Adjusting Assessment

[CKavanagh]

Hi All! As a third year teacher (and a Master's degree candidate), I have a question about assessing ELLs with district made assessments. In my school district all math assessments are given to us by the math department along with a scoring guide. These assessments are not differentiated by language proficiency level, and we are not allowed to clarify what the questions are asking. As a teacher with all language ability levels in my classroom, I find it very frustrating for both myself and the students to give these assessments because they aren't truly assessing how well students know these math concepts. Instead, they're assessing how well students can read and comprehend the questions being asked of them. I know that they're going to need to do that on state testing, but does anyone have suggestions for how I can give better classroom assessments? Thanks!

[Tdol]

Would they let you alter the words to the questions so that you have different versions that might accommodate different language levels but allow for the maths to be tested?

[CKavanagh]

We're not allowed to change any wording at all. The only thing we can do is read the tests out loud to students with an ELD level of 1 or 2. And while that's helpful to them, it doesn't resolve all their comprehension problems.