10) Assessment
What do I need to consider when assessing Multilingual Learners?
Video: Assessment of Dual Language Learners
This video helps educators answer the question: "What do I need to consider when assessing Multilingual Learners?" The goal of assessment is to understand what the child knows; for ML children, educators need to consider all of the languages that the child speaks to fully assess their development and learning.Read More
Podcast: High Quality Instructional Materials as Equity for English Learners
This podcast covers some of the systematic issues in schools that keep Multilingual learners from adequately progressing. The discussion then shifts to specific supports and considerations for curriculum design that make grade-level content accessible for all learners.Read More
Planning Template: El Dictado
The Dictado is a routine in which the teacher dictates a series of phrases or sentences, and the teacher and students collaboratively correct them. The Dictado serves to teach and reinforce basic writing skills within each language, and to highlight cross-language transfer. This template helps teachers analyze their Dictados.Read More
Video: El Dictado
In this video, the teacher dictates a series of phrases or sentences, and the teacher and students collaboratively correct them. The Dictado serves to teach and reinforce basic writing skills within each language, and to highlight cross-language transfer and reinforce the teaching points presented over the three days of implementation.Read More
Template: Oral Language Analysis—K-3rd
A template designed to guide the analysis of student's oral language record to identify follow-up instruction they can provide during upcoming Designated ELD time.Read More
Video: Oral Language Analysis—K-3rd
In this video, the teacher gathers a small group of Multilingual Learners to engage in a brief discussion in response to structured prompts regarding an artifact from the class' ongoing content learning. The teacher records each child's oral responses, and then analyzes the record to identify follow-up instruction they can provide during upcoming Designated ELD time.Read More
Video: Relationships, Strategies & Culture
The focus of this video is to exemplify how purposeful oral language interactions contribute to a positive relationship with both children and families in early education. The teacher in this video "reaches across the language divide" to ensure both the child and parents know that the home language is respected and valued.Read More
Video: The Stages of Preschool Second Language Acquisition
In this video, the term the four stages of second language development for early education are described and then exemplified through teaching vignettes between one teacher and one Korean-speaking Multilingual Learner.Read More
Blog: Should Multimodalities be Incorporated into Testing and Assessment?
This blog introduces research that challenges the idea of written text as the mode of communication for comprehending written language and assessing Multilingual Learners. Suggestions for alternative assessment, attending to all domains of English, are offered.Read More
Video: Model Curriculum for English Learners – Family Stories (1st grade)
This video captures a lesson for Multilingual Learners co-taught by a first-grade teacher and an ELD teacher. The teachers share how they intentionally plan to both teach and assess the English language within the content lesson.Read More
Video: Assessment for English Learners
Teachers at an immersion school in Arlington, VA discuss how they use iterative assessment cycles to inform their instruction.Read More
Video: Using an ELD Portfolio to Guide Instruction and Monitor Progress
In this video, a first-grade teacher talks through her thinking as she uses an ELD portfolio for Multilingual Learners in her class. She discusses how a portfolio helps guide her instruction and determine language supports for students.Read More
Video: Preschool for ELLs – Language Learning and Assessment
In this video interview, researcher Rebecca Palacios shares her extensive experience supporting Multilingual Learners with language learning and assessment in dual language preschool.Read More
Guide: Formative Assessment Considerations
This resource offers a list of questions that the teacher can consider to structure more opportunities for formative assessment of language inside of classroom activities.Read More
Strategy Overview: Talk Moves
This resource offers specific teacher language to use in order to facilitate and structure classroom discussions. These talk moves help create quality opportunities for Multilingual Learners to practice and use oral language.Read More
Strategy Overview: Strategic Grouping for Home Language Supports
Small group instruction is a key part of instruction for Multilingual Learners. In this resource, teachers find guidelines and rationale for different strategic groupings.Read More
Website: DRDP Measures – How Might It Look?
