Tired of grading overload? Discover how to make assessment in the world language classroom stress-free, proficiency-based, and actually useful for students with guests Andy Dykema and Pat Rolfes.

🎒 Want more sanity-saving tools? Grab the CI Survival Kit here: https://imim.us/survival

In this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we dive into “Assessment Without the Headache” with Andy Dykema and Pat Rolfes. We’ll chat about escaping the “points police” mindset, practical rubrics that actually work, authentic assessment tasks you can use tomorrow, and how to explain it all to skeptical admins or parents. If you’ve ever felt buried under red ink, this conversation will give you strategies, laughter, and the confidence to simplify grading while focusing on what really matters — student growth.

#WorldLanguageTeaching, #ComprehensibleInput, #LanguageAssessment, #LanguageTeachers, #TeachingPodcast, #CIclassroom, #ProficiencyBasedGrading, #ComprehendTHIS, #AndyDykema, #PatRolfes

Hosts:

Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion

Andy Dykema - https://www.instagram.com/@profe.dykema

Pat Rolfes - https://www.instagram.com/patrolfes73

Resources & Links:

Dynamic Discipline: https://imim.us/discipline

CI Survival Kit: https://imim.us/survival

Quick Write Paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fasvJu7EsETzlvKdH-N09L204J8m3PWq/view?usp=sharing

Rubrics: https://imim.us/rubrics

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Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

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Hey and welcome to this week's edition of

Comprehend This Podcast.

How's everybody doing this morning?

So, okay teachers, let's be honest.

Grading can feel like

a teacher purgatory.

You know when you're staring at 37

identical answers to como

estas and wondering if you

really need to keep your

red pen industry in business?

Today we're diving into assessment

without the headache.

And I've got backup.

Joining me are Andy Dykema and Pat

Rolfis, two brave souls

who've managed to escape

their points police past

lives and live to tell the tale.

We're talking real rubrics, sanity saving

hacks and how to keep

a straight face when

your admin asks, but how do you know

they're learning anything?

So buckle up, grab your metaphorical red

pen to snap it in half

later and let's talk about

how assessment can actually make sense

without losing your

weekend, your mind or your caffeine

supply.

We'll be right back

after these short messages.

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edge of your teacher

planner just hoping today's

lesson magically appears?

Enter the CI Survival Kit, a monthly

membership made for

teachers who love comprehensible

input but also love not reinventing the

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No stress, no guilt, just monthly help

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Sign up at mm.us slash survival and let

the Survival Kit do the

heavy lifting for once.

Welcome to Comprehend This, real talk for

real language teachers.

No drills, no dry theory, just honest

stories, practical ideas

and a reminder you're not

alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

So welcome, welcome,

welcome Andy and Pat.

Pat is a returnee with us so

she's kind of a veteran here.

Pat is, I mean Andy is new to us.

So Andy, why don't you give us a little

bit of information

about yourself before we get

started.

Sure.

Hi everybody.

I'm happy to be here.

Thanks Scott for the nudge.

I've been using some stuff from your site

previously and kind of been, I started at

a pretty traditional

school in New Orleans.

I taught at Jesuit High School and so we

very kind of grant

translation, textbook heavy.

Then I went to St. Martin's Episcopal

School where I learned a

lot of CI techniques kind

of and you know have been to several

different conferences.

Working with

comprehensible and like that.

Then I've been at an I-tech called Morris

Jeff High School for

a while and then just

moved over to Franklin.

Pretty awesome.

Oh, I'm trying to, where's my camera?

I have my mug.

There we go.

Oh, there it is.

We're the number one

public school in Louisiana.

I'm proud to receive that distinction and

I just joined there

and I've used a mix of

CI and kind of traditional techniques and

really enjoying

getting into grading here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

What about you Pat?

Give us a refresher about who you are.

I'm Pat Rolfes and I taught for 26 years,

23 of them in Worthington School District

in Southwest Minnesota which meant a 60

mile drive every day for me.

I spent 23 there, 30 back in the winter.

It wasn't so much fun.

I also spent three years up next to the

Canadian border and

international falls which was,

yes, the icebox of the

nation and we can prove it.

I have been using, before I left

teaching, I left teaching

three and a half years ago

now due to personal

issues, family issues, etc.

