Henry's Class: Week of 4/29

Research on English Language Learners suggests that it takes five to seven years for second language learners who have received some schooling in their first language to compete with native English speakers, and that students who have had little or no instruction in their first language may take as long as seven to ten years to achieve on par with their native English –speaking peers. What implications should such findings have on your instructional practice? (adapted from Richard-Amato & Snow, 2005, p. 86)

I’ll focus the response to this prompt on grading.

This quarter, I’ve set my Language Arts students up with blogs, through which they’re able to respond to prompts related to our current reading or curriculum. In grading the kids, I comment on their thoughts in the blogs and then give them their score via a simple rubric (Length: __/5, Conventions: __/5, and Content: __/5). The kids are required to read each other’s blogs and comment on at least two others’. Inevitably, this means that they read my comments and grades. This has driven me to be as fair as possible in grading them, since there’s absolute transparency. However, one bright young gentleman still found cause for complaint and sent me a message that read (in part):

I don't agree with your grading methods. I have read other blogs that have gotten perfect grades when they have had less content, even shorter lengths, and more terrible conventions (if I understand correctly what conventions mean) than my own blog.

My response to him is how I would respond more generally to this week’s Leadership Class prompt. I wrote (in part):

I don’t grade you against each other as much as I grade you against yourself; your last blog was about an “11″ from Theo, because– as I’ve told you before– I know what you can do and that WASN’T your best. Would you disagree?

Many of you are at many different skill levels; if I graded you the same way I graded a freshman that was still learning English, you wouldn’t ever improve. You would never get grades that indicated you had more to learn– and we ALL have more to learn.

One advantage of the year-long internship that the ARC program provides, is that it gives us plenty of time to get to know our students. I have been able to well acquaint myself with my students’ writing and am able to gauge with fair accuracy if my kids are writing to their full potential. Regarding my English Language Learners, I feel like I’m able to discern whether or not they’re picking up the organizational tools of writing and whether or not they’re improving, even through their hesitant English. The faulty grammar and spelling doesn’t concern me as much; I know that that will improve as their English improves. I’m concerned more with the evidence of their learning, based on what we’re teaching in class. I ask the ELL kids to turn in first drafts of essays to my mentor or me so that we can give them a good “cleaning” before they write their final drafts; beyond that though, I grade the ELLs the same way I do my other students: are they picking up the writing techniques we’re teaching them (organizational structures, etc.) and are they performing to their full potential?

If the answer to both of those questions is yes, the kids will do well, and many of them have.