relevant assessment

Toni asked me if I can make assessment relevant to the students. I would say that I try as much as I can. Of course, I can not change NCEA ( NZ equivalent of GCSE and A levels) but I try with any other assessment. I love the idea of the students learning more about French culture. We live so far from France and it is really hard to make it real for the kids. I am going to give you an example. I asked my year 10 to make a research on a French singer. I give them a list of singers to actually help the students who are struggling. If they want to choose a singer who is not on the list it is ok with me. And then I ask them to find relevant information about this singer. I do not tell them what to find because every body is interested in something different. For some kids the singer’s favourite course might be more interesting than how many albums s/he has sold! My only instruction is that it is forbidden to copy/paste from the internet because if they copy/paste they do not learn anything. I had fantastic work from the kids. I remember some presented the singer and they created a quiz to see if you followed their presentation. They even did some Powerpoint presentation with videos found on Youtube.

I was really proud of their work and they learned so much by having no directions because they worked towards something they were interested in, it was relevant to them, they enjoyed it so they worked bloody hard….and they were successful of course.