IH Young Learner Assessment – Online Seminars 2018

The YL Assessment Survey and Report – Xana de Nagy, IHWO Young Learner Advisor

A quick overview of what has been done so far, highlighting some of the more relevant results and a look at where we can go from here.

Testing Times – Ideas for Formative Assessment in the YL classroom – Jennifer Veit and Lucie Cotterill, IH Reggio Calabria

With parents becoming increasingly keen to see their children progress through the CEFR levels, more pressure is being put on teachers to provide evidence of learning through tests and assessment.  In this session, we will be looking at some practical ideas for assessing young learners throughout their course in a positive and engaging manner.

Why don't we just ask them? – Lisa Wilson, IH Palermo Language Centre

'Needs Analysis' is often the first thing we think of when we get a new adult 1-2-1 student, and one of the first questions we tend to ask our adult groups is 'Why are you studying English?' in an attempt to find out more about our new groups' needs. But when it comes to YLs, figuring out exactly what those needs are can present us with a whole series of new challenges; Do they know what they need? If they know, can they express it? If they express it, can we meet it? This talk takes the form of a short journey through recent adventures in this field of conducting needs analysis with 8-10 year olds. 

'Too young to be tested, too young to be assessed? Assessment and progress in very young learners' – Anka Zapart, IH BKC Moscow

VYL teachers face quite a few challenges when it comes to assessing their students. Formal assessment is not quite an option because the students cannot read or write and there is also a question of whether this assessment should involve only the language skills or should the cognitive, social or motor skills be included in it, too? And how to do it?

In this webinar, I am going to present different ways of assessing the
pre-primary students of English that we use at IH BKC Moscow as well as
some that we might be using more widely in the future.

Continuous Assessment – a Means to an End – Diana England, IH Torres Vedras/Lisbon

This session shows how we use classroom and homework tasks as a means of continually assessing our Young Learners.  You’ll see the type of things we use to assess students, the grids we use to document results, and how we use these at the end of each term to show parents / caregivers a rounded evaluation of their progress and abilities

Easy as ABC? An assessment case-study – Andy McNeish, IH Madrid

You went to school to learn girl
Things you never, never knew before
Like "I" before "E" except after "C"
And why 2 plus 2 makes 4
Now, now, now
I'm gonna teach you
(Teach you, teach you) ......

ABC, Easy as 1-2-3

(The Jackson 5)

In 2012, IH Madrid Young Learner's Department changed the way we did YL assessment away from end of unit tests to something called ABC assessment. We did this to try and make our YL assessment more effective in helping to improve our YL Learners'  skills and to adapt to the (then) relatively new demands of the CEFR and (Cambridge) YL exams. And also because The Director thought it sounded good.  So, what is ABC assessment and, more importantly, does it work? I'll be answering those questions and telling you what we learned at our school.