Not that I wanted to leave the kids but I

needed to take care of life.

Before that I had been using CI solely in

my classroom for give or take 15 years.

I had a good run with it.

I started out because my counterpart, the

German teacher, she

used it in her class after

attending a Blaine Ray conference and she

could see what the kids could do.

I was like, "I want my kids to do that."

She took me to summer workshop and I'm

like, "Okay, well, the

only way to do this is to

strap up my parachute and jump in."

That's what I did.

The first year, I'm not going to lie, it

was bumpy but after

that it got so much easier

and I wish I had figured it out earlier

in my teaching career.

Yeah, I got lucky where I did

get it in my early my career.

My second semester of

teaching, I got into CI.

Well, it wasn't called CI back then.

The only version of CI

we had was TPRS back then.

Now we've got so many different flavors.

We've got lots of variety, lots of

activities that we can do.

I'm with you on the commute.

For most of my career, I have commuted to

school between 20 and 30 miles.

The last 11 years, for the better or

worse, because there

was good and bad about it,

I was a mile from my school.

But that was way too close.

Kids were always in my business.

I went back to high school and now I'm

back to that 25 mile commute.

I'm with you, but

mine's in California traffic.

We don't have the snow,

but I have the traffic.

On my way home is when it's worse.

In the morning, I leave early enough so I

don't hit any traffic.

But then I'm at school two and a half

hours earlier than I

need to be, but at least I

get my work done.

I'd rather work and be productive for

that two and a half

hours and sit an hour and 15

minutes in traffic.

So I'll make that sacrifice.

On the way home, though, it's about 45

minutes to an hour to get

back, depending on the traffic

or if there was an accident.

The other day, it was last Monday, I'll

never forget, I was 0.8

miles from my exit, 0.8

miles.

And my GPS went from arrival to my school

in six minutes to arrival at school in an

hour.

Or there was an accident that happened

and blocked all the lanes of traffic.

So I was like, "Oh my gosh."

And then I did something

I've never done before.

And please, if there's any California

Highway Patrol people out

there, please do not come

and arrest me and give me a ticket now.

But another car I saw made a U-turn on

the freeway and went up the on ramp.

So went backwards on the on ramp, drove

up it instead of coming down it.

And another car did

it, another car did it.

I'm like, "Well, they're doing it.

I'll go ahead and do it too."

For the first time in my life, I made a

U-turn on a freeway and

I went up the on ramp.

So I used as an exit ramp when I was

supposed to be an on ramp.

It was a trucker's on ramp.

So nobody was coming down because they

saw the traffic, so

nobody was going down it.

And I looked behind me and I go, "Please

don't get me pulled over.

Please don't get me pulled over."

I'm looking behind me.

There are like 30 more cars behind me

doing the exact same thing.

So then it turns in an hour to get to

school in another 20 minutes.

So that saved me a

whole heck of a long time.

But yeah, that was my traffic.

Tell you traffic, traffic, traffic.

California traffic is a

whole different kind of animal.

I think I'd take the weather.

Yeah.

And Sacramento traffic is nowhere near as

bad as LA or San Francisco.

So I can't really complain, but yeah.

So that's that.

So let's go ahead and talk about today's

topic, which is

assessment without the headache.

So I don't know about you.

I'll tell you my story in just a moment.

But what does your grading look like now?

And if you made any changes in your

grading, what did it look like before?

And whoever would like to

start can go ahead and start.

Well, I think before I was very focused

on form rather than

function, if that makes sense.

And I think your point here, you

mentioned points police.

I think I was the point police, you know,

and I would like I

would have them write like

the numbers and take off

points from the face with the guy.

Or if they didn't put an accent or if

they felt thing and stuff like that.

I used to be really busy.

But what I'm trying to do now is really

focus on the IB use the

line, which I like a lot

in the rubrics.

And it says like, you know, errors do not

interfere with communication or and so if

the error does not interfere with

communication and the

writing thing, I try not to focus

on all, you know, and if it's up, I'll

signal it sometimes like I

have a underline something

I don't understand in writing or I'll

circle it if it's a

spelling error, or I'll do a

squiggly line underline if it's a like an

agreement issue to

help them do the revisions

and stuff like that.

But on things like that, I really don't

get to take off points.

