Learning and Growing in a Spanish classroom

Assessments.   Assessments and UDL. Oh boy.   This is the area that I find I am most struggling.   I am pretty old school when it comes to assessment.   Or at least I have been.   Ok, I’m evolving. At a very slow pace.   Like maybe a snail’s pace.   Is this a snail or a bunny?  A bunny snail? A pet!?!   When I first started teaching, it was all quizzes and tests for assessments.  Now that I’ve been teaching for 14 years, it’s all quizzes and tests.  Kidding!  I do pretty well in the category of formative assessments.  I am constantly checking in with homework, vocabulary quizzes, show of hands, sticky-note on the board, reflections and the like. Where I struggle is with summative assessments.   I’ve been writing killer tests for so long, I’ve got it down to a science.  There are good reasons for how my tests are written – they show higher-order thinking skills, they make kids show their understanding of t...

These last few weeks have been...interesting.  On the home front, my daughter decided that it would be super fun to catch the flu.  She made sure to do it directly after February vacation to have maximum impact on disrupting virtually everything.  She didn't stop there, though, she upped the ante by tacking on a robust round of pneumonia, just to keep life interesting.  * Side note - as I type this, my son is sitting crouched at my feet, banging a drum with a pencil.  I can't tell if he wants my attention!?!   Add to all of this the third nor'easter to come through in March and I feel as if I have spent so much time at home and so little time in school that I'm not even sure what I teach anymore!  * My son has moved on to drumming the Jumanji theme song when danger approaches...I'm feeling slightly menaced.     Being snowed in by Mother Nature, and sidelined with a sick kid, I decided the timing couldn't be better to ...