This website provides examples and videos of children's behaviors that align with several items and domains of the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP). Educators can use these videos to help them determine children’s developmental levels by exploring how their skills and behaviors change as they learn and grow.Read More
Blog: More Meaningful Assessment for DLLs
This blog offers a quick overview of why assessment is so critical for instruction with Multilingual Learners, including assessment in the home language(s) and understanding of language development. This resource is full of other relevant links.Read More
Video: Summative Assessments
This video explains summative assessments: a way to "evaluate learning by providing cumulative snapshots" that help teachers understand and evaluate children's learning. The data from summative assessments should come from a variety of sources and should also provide key information for intentionally providing individualized support.Read More
Guide: Assessing Children Who Are Dual Language Learners
This guide explains how educators can assess Multilingual Learners using the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP). The guide includes information about code-switching, a typical feature of dual language development, and how assessors can ensure they are collecting the most comprehensive information to accurately assess children.Read More
Video: DRDP Tutorials
This video playlist provides a series of tutorial videos for educators who are using the California Department of Education's Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP). In the videos, educators will be guided through conducting observations of children, documenting those observations, and completing the DRDP.Read More
Video: DRDP Microlearning for Teachers
This video playlist provides a series of tutorial videos for teachers using the California Department of Education's Desired Results Developmental Profile online system. Teachers can refer to these tutorial videos to use the online system, create and use reports of children's progress, and learn how to share reports with families.Read More
Video: DRDP Microlearning for Administrators
This video playlist provides a series of tutorial videos for administrators using the California Department of Education's Desired Results Developmental Profile online system. Administrators can refer to these tutorial videos to manage their program's enrollment information, monitor children's progress and assessments, and plan for instructional support using classroom reports.Read More
Video: Watching My Child Grow
This video playlist provides an introduction to the California Department of Education's Desired Results Assessment System and its benefits for all children and families. These videos are available in English, Spanish, and Mandarin.Read More
Website Article: What Research Says About Small Group Intervention
This article summarizes research and discussed how to use assessment to inform strategic groupings for Multilingual Learners, particularly for reading instruction.Read More
Article: Goals in Small Groups for English Learners
This article shares numerous strategies that can be used to support Multilingual Learners in small group reading instruction to support both reading and English Language Development (ELD) skills.Read More
Strategy Overview: The Art of Listening to English Learners
This article offers teachers tips on how to listen to Multilingual Learners, especially those who are just beginning to share their thinking in English. While listening, teachers can informally assess language to inform their future instruction.Read More
Video: Model Curriculum for English Learners- How Do I Feel? (Kindergarten)
In this video, a designated teacher for Multilingual Learners talks through her objectives for a read-aloud lesson. She builds in practice opportunities for the students to use the language of feelings, the language of sequence, and specific use of pronouns. She also uses instructional tools like graphic organizers and an end-of-unit rubric to support student experiences in reading, writing, speaking, and listening in English. A link to the whole unit plan is available on the video's YouTube page.Read More
Online Module: Assessment of Students’ Academic and Language Skills
Initial and ongoing assessments in both the home language(s) and English are critical to determine instruction for Multilingual Learners and understand the full range of their skills. This page on the assessment of diverse learners is part of a larger set of online learning modules.Read More
Website: Assessing when a Child’s Language is Not Spoken in the Classroom
This resource provides guidance on assessing Multilingual Learners’ language abilities when teachers do not speak the child’s home language. Recommendations include partnering with families to co-create goals and finding interpreters to help conduct assessments.Read More
Tip Sheet: Instructionally Embedded Assessment
This resource describes how educators can draw from a variety of formative assessment tools to assess Multilingual Learners’ language progress. This resource highlights the importance of continually observing what children are able to do across time and in a variety of ways.Read More
Webinar: Measuring What All Children Can Do in All Languages
In this webinar, presenters discuss the trajectory of bilingual development and important considerations for assessing Multilingual Learners. The webinar provides guidance around using a variety of formative assessment tools, using summative assessment, and assessing children in their home language.Read More
Article: Assessing Young Dual Language Learners
This article introduces ideas for formative assessment, as well as key questions for teachers to ask themselves when assessing Multilingual Learners. The third page of the article offers five practical ways that teachers can develop their own assessment skills.Read More
Website Article: Young Dual Language Learners-Screening and Assessment
The objective of this article and accompanying video is to focus on Multilingual Learners and "understand some of the unique considerations that educators must keep in mind when screening and assessing."Read More
Strategy Overview: Oral Language Analysis
In this formative assessment, the teacher gathers 1-4 Multilingual Learners to engage in a brief discussion in response to structured prompts regarding an artifact from the class' ongoing content learning. The teacher records each child's oral responses, and then analyzes the record to identify follow-up instruction they can provide during upcoming Designated ELD time.Read More
Strategy Overview: Family-Centered Goal Setting
This guide breaks down how to set simple, targeted, short-term learning goals in partnership with families. By engaging families in developing learning goals, teachers ensure that the goals are rooted in a shared understanding of the whole child, and prepare families to support their children in working toward their goals.Read More
Strategy Overview: Performance-based Assessment
Both formative and summative assessments are critical to understanding the language development and content learning of Multilingual Learners. This document offers a variety of instructional ideas for all types of assessment tasks.Read More
