OFLA PD Recommendations for SLOs, Pre-Assessments and Post-Assessments

Martha Pero, Professional Development Chair

I cannot tell you how proud I am of all my world language colleagues in the state of Ohio!  What a fabulous group of people to work with while working through this SLO process.

I just wanted to recap a few of our main ideas and recommendations.

• Use the oflaslo.weebly.com site.  It has a plethora of information for all language teachers.
• Start thinking in terms of proficiency rather than points.  You will have more information about your students if you understand at which proficiency level they are than if they have an 85% in your grade book.
• For the Pre-assessment, choose a topic that they can talk about or have some knowledge.  It will not hurt you for them to “do well” on a pre-assessment because we are assessing for proficiency.  They will test at a certain level and should feel good about what they can do. Your job is to take them to the next level.
• For the Post-assessment, also choose a topic that they can talk about.  The difference you should see from the beginning of the year is a broader vocabulary base and a richer use of functional grammar.
• Use your LinguaFolio to help motivate students and show them their progress along the way.
• Share IPAs and means of documenting.  If we all help each other out, the load is not so heavy.
• Don’t worry about the one or two kids who do not meet your expectations because of unusual circumstances.  We do our best and that is all we can do!

Thank you all for being so generous with your time and reflections.  It has been most helpful and will continue being helpful in the future as we do our post-assessments in April.