Practical Ways to Implement Technology In Your Classroom

I wanted to give you a couple more simple ways to begin implementing the TESOL standards in your classroom today! If you take a look at the Goals and Standards for Teachers, you'll see that Goal 3 states that, "Language teachers apply technology in record keeping, feedback, and assessment". One easy way to do this is to use your school's platform (Infinite Campus, for example) to stay up to date on grades. Students and parents want to have quick feedback on how they (or their child) are doing. For the parents of ELLs, especially, this may be a non-intimidating way for them to stay involved in their child's education. It doesn't involved having to communicate with the teacher, and it is easily understandable. There is no language barrier. Teachers must be timely in providing feedback for students. One of the purposes of formative assessment is for students to see what they need to work on. Technology is one of the easiest and fastest ways to communicate with students about how they are doing. Use it wisely!

A second tip is this and relates to Teacher Goal 4- Language teachers use technology to improve communication, collaboration, and efficiency. In Outlook, create a distribution list for each of your classes. You'll have to gather cell phone numbers from your students in order to do this. You can use these distribution lists to quickly and easily send text messages to your classes. You can use this tool for quiz, test or homework reminders. This allows students to be better prepared for assessment in your class. Some students will prepare without any prompting and some students will not prepare, regardless of reminders. I believe, though, and this has been my experience, that some students benefit from the reminders and will use the opportunity to study. Take advantage of ways that technology can save you time and help your students!

Lesson Plan Resource Using Technology with ESL Students

Yesterday we talked about how to begin to practically implement the TESOL Technology Standards in your classroom by using the checklists provided to both self evaluate and get an understanding of what your students can do. Today I want to show you how TESOL has provided teachers with vignettes that allow them to easily begin to incorporate technology into their classrooms. This is what I love about this book and one of the main reasons that I want to see more teachers using this book in practical ways in their classrooms. The middle part of the book (Part 2) provides teachers with vignettes, which are basically lesson plans, that address all of the goals and standards. This is a simple way for teachers to begin using the standards in their classrooms. Each of the vignettes tells you how to modify the lesson based on the technology access you have, so whether that is a lot or a little, you can use the lesson. I encourage you to pick up the book today and familiarize your self with the standards. Then choose a grade/literacy level appropriate vignette and try it in your own classroom. Let me know how it goes!

Technology Checklists for Use with ESL Students

I wanted to do another post about the TESOL Technology Standards because there are still plenty of ways they can be helpful to you. Here is one more way the text can be super helpful to you. In the middle section of the book (pp. 175-217), there are three different rubrics at which I recommend you take a look. The three are as follows: Technology Standards for Language Learners, Technology Standards for Language Teachers, and Program Assessment. I think you will find all three of these tremendously helpful. They are actually a great starting point if you are interested in using the standards but don't know where to start.

The first rubric (for Learners-pp. 176-188)) covers all of the goals and standards and can be administered to your students as you seek to find out how proficient they are with technology, what areas you need to address, and which areas are already strong. Administering this rubric to your students allows them to self assess their technology skills and also allows you to move forward with instruction that is geared specifically to your students.

The second rubric (pp. 189-205) for teachers allows you to self assess and see how well you can use technology and what areas you might need to work on in order to teach from a place of knowledge and strength. The rubric also serves to illustrate in what ways you are utilizing technology both for professional development as well as teaching and learning.

The third rubric (pp. 206-217) is intended for program assessment. This allows administrators to analyze use of technology in the curriculum and informs decision making.

I hope you find these rubrics to be helpful to you as you implement the TESOL Technology Standards in your classroom. Let me know how it goes!

TESOL Technology Standards

As you use assessment in your classroom, technology is a great way to get your students excited about what you are working on! Students are typically great with technology and love the opportunity to use it in the classroom. TESOL Technology Standards (which you can purchase here) is a tremendous resource as you seek to implement technology into the assessment cycle. There are three goals, with a total of eleven standards for students (language learners). There are also four goals, with a total of fourteen standards for teachers. The standards for teachers allow teachers the opportunity to self reflect on their use of technology, as well as giving teachers ideas for ways to use technology for professional purposes, teaching and learning, record keeping, and communication, to name a few.

What I want to focus on in this post are the goal and standards for students. According to the text, research shows that "there are important benefits to be gained from the use of technology in language learning and teaching" (p. 8). Additionally, research also shows that "technology in learning is not being used to its full potential and that inadequate teacher training and learner training are some of the main reasons for this" (p. 8). The TESOL Technology Standards seek to address these issues in several ways that I will post about in the next few days. For now, I'd love for you to take a look at the book and read more about the research. Teachers need to be convinced, by their own exploration, that technology in the classroom is indispensable.

As for the standards for learners...they can really help you as you design formative assessment in your classroom in several ways. One, your students will be excited to use technology. Secondly, as you can see from the research, technology is an important way to engage students in the learning process and there are a lot of really neat instruction ideas that involve technology. The TESOL Technology Standards allow you to make sure you are implementing technology in a way that is effective and appropriate for your students. I'll talk in later posts what this looks like practically!