So I'm really more focused on what are

they communicating the message is that

mostly comprehensible

rather than like super nitty.

And also thinking like

what's the developmentally?

And like, you know, verb

tense endings are development.

So appropriate to make that error, get

back to the key, fix

it, changes like that.

So but that happens with

feedback and class interaction.

So I think, you know, I think the long

version is that I just

feel a lot more, a lot more

nitpicky about it.

And what about you, Pat?

Well, now I'm free and clear of the

grading because I'm

hungry in the classroom.

But when I left the

classroom, let's put it that way.

I still had my number one,

I never ever used a red pen.

Never.

Because one of my friends, a teacher

friend said, all the

students always fear the red

pen police.

And it's like they see red on their paper

and immediately they have a heart attack.

And it's like, well, okay, so then I

would grade in whatever color wasn't red.

I mean, I wouldn't use black or blue

usually that much unless

it was very different from

the pen color than what they were using.

But I did a lot in purple.

I did a lot.

Yeah, there you go.

Turquoise.

Yep.

Yep.

That's what I would use.

I would do orange.

I would do pink.

I would, you know, whatever color.

And I too was for the longest time hung

up on the spelling and

the grammar of things

and so on and so forth.

But then I started just circling things.

And even though it was circled, it didn't

necessarily mean I

took points off for it.

If it was a point type

assignment, if it was a quiz, yes.

Unfortunately, then I would take points.

But that was a different situation.

It was an assessment that I needed to do

to keep my higher ups happy.

You know, you've got the guard dogs

waiting to catch you

not teaching something.

It's like, if they can talk to me, then I

know they understand it.

You know, they don't have speech bubbles

above their head when

they're talking to me.

So I don't know if they're spelling

things right or not in their head.

You know, they're communicating with me

and that's the goal.

And if that works, there you go.

But to keep, you know, the people happy

and admin and

everything, they got the quiz every

now and then.

And I usually saved it for Friday.

And we talked about how there was going

to be an assessment

coming up soon, you know,

the entire week so that they had plenty

of time to prepare themselves.

And it wasn't a surprise.

And I gave out perfect score stickers.

And you wouldn't believe how giddy high

school students would be

about getting a sticker

on their paper.

Oh, yeah.

Look what I got.

Look what I got.

And it's like, okay, you're a little too

excited about it, but that's okay.

But yeah, absolutely love those stickers.

And I would give out so many of them, I'd

have to keep replenishing my sticker pile

because, you know, they

knew about it all the time.

So they were ready for it and they felt

comfortable with it and

zippity doo, they'd go through

it in like five minutes or less.

And that would be my only thing I would

do on the weekend is grade that one quiz.

And I wouldn't be, you know, dealing with

essays and all that stuff.

But I saved for during the week and then

after school or before school, looking at

those.

Well, you may even see me looking around.

I was trying to see if I had one of my

multicolored pens, but I have the kind

that Andy has there.

I have the traditional ones and I have

the blue one and I have

the other one too that

you have.

So I buy them in four packs.

They're hard to find nowadays.

But I buy them on Amazon

and buy the four packs.

But I also have one that's got, I don't

know if it's six or seven colors on it.

It's a little fatter.

It's not by the same company.

And I got that's what I was trying to

find if I had a three

pack and I couldn't find

where I put the other

extra ones I was looking for.

So yes, I do do the colorful pens.

It's funny how that you mentioned about I

wrote some things

down, some notes, because

you said some good things here.

The red, my sister teaches elementary

school and they were told

that they couldn't choose

any one color for grading.

They had to be color agnostic so that

kids wouldn't associate

any particular color with

being bad.

So they had to rotate

through the colors as they grade.

So a couple of weeks in red, a couple of

weeks in green, a

couple of weeks in orange.

So no gray, no color, because I guess

they were finding that

kids who maybe their favorite

color was red.

Now it was being associated with being

bad and they all kind of mental things.

So that was kind of funny about that.

Stickers Pat, you're richer than I am.

I don't use stickers because you have to

get replenishing them.

I use stamps.

So I would.

Why would you use those too?

I would always find

Spanish stamps I would find.

And then I bought and I still have, they

did not lie, the never

ending lifetime stamp.

I have a giant stamp ink stamper and I

stamp them in there and

I've had it for my entire

career.

