One of the difficult things about teaching grade 1-2 is evaluating comprehension/reinvestment. How are they supposed to read questions and write their answers when many of them cannot read or write yet?
I have created short tests or “check-ups” to see how the students are progressing. These tests evaluate the themes that we see in my “Listen” activity book, only in a more condensed way.
I have attached 4 of them here.
The first is the same evaluation you find at the the end of the “Listen” activity book, only in stand-alone format. It evaluates the “Good Morning” (greetings and day routine), Yes/No vocabulary, along with parts of the body (just the face). And there is a Cl@sster section at the end to practice day, month, etc.
The second one evaluates numbers, months, days, weather, and has a Cl@sster activity at the end.
The third is a more comprehensive version of the first one and features 10 parts of the whole body instead of just pointing to features of the face.
Finally, there is a short shapes test.
I designed these evaluations to be easy to do, and easy to evaluate. The students simply match the image to the vocabulary word. For grade 1, I would read the vocabulary words for them, but for grade 2, they should be able to do that on their own.
For teachers, I made the sections 5 questions each, for ease of correcting. I find the math of x/5 is easy to calculate. I try to follow this philosophy in general for all of my comprehension/reinvestment pages. Evaluationg on 5 or 10 is easier than on 6 or 11. The math is just more simple to visualize. The tests all give you a nice /5, /15, /20, or /25 grade.
There is a differentiation section at the end. I added a Cl@sster activity. For early finishers, they can add more detail to this section. This activity is explained in my previous posts. Basically, the students get a chance to practice writing the date, writing and/or circling some simple verbs, etc. You can be more lenient with the Grade 1 spelling vs the Grade 2 spelling, as they are just starting to write. I also have the Grade 2s recopy the “4 phrases” (I played…I watched…I ate…I went to) to accompany their drawings. You can choose to evaluate this on 5 like do, or not evaluate that part.
I find that by adding two short tests per term where we evaluate comprehension/reinvestment, along with the sum of their weekly pages in the activity book, we get a good idea of the students’ strengths and weaknesses; and can vigilantly evaluate them, in order to provide helpful feedback to students, parents and any other stakeholders in the process.
I am always working on consolidating more material into evaluation pages, so be sure to come back for more easy to use tests!
Mr Andrew ESL 