Assessment Tip

When developing both formative and summative assessment, always keep in mind the four language domains--Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. It is important that students have plenty of opportunities to learn and demonstrate knowledge in each of the four domains. For help with this, make sure you are utilizing the TESOL English Language Proficiency Standards. The corresponding book (which you can buy here) has many Sample Performance Indicators. These are examples of practical ways you can implement the standards. They are divided up by grade level, subject, proficiency level, and include examples in all four language domains. These Sample Performance Indicators are a great resource as you seek to use formative assessment to inform your instruction.

WIDA Standards

Levels of English Language Proficiency

TESOL has developed five levels of English language proficiency. The goal of the five levels is to allow teachers to see student development and progress. The levels reflect different characteristics of language development. Understanding these levels is important in using the TESOL standards appropriately because you can use level-appropriate activities to enhance student learning.

Level 1- Starting

ELLs can understand and use...

language to communicate with others around basic concrete needs

high frequency words and memorized chunks of language

words, phrases, or chunks of language

pictorial, graphic, or nonverbal representation of language

Level 2-Emerging

ELLs can understand and use...

language to draw on simple and routine experiences to communicate with others.

high frequency and some general academic vocabulary and expressions.

phrases or short sentences in oral or written communication.

oral or written language, making errors that often impede the meaning of the conversation.

Level 3-Developing

ELLs can understand and use...

language to communicate with others on familiar matters regularly encountered.

general and some specialized academic vocabulary and expressions.

expanded sentences in oral or written communication.

oral or written language, making errors that may impede the communication but retain much of its meaning.

Level 4-Expanding

ELLs can understand and use...

language in both concrete and abstract situations and apply language to new experiences

specialized and some technical academic vocabulary and expressions.

a variety of sentence lengths of varying linguistic complexity in oral and written communication.

oral or written language, making minimal errors that do not impede the overall meaning of the communication

Level 5-Bridging

ELLs can understand and use...

a wide range of longer oral and written texts and recognize implicit meaning.

technical academic vocabulary and expressions.

a variety of sentence lengths of varying linguistic complexity in extended oral or written discourse.

oral or written language approaching comparability to that of English-proficient peers.

TESOL PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards

The TESOL standards were devised to help teachers provide culturally and linguistically appropriate education to English Language Learners. Tomorrow I will be posting some more information about the standards and how they can be used in your classroom. The standards are as follows:

Standard 1: English language learners communicate for social, intercultural, and instructional purposes within the school setting.

Standard 2: ELLs communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of language arts

Standard 3: ELLs communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of mathematics

Standard 4: ELLs communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of science

Standard 5: ELLs communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of social studies

Performance Assessment Tips, Part 2

Here are the other four suggestions to help you create an appropriate performance assessment:

1. Whether ELLs will be able to connect their cultural backgrounds and experiences to what is expected in the learning task

2. Whether the assessment tasks are multidimensional in ways that accommodate different culturally based cognitive styles and modes of representing knowledge and understanding

3. Whether the ELLs have had experience with the format of the learning task or assessment

4. The types of accommodations that are needed for ELLs to have the same opportunities as other students to demonstrate what they know and can do

Performance Assessment Tips, Part 1

I would highly recommend the book Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners by Mary Ann Lachat. The book is full of information and tips to help mainstream and ESL teachers improve learning for English Language Learners. Today I would like to address the area of performance assessment. A teacher has to be knowledgeable not only about their content but also about the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of their students in order to create fair assessments. I would like to share Lachat's ideas for improving performance assessments for ELLs. Theses can be found on page 92 of the book mentioned above. Below are five areas to consider in regards to developing appropriate performance assessments. I'll share a few more in a future post!

1. The extent of English Language learners' experiences with the concepts, knowledge, skills, and applications represented in the learning task

2. The language demands of tasks, particularly for tasks emphasizing higher-order thinking skills

3. Whether learning tasks include concepts, vocabulary, and activities that would not be familiar to students from a particular culture.

4. The prior knowledge and understanding that English Language learners need in order to make sense of learning tasks.

5. Whether the standards for performance are known and familiar to ELLs, as well as the criteria for judging proficiency in a student exhibition or product

Performance Assessments

Performance assessments can be a great way to assess all students in your classroom, especially English Language Learners (ELLs). Examples of performance assessment include, but are not limited to, presentations, journals, skits, and group projects. Performance assessments give students a varied and authentic way to demonstrate what they know.

Here are some key features of performance assessments (taken from Standards Based Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners by Mary Ann Lachat):

1. Measure student achievement against a continuum of agreed-upon standards of proficiency

2. Emphasize the importance of context through real-life tasks that are "authentic" to the learner

3. Focus on higher order thinking processes and how students integrate information and skills in performing tasks.

4. Require students to display what they know and are able to do by solving problems (performance tasks) of varying complexity, some of which involve multiple steps, several types of performance, and significant student time

5. Often involve group as well as individual performance on a task

Blog with a Purpose

Assessment has a purpose! According to Scenarios for ESL Standards-Based Assessment by TESOL, "results from assessments are used to enhance instruction, improve student performance, and aid in educational decision making". It's important to understand the vital role of assessment and to use it wisely in our classrooms.

I hope this blog will be a helpful place for mainstream and ESL teachers to learn ways to improve assessment practices in their classrooms!