I bought it in my second year of teaching

and I'm now in my 24th, I think 24th year

and I have had it.

It's the same one I've been using year

after year after year.

The only thing my kids complain about is,

do you have anything other than blue?

So because it's been blue, I'm like, hey,

I bought this for

like $6 way back in 2002

and it's still going strong and it's

going to be there until I retire.

So I use that that way.

I don't run out of stickers.

I used to use, I, only time I use

stickers though was I

bought something from senior

Woolie and he threw in some stickers in

the pack and so I used

those until we ran out.

But absolutely.

I was getting mine at Walmart and they

would be just the

generic smiley face sticker.

There wasn't any Spanish written on them.

If it was like an essay or something,

then I would use my

pretty Spanish stickers that

I got from teachers

discovery or whatever.

Those I held onto with both hands and you

had to pry them out of my fingers.

But otherwise I used the happy face

sticker and they would

just go, I got one, I got one,

I got one.

I had.

I say, Mr. Hundo, this is

Mr. Hundo, if I can find it.

So like on paper, if you get a hundred,

Mr. Hundo comes out and

he got his eyes and so

he's like, he says, I just draw my little

ridiculous caricatures

and then the kids are

like, Oh, Mr. Hundo is back.

Well, you are way

more creative than I am.

And I was going to say when Pat was

talking with the smiley

faces, I don't want to spend

that much time.

I grade really quickly, especially

because when I taught in

Vegas, had 280 students.

So grading 280 quick

rights was time consuming.

So I found I don't even know if they

still make it, but the

Crayola markers, they had

they do make it.

But no, no, not that though.

But what I'm talking about is they had at

the end of the Crayola

markers, they had shapes.

So they still make those.

So they still make a smiley face, one

star, one lightning bolt.

And I would just stamp them on the papers

to save time because

drawing a smiley face

took too long for me to spend on a paper.

So I never I never did any of that.

So let me tell you about my situation.

When I started teaching, I

was not a certified teacher.

I was on an emergency permit, so I had no

teaching experience

and no teaching school

behind me.

I hadn't even started teaching school

yet, just had my bachelors.

So when you come in and you don't know

what you're doing, like

I had no clue what I was

doing, you just beg, borrow

and steal whatever you could.

So I took someone else's syllabus and I

took their grading

program just the way they had

in there.

Like, you know, how many percent for

projects, how many sent

for quizzes, tests, homework,

all that stuff.

And I just copied that down.

And that's what I did.

And then I had this girl, Brittany, and

I'll never forget her.

She sent me her senior picture, you know,

in school and, you

know, kids do that when

they're seniors.

And she wrote on the back because she

knew she goes, thank

you for passing me because

I was teaching Spanish to my first year

and she knew nothing.

Absolutely positively.

Not a single thing.

I don't know how she passed Spanish one.

She was a nice girl, but she couldn't do

any Spanish whatsoever.

But she always turned in her homework and

her projects were already always nice and

pretty.

So she earned her points for that.

And that saved her.

That gave her her C when she should have

had an F because she couldn't do Spanish.

And I should have been measuring how much

Spanish she could do, which was zero.

But that's not what happened using that

the grading program

that the other teacher that

I copied from, she was able to pass.

And so then I said to

myself, this cannot happen again.

So starting in my second year of

teaching, I did a whole

bunch of research over the summer

about standards based grading.

And I read a book, how

to grade for learning.

And that was my Bible.

I read that book.

It had nothing to do with languages, but

just how to grade for

actual learning, no matter

what the class was.

And it was a look at

standards based grading.

And I, from that point,

that's where I started doing that.

And in that second year, I was

experimenting on my kids' life.

And it was so funny because I always made

them think that it was their choice.

But I just kind of painted the picture

brighter on the side that

I wanted them to move to

because I was like, do we do averages?

Is that going to work better?

Is it going to be median?

Is that going to be worked better?

Or is it going to be mode?

Was that going to work better?

And how different ways to calculate.

We all know the average, which is mean.

The median was picking the middle number

when you put them in

high to low or low to

high.

And then the mode was picking the most

common number that

showed up in the kids grade.

So I tried all of these and they all had

their pluses and minuses.

But when I wanted to switch every

quarter, we switched

grading things to see how it was

going to work.

