Assessment

The BC Ministry of Education ELL Standards provide a common language for ELL Specialists and all educators in assessing ELL students. The Standards are organized into a continuum and focus on four language domains: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening (Oral Language). There are separate Proficiency Scales for Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7), and Secondary (8-12) and each one uses a five-level ranking scale. The levels are Beginning, Developing, Expanding, Consolidating, and Bridging, with each level representing different language skills that the student is capable of. ELL Specialist will use the scales when conducting an Initial Assessment of a student to determine their level and what kind of support they'll need. Throughout the year, ELL teachers will conduct ongoing assessments to determine language development in each of the domains and whether the student is progressing in their language goals. 

As per the standards document, "All ELL support services should be designed to support and enable students to progress in language proficiency and to increasingly meet the learning standards of the provincial curriculum. Accordingly, educators should be committed to students' language needs pertaining both to their proficiency levels and to the subject-specific knowledge from content-area classes". 

The Four Language Domains 

Reading: Includes reading strategies, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary

Writing: Includes meaning, style, form, and conventions

Oral Language: Includes Receptive (understanding) and Expressive (using) language, and focuses on meaning, form, and use. 

Each of these domains are gauged on a 5-level scale, placing students at the Beginning, Developing, Expanding, Consolidating, or Bridging level. 

How Do We Assess Reading?

ELLs benefit from reading instruction that includes five factors: 

1. Phonemic Awareness
2. Phonics
3. Oral Reading Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Reading Comprehension

Assessment options can include standardized reading assessments and informal assessments. Standardized reading assessments include PM Benchmarks, the Mann Suiter, Alberta Diagnostic, Fountas and Pinnell, and many more. They can provide a quick snapshot of how a student is doing in their reading, but more evidence may be needed to accurately reflect their language level. 

Informal assessments that teachers can use throughout the year include:

• Having a student summarize, retell, explain or describe a text that they've read.
• Checking for oral fluency during shared reading or student read-alouds.
• Asking students oral or written comprehension questions about a text.
• Checking vocabulary and word knowledge through fill-in-the-blank or Cloze activities.
• Student presentations or portfolios that demonstrate understanding of a text or subject. 

Image above: The ELL Quick Scale for Reading in the primary grades. 

How Do We Assess Writing?

Helman et al. (2019) identify three components of student writing:

1. Transcription: "The encoding of sounds, words, sentences, and longer passages into print, involving both spelling and hand-writing" (P. 148).
2. Text Generation: "The process of turning ideas into words, sentences, and larger units of discourse while drawing on semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and knowledge about various topics, text structures, and genres" (P. 149).
3. Self-Regulation: A student's ability to manage the overall writing process, to setting goals for writing, to planning and organizing writing, persisting in the writing task, revising, evaluating and reinforcing when writing goals are met" (P. 151). 

Writing assessment options can include letter-writing and sound-spelling, word dictations, picture word prompts, story word prompts, and more. 

Image Above: The ELL Quick Scale for Writing in the primary grades.

How Do We Assess Oral Language? 

There are a variety of strategies (both formal and informal) for assessing a student's receptive and expressive language skills. These include: 

• Standardized assessments such as formal interviews
• Sharing picture books.
• A student's ability to follow directions. 
• Point-to activities (expressing the name of an object when it's pointed at).
• Classroom and group discussions.
• Recording classroom activities.
• Orally describing a text.
• Oral teacher-student interviews.
• Oral language games (Charades, Head Bandz..)

Image Above: The ELL Quick Scale for Oral Language that includes Receptive and Expressive skills. 

10 Strategies for Assessing Oral Language poster..

Ensuring Equity in Assessments

To create assessments that are fair and equitable for ELLs and all students, teachers can incorporate a number of strategies and practices. These can include: 

• Taking into consideration the challenges that students can face when trying to develop their language skills while simultaneously understanding the content in lessons. 
• Providing scaffolding in instruction that allows students to participate meaningfully in academic content. 
• Providing scaffolded assessments that allow them to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways.
• Providing more time and opportunities for practicing the language. 
• Focusing on the progress and process of learning, as opposed to just the product of learning. 
• Sharing content and learning objectives with ELLs and providing models of quality work.
• Grouping students strategically based on strengths and needs.
• Explaining grade level expectations, the grading process and report cards to both students and parents.