Writing Assessments

Assessments are done to find out more about a student. Teachers use assessments in many ways to guide their instruction. Unfortunately, challenges face teachers teaching those who are deaf and hard of hearing. These challenges are due to assessments not being geared towards these students. There are many types of informal and formal tests out there but little that give teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing the means to build instruction.

Teachers are always looking for assessments that work for a mass majority of their classrooms population. Here are a few that I have found that show hope in improving the instruction of a classroom and giving a writing sample meaning.

CBM Writing Assessment

I find this assessment to be very user friendly and effective for any classroom. It does not take much time to implement the assessment and can be completed under 5 minutes. When trying to get writing samples from students there is not always time to get a whole narrative but with the CBM writing assessment a teacher can take a few minutes to see if the students have mastered the task and are showing improvement. This assessment can be graded in a few ways, from word counts, letter counts, to grammatical and sentence structure. I would implement this in my classroom for the purpose of collecting a writing sample from student with little time wasted. This assessment can be implemented daily and used to document the gradual changes from students who are deaf or hard of hearing. 

6 + 1 Trait 

When taking a closer look at the 6 + 1 Trait Writing Model of Instruction and Assessment it is shown to be aliened to the Common Core State Standards. For a teacher this assessment would be helpful to evaluate students with confidence that it will be linked to their curriculum. The 7th trait includes Presentation, giving the students the opportunity to construct appropriate language thorough the air. 

Writing Portfolio

When assessing a student it is not always going to be through a paper and pen assessment but could be based off performance. With a writing portfolio a student has the opportunity to showcase their writing and best papers for the teacher to see. It is a great way for a teacher to see what the student is producing from the begging of the year to the very end. Teachers can evaluate samples how ever they wish. For example a teacher can use the Mean Sentence Length (MSL) to evaluate written samples. The MSL measure the men number of words used per sentences. Teachers can also develop checklist or detailed rubrics looking for specific components.

Learn more about

It is a common goal to discover new ways to assess students who are deaf and hard of hearing. For the many standardized test that are required by the state to be administered, how are accommodations being met? And how are the accommodations being done ethically with out impacting the validity of the test? The huge advantage that faces many of these students leads me to think that assessments are in high demand and the more success the popular assessments have the more aid in written language teachers will receive.

Language Intervention and Techniques

 

Language Intervention

When exploring language intervention for those who are deaf or hard of hearing I have found that many techniques can be conducted in a natural environment. (That environment being home or school.) In an article written by Barbara Luetke-Stahlman, she challenges in many ways how to use language techniques to form development. It is mentioned in the article to treat the student or child as a communicator. I have always agreed with the technique to build language through conversation, ideas such as turn taking and expecting replies to questions.  Luetke-Stahlman mentions that it is beneficial to not always be in control of the conversation to let the control of topics to be in the hand of the child. In many of my classes I have been taught to build raptor and to base the conversation off of the students interests, this can be beneficial to any child when language is needed. It is a certain respect that can be applied to any conversation of manipulation. Every social environment and routines in any students environment can be altered to implant a linguistic acquisition. In any social environment a teacher or parent can look for opportunities to have repetition, imitation, or expansion from the child.   
At the end of Luetke-Stahlman’s article she concludes with positive adjustments that provide a sufficient and necessary input broken down into levels.

1. Adjusted to the child’s current structural level-above but not too far above the level;
2. Adjusted to the discourse situation-placed so that the child has a good chance to attend to, make social sense of, an encode of the input example;
3. Adjusted to the child’s strategic approach to learning language-input that works well for one child at a certain stage may be useless to another child operating with another strategy;
4. Adjusted to the other inputs the child receives. When a full set of useful input for the child’s current stage is not supplied by the primary interaction partner, then the child may fill gabs in the input through interaction with others.

Language Techniques 

As a future teacher one can never have enough tools or resources. Some techniques will work for some students and some for others. With any education and language modeling it is a case by case learning experience for each student. Another resource that supports conversational interactions is an article written by Linda Spencer. She supports each technique with examples that could help any parent or teacher of those who are deaf or hard of hearing. 

Techniques:

1. Signalling Expectations
2. Description
3. Self-talk a Running Commentary
4. Parallel-Talk
5. Modeling and Expansion
6. Question Stimulation
7. Time Talk
8. Violation of a Routine
9. Withholding or Hiding an Object
10. Natural Reinforcement
11. Reading

 Out of all these techniques I would find myself using description and natural reinforcement in my classroom. It would be easy for me to incorporate the technique description due to the high level of vocabulary need for my students. Always expanding on any subject or topic they bring up on their own. Their curiosity could lead to a new vocab word and the expansion of an interest of their own. In addition I would constantly be checking for language and informing my students when their language is correct or incorrect. My conversation would be filled with positive and motivating phrases to aid in the development of language. For the other techniques I would be open to constantly introducing them to my classroom and students. Trial and error leads to new discoveries!