And I ended up sticking with the median.

That was the most accurate one.

And we stuck with that one for a while.

But grading programs don't really do

median unless they turn it

on from the district side

of it.

So that was where I started with was that

percentage in points

back then and kids would

always ask for, you know, they would

fight for every last

living point they possibly

could.

And they weren't thinking

about the whole picture.

And so when I switched to proficiency, my

goal was to look at

them and say, when I look

at the kid, I have an image of what they

can do in the language.

And then when I look at the

grade book, it should match.

So if I thought that they were proficient

in Spanish, then that

was a B. I better find

a B in the grade book.

So I worked really hard in making sure

that their ability

matched the grade book.

And I played with the math

and I am not a math person.

I cried over the math.

I'm like, okay, math

teacher, please help me understand.

I put in 100% in the grade book for a

child and their grade went down.

How is that possible?

I couldn't understand the math and I

would go after school

every day, explain to me this

math.

I've got to figure this out.

And I came up with a system that I've

been using and I've

been using for the majority

of my career is grading

towards that proficiency.

And now I look at my kids and I can say

that is a top kid and the grade matches.

That is a struggling

kid and the grade matches.

And so the grade isn't because you showed

up and smiled and did all your work.

It's how well you did your work.

And so that for me was really the key to

it because I really

wanted to make sure that

the grade wasn't a

let me give you a grade.

It's when that you earn, but also

reflected what you

actually can do in the language.

And we lost Andy, so

hopefully he'll come back shortly.

But that's how I

worked with the grade book.

It made that big change for me.

And I'll add one other thing.

Somewhere in the middle of

that, I had to grade grammar.

I stopped grading specific grammar, but

when I did grade

grammar, how I did it, because

the typical way is you look at it and you

subtract points for not putting an accent

mark or subtract a point or a half a

point for not spelling

it correctly or the word

order.

What I did is I thought of it like math.

What's the lowest common denominator?

What was the least of

an answer I would expect?

And they would get full

credit for that answer.

And if they made it more correct, like

the accent mark was

there or the spelling was

there or the right order was there or the

indirect or direct

object pronoun was there,

they would get plus point.

They would get bonus points for that.

So that's kind of how I dealt with it.

Instead of taking a negative aspect,

taking away points, they

got more positive points

for doing it.

So that's kind of how I approached that.

I wish I would have thought of that.

It would have been a lifesaver as to

worrying about every

accent, every nuance that like

I said, if the whole goal is

comprehension, they don't

have speech bubbles above their

head.

So if they're able to say it right, I

shouldn't care whether

they should be able to spell

it right.

Yeah, exactly.

That would have been a lifesaver there.

Well I know you're not teaching right

now, but what were some

of the assessments, the

kind of go to assessments that you like

to use to assess your students?

Well, if it was an assessment for the

powers that be, it'd

be straight up points.

It would be, you know, they got 19 out of

20 on their quiz or whatever.

If it was for me in the classroom kind of

thing, then I use some of your rubrics.

I might have fine tweaked them a little

bit to fit my room

culture a little bit more,

but I use some of your rubrics from

Immediate Immersion,

especially on the free rights.

I even took some of those, the free right

ones and used them

when I had them do like

a more lengthier essay that they got to

work on for a couple of days in class.

I said, it's not an essay,

you're writing me a story.

You need to include this many characters,

you need to have there

be a problem, you need

to solve the problem and

everybody ends up happy.

You're not blood and gore here, guys, so

nobody gets hit by a meteor.

If you can't say it in Spanish, which is

the language that I

taught, if you can't say it

in Spanish, you don't get to say it.

You got to come up with another way of

saying it because you

don't get your dictionary,

you don't get your phone, you don't get

your iPad and the papers stay here.

It's got to come out of your head.

So, then I would usually let them have

their notebooks for

like the last 20 minutes or

half hour or whatever, that way they

could verify whatever

they wanted to verify.

So it wasn't a complete assessment

because I let them, you

know, in their books or in

their notebooks.

Yeah, it was a lot of your rubrics that I

used, your speaking rubrics.

You know, when I would be listening to

them talk about

whatever country they drew and

they had to tell me three interesting

facts about it and they

had to tell me if they had

a president or whatever for a leader and

something that they found fascinating.

