Assessment for Learner Gains 

Many programs find it useful to give students a test at the beginning of the term (a pretest) and at the end of a term (a posttest) in order to see if students have made progress during the session. You will want to work with your instructors to have them do ongoing assessment, evaluating students in a variety of ways throughout the term to give instructors a lot of information about how the class is going and whether the students have met the outcomes set by the class.

Here are different approaches you can take (or you can use a combination of any of these):

• Textbook assessments
• Standardized tests
• Tests created by instructors/program
• Informal assessments

■ Why use textbook assessments?

Most of the textbook series have chapter and/or unit tests in their teacher’s guides to give you a measure of how the students are doing in relation to the outcomes of the text. Some of them also have separate assessment guides you can use. They may also have online resources where instructors can create tests and choose the questions they want to use.

These tests can be used as pre/post tests and ongoing assessments. Instructors can also use workbooks or the online practice activities associated with the textbook series to do ongoing assessment.

■ Why use standardized assessments?

There are a variety of standardized assessments used by adult education ESOL programs that can give an objective picture of how students are doing that can also be consistent across the program. These can be used as placement tests as well as pretests and posttests. These each have both paper and online tests. All of the ones to the right align with NRS levels (see Chapter 10, p.31). They all have costs involved.

CASAS Test
This is the most common one used across the country. They offer both listening and reading multiple-choice tests. Students can take a pretest and posttest.
https://www.casas.org/product-overviews/assessments/life-and-work-reading
https://www.casas.org/product-overviews/assessments/life-and-work-listening
 

TABE Complete Language Assessment System—English (TABE CLAS-E)
This test includes more skills than CASAS with tests on reading, listening, writing, and an optional speaking test. It can also be used as a pre and posttest.
http://tabetest.com/students-2/tabe-class-e/

BEST Plus
This test has listening and speaking and involves extensive training for those who administer it.
http://www.cal.org/aea/bp/

■ Why use instructor-created assessments?

You may have outcomes for your courses that are not addressed in book tests or standardized assessments. In addition, if your program focuses on student goals, you may want to create your own assessments to find out if students have met the outcomes they have set out for themselves. Your program or instructors can create their own larger pre/post tests or tests for particular units based around materials covered in the class. There are a number of resources online to create assessments students can do, which can be tailored to outcomes you have in your course. Examples include:

QUIZLET: Create quizzes that students can take on their own
KAHOOT: Done in class, a quick and fun way to see if students understood concepts in a multiple-choice format
GOOGLE FORMS: Used to test in a variety of ways and formats

■ Why use informal assessments?

You can use these to do ongoing assessment over the course of the class. And they can be a better measure of progress when working with learners who are not “good test takers” when
assessed in a formal setting or who have limited experience in a formal education setting and therefore weaker test-taking skills. 

Some of these may already be created or may be put together by the instructor or program:

• Performance samples—such as writing samples, worksheets,audio (recorded on their phones), projects
• Informal reading inventory (these give you a “grade Level” for what they can do); more information about how to use these here: https://study.com/learn/lesson/informal-reading-inventory-test-uses.html
• Learner self-evaluation (can-do charts, questions about confidence, exit tickets)
• Learning plans and logs (what they want to learn and whether or not they did)
• Computer-generated assessments—such as by topic or subject area (there are lots of things that can be done online)
• Teacher-designed quizzes
• Interviews and teacher observations (teachers can keep track of what they observe in a log)
• Journals (students write at home about a variety of topics and can get feedback from instructors)
• In-class writing assessments

ONGOING SELF-ASSESSMENTS

Exit Tickets

One way to do ongoing self-assessments is to do daily exit tickets in which instructors ask students to give feedback on the instruction in the class. It gives the instructor immediate input on what went well and what may need to be reviewed or taught differently in future classes. There are a variety of things you can ask about:

Students’ general feeling about the class:

• What did you like best about today’s class?
• What was the most useful/interesting/exciting thing you learned today?

Checking to see if they learned what your outcome was:

• Write down one thing you have done that no one else in the class has done.
• Write three body parts you learned today.
• What do you think is the most challenging part of writing a resume?

Seeing how they feel about how you conducted the class:

• How did you feel about the pair work to check your answers?

Finding out what didn’t go as well:

• Tell me a question you have about the lesson.
• I am still not sure I understand…

Deciding what comes next:

• I would like to learn more about…
• In future lessons, I would like to learn about…

At the end of each class, instructors can just write one of these on the board, on small cards, as a handout, or students can do it online:
https://www.teachthought.com/technology/smart-tools-for-digital-exit-slips/