Assessing student levels of oral language development is critical to adjusting instruction to fit specific student needs. The effort here is a beginning for us as we carefully implement an effective formative assessment system for oral language development. These tools and processes continue to be validated through an ongoing Action Research project, moving paper and pencil forms to electronic format, and validating the use these tools and methods.
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Why
It is crucial that your awareness of how to support language development is heightened through observations of students’ formal and play peer interactions, teacher-student, and whole/group/individual interactions. The goal is to help the teacher listen, record and analyze students’ oral language in context to appropriate developmental language using the responses of the students during all interactions, and to provide a format to capture and analyze brief snippets of student oral language.
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How
With practice, capturing and codifying oral language becomes easier and more valuable as a formative assessment process. The observation tool provided here provides a frame for what you should notice, documents growth over time, and provides a coding system to guide instructional choices. Documents provided here provide the observation tool, specific instructions for both use, and a video example of how it might be used.
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Join the Action Research
The observation tool supports teachers’ analysis of student oral language, and is in its early stages of field-testing. We would like to invite you to join our action research by trying it with your students. As you do, please use the assessment feedback form to provide feedback on what you notice about your students’ oral language performance and development, how these insights inform your instruction, what is working in your teaching practice, and suggestions you may have for the research and development team as we refine this resource. We look forward to hearing from you!
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