Whether it was the fact that Shakira came

from that particular country or that, you

know, it has 487 volcanoes

or that, you know, whatever.

They had to give me a

fascinating detail to them.

I remember that one because one of my

students said, "It's got

really awesome amusement parks."

And he called it, he couldn't say

amusement parks but he

kept saying "montanez rusas,"

you know, roller coasters.

And I'm like, "Really?

Roller coasters?

What are we talking about here?"

And it took me a minute.

I'm like, "I bet he

means amusement parks."

And I was right, that's what he meant.

But he got the point

across, he communicated it.

Yeah.

It just took me a little bit on the

uptick to put data on.

To catch on, yeah.

So those assessments, my principal who is

my direct supervisor would

ask me, "Well, how are you

assessing these kids?

You don't have very many

grades in your grade book.

I can see your grade book online.

You don't have very

many grades in there."

I said, "I assess them from the minute

they walk through the

door to the minute they leave

my door.

I'm assessing them.

Not all assessments are written down.

And, you know, if they can understand me

when I'm presenting a

lesson, well, then their

listening assessment is 100 percent.

If they can produce what I ask them to

produce, well, then their

speaking assessment is 100

percent."

And likewise and so on and so forth.

I don't know about how you do your

classes, but that's kind of

what I thought was if they

can understand, well, then it's getting

through the muck and

they're understanding it.

And so it's 100 percent.

They said, even if it was a little bit

more complicated of an

idea, I slowed way down.

That was my most difficult piece of

either assessing or just

simply life in the classroom

was to go slow enough.

I like zoom and they'd be like, "Huh?"

Like, "Okay, yep, that's right.

Dad, back her up here.

Let's back up the cart.

We'll try again."

And I'd go her way down and then they'd

be like, "Ah, yeah, I

got that this time."

So that would be how I would assess is

basically on a daily

basis, but occasionally in the

grade book just to make Pappy.

Yeah, for me, I only did those essays

that you were talking about on finals.

So I would not do them otherwise because

I actually hated them.

Andy is back.

Let me add him back in.

One moment, Andy,

getting you back in here.

Welcome back.

I usually get them when it was

parent-teacher conference time because

that way I could show

the parent, "Look what your kid can do,"

and they've written an

entire sheet of paper worth

of Spanish, I said, and this is after

four and a half weeks in a quarter.

And that's when I would do mine would be

around parent-teacher conference time.

"Look what they did this time."

And then the next time they had it for

the end of the quarter, I'd

attach it to the information

to go home and it would be front and back

of a sheet of paper.

And they would grow each chunk, and so

that's what I wanted the parents to see.

It wasn't about them writing the essay.

It was about what I could prove to the

parents they could do.

Yeah, we didn't have parent conferences.

We always had open house, but it was way

at the beginning of

school year, so there was no

chance to doing that.

So I did that, but I hated that one

because it was too polished, and I

couldn't figure out what

they actually needed help on anymore

because if they cleanly

erased it and rewrote it,

I couldn't tell there

is even a mistake there.

So my go-to, my absolute most absolute

favorite of all assessments

is the Quick Write, and I know

Andy wanted to talk about that, and we'll

talk about it a little more

in a moment, but I'll just

tell you about my assessments I use.

My Quick Write I love.

There's no planning.

There's no time to fix errors

or any of that kind of stuff.

It's pure.

What they get right is what they know,

what's been acquired, and what's not

right is what I still

need to work on with them.

Now, I told you at one time I had over

280 students, and I do not like grading.

I know I teach about grading and all this

stuff, but it's not something I look for.

I get to grade all these papers, and

having a stack of papers

in my inbox stresses me out.

So I always get my papers back within 24

hours, always, always,

always, always, always, always.

I find a way because it stresses me out

to have that there, that stack of papers.

I don't like to have it.

So I had to find a way

to grade really quickly.

So I'll put it back up here.

You can get a copy of my rubrics that Pat

was talking about here, but

I use my rubrics to grade.

I do not mark up papers.

I thought I was doing it wrong, but I

didn't want to do it

because it took too much time.

I know, personally, I took German,

French, and Spanish in school.

My German teacher would mark up every

single error, and we had to

rewrite it to correct the errors.

You always get a little sunken feeling

when you got that paper

back, and I had all that blood

all over it with all

the little marks on it.

