How primary teachers can effectively teach and assess English while maintaining high levels of motivation

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How primary teachers can effectively teach and
assess English while maintaining high levels of
motivation

• Olha Madylus

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Why assess children?

• To monitor and aid their progress
• To provide children with evidence of their
  progress and enhance motivation
• To monitor our performance and plan future work
• To provide information for parents, colleagues
  and school authorities

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What are we assessing?

• Skills development
• Learning how to learn
• Attitudes
• Behaviour and social skills

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Listening

• For example
• Can extract specific information
• Predicts what comes next
• Can identify key words
• Can understand the connection between ideas
• From HK Basic Competency Descriptors, Key Stage
  2

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Learning how to learn

• For example
• Asks questions
• Can work independently
• Keeps a vocabulary book
• Shows motivation and eagerness to learn
• Can reflect on own learning
• .. developing life-long learning.

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How can we assess?

• Portfolio assessment
• Structured assessment activities and tasks
• Self-assessment
• Peer-assessment
• Traditional tests
• Observation
• Conferencing

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Test Quiz

• a. To enable school to monitor progress at
  different stages
• b. To establish students abilities at beginning
  of school so that later achievement can be
  compared
• c. To identify strengths and weaknesses to
  provide appropriate learning experiences for
  individual children
• d. To enable students and schools performances
  to be compared
• formative tests placement tests
• national tests in-house school tests

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What makes a good test?

• Simple, clearly focused tasks
• Clear instructions
• Low anxiety
• Free from failure
• Greater emphasis on oral / aural skills
• Frequent changes of task type
• Tasks are game-like e.g. colouring
• Focus on meaning
• Clear contexts
• Test what students know, not what they dont know

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Tasks

• Children demonstrate their understanding by
  doing
• Paint Touch Draw Mime
• Tasks are
• Contextualised, Fun, Authentic, Interesting

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Movers
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Movers
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Starters
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HK Basic Competencies YLE Good Classroom
Practice

• Speaking -
• Using a small range of vocabulary, sentence
  patterns and cohesive devices to convey simple
  information and ideas fairly appropriately with
  the help of cues despite some grammatical
  mistakes
• Simple story-telling
• From Basic Competencies, Key Stage 2

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Top Tips

• Play instruction games in class to ensure that
  children understand and can follow written and
  spoken instructions

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Top Tips - Vocabulary

• Introduce new language meaningfully
• Ensure children know how to spell the word and
  how to say it
• Make sure children have a record of the
  vocabulary
• Give lots of practice of the vocabulary

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Top Tips

• Make activities fun as this will motivate the
  children and make the language being practised
  more memorable.

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Top Tips

• Practise the language skills not the tests in
  class.

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Top Tips

• If children make a mistake it doesnt matter as
  long as they communicate clearly. So, do not
  over-correct, but praise them for their efforts.

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Top Tips

• Children should speak and listen to English in
  the classroom as much as possible.

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More information

• Website www.CambridgeESOL.org
• Teachers seminars
• Handbook
• Sample / Past Papers

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• University of Cambridge
• ESOL Examinations
• 1 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB1 2EU, UK
• Tel [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• E-mail ESOL_at_ucles.org.uk
• Keep up to date with what's new via the Cambridge
  ESOL website
• www.CambridgeESOL.org