“Assessment, Articulation, and Accountability”
9:00 am – 4:00 pm on Saturday, April 6, 2019
Pyle Center (702 Langdon Street, Madison, WI 53706)
The Center for East Asian Studies (a federally-funded Title VI National Resource Center), the Korean Flagship Program, and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were pleased to co-host a workshop for K-16 instructors of East Asian languages in Wisconsin and beyond.
The theme of the workshop was “Assessment, Articulation, and Accountability.” We had the following speakers:
Plenary Speaker:
Mr. Paul Sandrock (Director of Education, ACTFL)
Panelists and Breakout Session Leaders:
Dr. Cynthia Ning (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Mr. Yo Azama (North Salinas High School / California State University, Monterey Bay)
Dr. Sahie Kang (Middlebury College)
The workshop began with Mr. Paul Sandrock’s plenary talk titled “Assessing Language Performance: Guiding Learners to Show What They Can Do with What They Know,” followed by a panel of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean specialists responding to the plenary talk. The 2-hour breakout sessions in the afternoon were led by the three East Asian language specialists, who drew specific examples from respective languages. The concluding session shared the outcomes of the breakout sessions and provided an opportunity to the sharing of ideas across languages. We hoped that this unique format would enhance our mutual growth.
Registration
Participants were asked to register here, which contained pricing as described below. Lunch was included in the registration costs. The registration web address was: http://services.iris.wisc.edu/ceas2019
Early registration (until March 10)
General Registration (including UW–Madison Faculty): $50
K-12 Teachers: $35
Students: $25
Late registration (March 11-31)
General Registration (including UW–Madison Faculty): $65
K-12 Teachers: $50
Students: $40
Hotel accommodations
Lowell Center
Participants who were interested in staying at the block of rooms reserved at the Lowell Center were given the following instructions: To book a room at the special conference rate of $115 per night, please go to http://bit.ly/ealpw05apr and reference EALPW as the group code.
A limited number of fellowships were available for K-12 teachers’ travel expenses. The following contact information was provided: Please contact eas@eastasia.wisc.edu for more details. If you have any questions regarding the workshop contents, please contact Junko Mori at jmori@wisc.edu. For logistical questions, please contact Laurie Dennis at ldennis@wisc.edu.
Plenary Talk
“Assessing Language Performance: Guiding Learners to Show What They Can Do with What They Know”
Mr. Paul Sandrock (Director of Education, ACTFL)
After graduation (at any level), learners will use their second (or third) language in ways we cannot predict but for which they need to be prepared. To prepare “world-ready” citizens, language programs can no longer teach about language, culture, or literature; learners need to be engaged in using language to access and grapple with content and to build relationships. The validity of assessment in a language program increases when how learners are assessed reflects the characteristics of the goals for the program, charting progress with feedback on how well learners are able to use language for different purposes. What’s the shift in how we guide learners to achieve their language goals? Sandrock examined and analyzed assessment that provides evidence of learners’ increasing language proficiency and confidence to achieve these goals, answering the question “What can learners do with what they know?”
Materials
Breakout Sessions
“What Do I Do Now? Reflecting on Assessment Results”
Mr. Yo Azama
(North Salinas H.S./ Cal. State Univ., Monterey Bay)
232 Pyle Center
What do assessment results tell us about how we taught and what our students learned? Learning is demonstrated when learners “can do” something with and through the target language that they couldn’t do – or do as well – before the learning episode. How can we develop assessments that inform learners of their progress while providing them feedback to improve? Learn to design instruction to connect the formative assessments so they lead up to the summative assessments for a unit or course. Explore types of feedback that move leaners to the final outcomes. Participants applied these strategies to one of their units of instruction, transformed the summative assessments and then designed backwards to craft effective formative assessments throughout the unit for each mode of communication.
“Applying current U.S. Best Practices to Chinese language teaching”
Dr. Cynthia Ning
(University of Hawaii at Manoa)
227 Pyle Center
This session began with a quick recap of current Best Practices, including STARTALK’s Six Principles and Lourdes Ortega’s Five Element model, and segued quickly into a Hindi lesson built on these practices, so that participants could experience language learning using recommended Best Practices first-hand. We ended with a discussion-demonstration of what these approaches might look like in the Chinese language classroom.
“Linking Assessment with Learning in Standards-Based Curriculum”
Dr. Sahie Kang
(Middlebury College)
332 Pyle Center
Dr. Kang reviewed principles and implementations of performance and proficiency assessments which can help both teachers and students to reach the course learning objectives successfully. Participants could see that such assessments measure not only learner progress in attainment of the proficiency and National Standards, but also guided and informed instruction and program design that led into a connection between learning and assessment.