So I didn't want to do that to my

students, but I had no

research to back it up.

I just had my personal

anecdote that it made me feel bad.

Even though I got good grades on it, I

said, "I don't really

think I deserve the A because

look at all this red

marks that was on the paper."

So I didn't want to do it to my kids, but

then the research shows,

and I can't quote where the research is.

It's been told to me, and

I am not a research person.

If someone says it is, that's the way it

is, I don't go and back it up.

It's just not me, I'm

not that kind of a person.

They did analysis on three

different ways of grading.

One is to mark up every wrong answer and

mark it all up on the paper.

One was to pick one common error, let's

say subject verb agreement,

and just mark those errors on the paper.

The other one was not to mark up

anything, but just put a positive comment

at the end of the paper.

Then they compared growth over time.

And there was negligible

growth between the three of them.

Whether marking up the

paper, marking up only one error,

or putting a positive comment down, there

was negligible growth.

If there was any positive growth, it was

in the third one with

the positive comment.

That was the only growth that they saw,

and it was negligible.

So I'm like, "Why would I

want to spend 15 to 20 minutes

marking up a paper if it's not going to

help them in any way?"

And most of the time, the kids

would just look at the grade,

crumple it up, and throw it in the

garbage, and wouldn't even

pay attention to all the marks.

That was 20 minutes of my

life, so I didn't do that.

The other thing was that I did for a kid,

when I saw that that

positive comment thing could work,

I put smiley faces on my papers.

So I had a girl whose writing was trash.

I couldn't understand it at all, but I

put a smiley face on it.

She was so excited, she

got a smiley face on it.

She goes, "I'm going to work and get two

smiley faces next time."

So the next time, I put two smiley faces

on her paper, because

I heard her say that.

And then I didn't give her any more

smiley faces for a few weeks,

and then I gave her a couple

more, and she kept working.

But it was such a problem, I actually

went to her English

teacher and asked her,

"Does she have a

problem writing in English?"

Because her Spanish is so poor, that I'm

thinking it's coming from,

she doesn't have a strong English

background in writing.

Instead, her English

writing was pretty bad as well.

I didn't mark up her papers, all I did

was put these smiley faces,

and she got to four smiling

faces every once in a while.

But from the beginning of the year to the

end of the year, she went from

a solid F to a C- in writing.

And all I did was put a smiley face on

her paper, and we do

them weekly every time.

So it does help a little bit, because she

felt more confident by

getting those smiley faces.

I decide I do not want to

waste all that time on the papers.

Now, here's my exception.

I always invite you to...

We should be able to try and

put the rest of the work...

If you want to know what you did right

and what you did wrong

and go over your paper,

you're welcome to come see me before or

after school, not during lunch.

Because that's not an

investment of time on their part.

They're already at school.

Before or after school, come

see me with your paper in hand,

and we will go through

it line by line by line.

This way, we both benefit.

Number one, I can ask questions like,

"What did you mean here?"

Not me trying to guess

what you're trying to mean.

So I can show them the

right way to express that.

And then two, they're

seeing why I'm seeing the errors

and why those errors are problematic

because they are

hindering my comprehension.

So we can both benefit because it's a

discussion between us

and it's more memorable.

And because they gave up their personal

time before or after school,

it became much more strong.

They were more invested in that.

And I only get three or four per year

that ever want to do that.

And those kids are the kids

who are truly going to benefit.

They're not the kids

who look at their grade,

crumple it up and

throw it in the garbage.

They really want to understand.

So I'll put in the time for those kids,

but putting it in for all 280 of my kids,

when only three or four

are going to benefit from it,

it's not a good use of my time.

And I'm going to tell you, it only takes

to grade one of those essays.

It only takes me as long as

it takes me to read the essay.

I don't spend any more time.

So if it's 100 words or so on average,

we're talking a minute, maybe

a minute and a half at most.

So I can get a class of

40 done in 45 minutes.

Easy.

So it was really easy for me to get them

back in the 24 hours.

So I that's my absolute

most favorite assessment,

followed by my speaking assessments,

because I don't do the

speaking assessments.

They're skits because

that's a drama performance.

That's not a Spanish speaking assessment.

And my kids spontaneously have to get up

and speak about pictures

or whatever it might be.

