a not so perfect world, tempers rise.  "Why did you fail me, I did everything right!" "My teacher failed me."  The students blame the teacher; the teacher is forced onto the defensive.  It now becomes the teacher justifying everything they have done in the last month, not what the student should do to improve.  This puts the teacher in a rough spot to say the least. This is when the shouting matches begin, when teachers decide to leave the profession.

What to do? Well, crawling into a hole sounds good but...

The Idea

Let's bring the responsibility back to the student while encouraging building academic skills.  The idea is for students to keep a grade book of their progress.  In this blog, I'll share a digital version.  It doesn't need to be; you could print it out blank and pencil in the numbers.

This will help students to not be "surprised" about their final grade while taking some of the bureaucratic weight off the teacher so that they do not have to fill out endless warning forms.

The end goal is to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning, plan and be on the right track to improving their English, not being worried about numbers and grades.

What to do

However you calculate your grades, make it simpler so everyone can understand it.  Make thing point based, have a total where all the quizzes add up to that point.  Or only work in percentages and average.  Whatever you do, just make it simple enough for a student to work the numbers.  I teach adults, adults know math.  They can figure it out if you give them the information in a comprehensible form.

Work in your rubric to your form. For example, one rubric I follow is split into four categories: 25% for participation/homework, quizzes, speaking, and the final exam respectively.

Next is the spread sheet.  Leave room for students to write.  Leave room for yourself if you need to "pull an audible" and add or subtract items as you see necessary.

I used Google Docs and created a spreadsheet that holds all my grades.

Examples

Feel free to view the spreadsheet here and copy/download it for yourself to modify.  This is what you could send to students so that they can put in the numbers.

What to do next

Feel free to copy or download and modify my examples as you see fit.  For me, I would share the form with my students on the first day of class and have them save it for themselves.  As grades come in, help/encourage students to record their grades.  This way they can see how well they are doing and what scores they need on tests to succeed in the future.

Other Applications

• Keep track of all the grades for the students. Give them numbers so their identity is secure.
• Administration sets up the E&E and watches as grades/attendance come in.  They can assist with warnings.
• Link in with other grades and have an up to date total class average.  
• Give teachers laptops/tablets. Teacher fills it in an shares with the student so they can watch.  
• Websites that track student grades.  You could do this with Edmodo or Engrade just to name a few...Maybe a blog for the future :)

What do you think?

Any ideas on how to encourage students to take responsibility?  Help them succeed in their work?

Collaborative Idea Lists

The Problem

I had a class I hated teaching.  It started when "rape" was one of the words to be taught that day (apparently it is in a bigger list of 2000 "most frequent vocabulary words).  In my teaching career, I'd never felt more frustrated about the material I was given and told to teach. Let's just say we did something different that day. Ever since, I've dreaded teaching that class.

The Idea

To shake the bad feelings off, I decided to put my heart into making teaching these 2000 words better. So I went to work and asked coworkers to contribute. Great time for a Google Doc.

What to Do

Share a document with other co-workers of different teaching ideas.  There should be a general goal and some guidelines.  For this, I found a common problem and tried to address solutions together.

After you frame what you want the document to cover, make it.  I just used Google Drive for this.  Click the create a new document button. Name it.  Click the share button, and then click "change" to so that it can be edited by who ever you want.

Example

The frame of this example:

• Create a 10 minute lesson
• Little to no preperatoin
• To be used with 10 words

Here is an example of a list that I started.



Go here to add your own ideas, be sure to write your name (if you wish) so you can get credit!

Write a comment if you can think of any other ways to use Google Documents.

Classroom Scribe

Ever wonder how to have students pay attention while listening? Having problems with students recording something meaningful during the course?

One way that you can help out your academically bound students with note taking, check comprehension, and encourage communication is by sharing notes.

The Idea

Select "note taking groups" for the day. Their job is to record all grammar, vocabulary, test dates, homework, or any other item that was important that day. That night, they go home and rewrite their notes as a summary for the other students in the class.

How

There are many ways that sharing these summaries could work. You could use a website like Edmodo and post. Another item could be Evernote, then students can send it to other people in class. Another method could be to make a shared document and have everyone collaborate, using something like GoogleDocs.

Here is an example template that students need to fill out. You could copy this, put a student's name and the date it is their turn, and have your whole class on one document.

Benefits

Teachers can check comprehension of their students and make comments or guide the students in the right direction. It could also be a forum for sharing knowledge and resources among students, encouraging communicative practices. The teacher could insert little bonus assignments or encourage students to explore and interest and share.

Students who have to be in charge of the notes may be highly motivated to provide their follow classmates with a resource. Students could also comment on other people's work, giving input or assisting other students in understanding the idea.

What are your thoughts? What are some other ways or things students could share?