And I can get through a whole class in

one period with time left over,

even if I have 45 kids in the classroom.

So both of those, I love

them because they're pure.

They don't have time to plan it.

They don't have time to practice it.

They don't have time to polish it.

It is what it is what it is.

And that really gives me the truest

picture of what they

can do in the language.

And so I like this very much.

And welcome back, Andy.

Now we got your back here.

Yeah, sorry.

I thought my phone was going

to last longer than it did.

So that was hubris on my part.

Yeah, I love that instant assessment,

like doing it right in the class.

I think that's huge.

Yeah.

And I think I like your point about the

agency and the economy also,

like having the kids, like the ones who

are really going to

be curious about this,

like really come and do that.

And can I talk about one thing, like one

of my former colleagues does

that I really like and want to feel?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And it's kind of a little related to, I

don't know if you know,

it's Señora Chase, but she has these

things called magic cards, which I love.

And that's oh, yeah,

so that's the free ride.

Yeah, that's the free ride.

I'm just getting it ready because I'm

going to have you talk about it next.

So go ahead and talk about

what your magic cards first.

Okay.

So magic cards, I think were great.

And she does it for listening, reading,

writing and speaking.

And then, oh, sorry, wait, there we go.

And you have just one, one,

like this is like a quadrant.

And then you have the

kids name on the back.

And then if you do card talk, like, like

Mike Pito, I think this card talk

where you like have them draw something

they like or whatever.

I use this for like

random calling on people.

And I haven't rolled it out in my new

school yet, but I intend to.

And the way I intend to do it is put a

summative for each of these.

Like we have semester summatives for, we

would go by semester.

So I'm going to have a semester summative

for reading or reading and a semester

summative for what is that?

Listening, writing and speaking.

And then if a kid, for example, like this

is for like little small in-class.

Like if I ask a kid a question and

they're able to like give me a decent

answer in Spanish and,

or if they don't understand it, if they

ask me for clarification,

then you put like a check, you just put a

check mark in the, you got

your pen out of your hair.

And the check mark is like, hey, they did

pretty well with that.

Right. And then if

they, you know, if they

start reading aloud and then they, you

know, kind of forget a place and then,

or then then they can check out and

they're doing it kind of

half, but, you know, halfway,

I do a squiggly line, right?

And then if they refuse, like if they,

you know, like, hey, I need

a volunteer to read aloud.

Can you do it? And they're

like, no, you know, I don't know.

That one's, that one's a little, I don't know.

That one's a little, I'm not so convinced

on that, but if it

doesn't go well, you put an X.

And then like, what I intend to do is if

I get, once I get 10 marks

in a column, right? So like,

you know, they did this listening thing

and they understood

it, that's a check mark.

And then out of those 10, I can be like,

okay, they have 10

check marks. That's 100.

Or if they have nine check marks and one

squiggly, that's a 95.

And that's their

speaking magic card summative.

So that's, that's how I'm thinking of

doing it. And then one

thing that my colleague does,

he does, he has this, the kids put this

in their notebooks every day. So they

just draw this little,

this little like thing in the notebooks.

And he gives them, like,

the kids have to tell him

to like, in certain class, they have to

say, Prope, you have to

sign my notebook. And they,

they're like, okay, I did, you know, I'm,

he uses my V rubric. So he's out of

eight. So it's like,

I, the kids like, I deserve an eight out

of eight for speaking today because of

this. And he's like,

you know what, you're right. Then he

signs it up. And they're like, I read

aloud today. I think

I get an eight for reading. And he's

like, well, you kind of goofed off a

little bit. So we're

going to call it a six of eight. You do

it better next time and stuff

like that. And then he makes

them add up their average and puts that

in as a summative, like

later on in the quarter. So I

think the agency and like the immediate

feedback are the two

things that I really love about

strategies. Yes. And I do something

similar, but I don't do

it all the four categories.

I have name cards that I use for my kids

to call on. But on the end, I

tell them any time that they

speak to me is a potential speaking

assessment. So when I'm

speaking to them, like when we do

conversation days, or if I know a kid's

really nervous, I'll try to

engage them in conversation

as they walk into the classroom. So

they're not even thinking it's an

assessment right there.

They're just, you know, they're coming

into class and I'll go, oh, how are you