Formative Assessment for ELL Students: How to Know If They Are Actually Getting It

[00:00:00] Hey there, and welcome back to the Equipping ELLs podcast. I am so excited to share this topic with you today because it was one of those things that really became a game changer in supporting multilingual learners. If you are a few weeks into the school year now, you probably already are familiar with your students, you probably have them in groups, maybe you have some routines running.

Hopefully, you're meeting with your groups. I know sometimes it takes a while to get those groups formed at the beginning of the year. So hopefully, you're at least getting to consistently meet with your students, and you're starting to teach. And probably at some point in the last few weeks, you have probably looked at a student and thought, "I am not sure if this is landing."

They seem to be participating, they're completing the task, they sit through the lesson, but are they actually understanding the content? Are they actually acquiring the language, or are they going through the motions with [00:01:00] enough surface compliance that it is easy to assume everything is fine? Now, if you're at this point of the school year and just asking those questions, that is totally okay and totally normal.

What we wanna do though is start asking these questions now and put things in place so that it's not the middle of the school year or the end of the school year when we start asking these questions, right? So how do I actually know if my students are getting it? That is what today's episode is all about.

And the answer is more specific and actually more actionable than you might think. You're probably already doing a lot of these things in your classroom already. So, let's dive in. Let me name two opposite mistakes that some ELL teachers make with formative assessment, and both are totally understandable.

Both limit what you can learn about your students, though. The first mistake is using language-heavy assessments to measure [00:02:00] content understanding. You might give your students a written exit ticket in English. You might look at the writing and conclude the student does not understand the content. But what you are actually seeing is the student's English writing level, which may tell you almost nothing about whether they understand the science lesson.

A student who cannot write a paragraph about ecosystems in English might understand and comprehend ecosystems really well, but the assessment did not separate content understanding from language production, and so you draw the wrong conclusion about what the student needs. I have been guilty of this so many times.

That's why this subject is really important for me, because it really did transform the confidence and how I showed up for supporting my English language learners. Now, the second mistake is actually the opposite of that. Because we know our students are still developing English, sometimes we just lower our [00:03:00] expectations for what counts as evidence of an understanding.

We accept a nod, a one-word response, a completed frame, without asking whether the student actually got the idea. We give them the benefit of the doubt so consistently that sometimes we stop collecting real evidence. I have been so guilty of this as well. But the result of both mistakes is the same. You do not actually know what your students understand.

You know what they can do with English, and those are two completely different things. So here's a reframe that I want to anchor today's episode around. Every time you assess an ELL student, you are actually assessing two things simultaneously: content understanding, which means do they get the [00:04:00] concept?

And language development, can they use English to demonstrate and engage with that concept? These are not the same thing. They do not develop on the same timeline, and your assessment has to look at both separately to give you useful information. Is this a topic or an area that you felt lost on? Because I, for sure, early on in my teaching, did not separate these two, and a lot of times I didn't even know what I was assessing, and neither did my students, and so it left us just all feeling confused.

That's why today I wanna help make this super actionable because it is going to change how you show up to support your students. Because a student who understands the content but cannot yet produce it in academic English needs language scaffolding. More frames, more modeling, more structured output opportunities, right?

The instruction is working. The [00:05:00] access is the gap. But a student who can produce the language fluently but is completing frames without genuine comprehension, they need conceptual support, more visual explanation, more background knowledge activation, more processing time. The language here is not the gap, the understanding is.

When you look through both lenses at once, you stop guessing and you start responding. And the strategies I'm going to give you today are designed to show you both lenses clearly, even in just five minutes of class time. So let's dive into five formative assessment strategies that work for every level.

Because if you can incorporate even one of these strategies into your classroom this week and start to make this part of your teaching, you are going to dramatically see a difference in how you can figure out what [00:06:00] type of support your students need. So the first strategy is tiered exit tickets. An exit ticket is only useful if you can actually read what it is telling you, right?

For ELL students, a one-size-fits-all written exit ticket tells you about language production, but it doesn't necessarily tell you about content understanding, and this can be a really great opportunity and a simple way to really check in on both. So tier your exit tickets the same way you tier everything else.

So maybe your level one students, they're gonna draw and label. "Show me what you learned today." Students who cannot produce written English can still demonstrate that conceptual understanding through drawing and labeling with any vocabulary they have. It's incredible to see what your students come up with, even just through pictures and labels.

It gives you a really great idea of what did they comprehend today? Is my teaching landing, right? For your level two [00:07:00] students, complete a sentence frame. One sentence. The frame carries the language structure. The student fills in the content, and you can see immediately whether they understood the concept because the frame removes the language barrier from the equation. Level three, two to three sentences with a partial frame.

The student does more work, but still has a scaffold. You can see both content understanding and emerging language production in this type of exit slip. For a level four, independent written response. No frame, full sentence structure expected. You are now looking at both content and language simultaneously.

Same lesson, same concept, four exit tickets. Each one tells you exactly what the student at that level knows, not just what they can write in English. Now, that might feel like a lot of work for a five-minute exit slip, but I promise you, if you get this set up, it is going to [00:08:00] really help you close out your lesson and check in on their understanding and their language production.

To make this simple, you can just go into Canva, open up a document, put in four boxes, and every time you're gonna make this for your lessons, just edit those boxes. So you already have your level one drawn, you already have the directions, you have picture supports, and you're just gonna add in whatever the topic is that you're teaching.

Same with level two. Have that sentence frame starter. Easily switch them in and out. So you have your template for your four different levels, and now in a couple seconds, you can switch those out depending on the lesson you're teaching, print them, have them ready to go. All right. Strategy number two, quick comprehension signals.

Before you teach the next thing, before you move on, take 30 seconds to find out whether the last thing landed. Things like, "Give me a thumbs up if you understood, [00:09:00] sideways if you are not sure, thumbs down if you are lost. Stand up if you agree with this statement. Point to the picture that shows what I just described."

"Show me with your fingers, one for confident, two for kind of, three for not yet." These types of signals have almost no language demand. A newcomer who cannot respond in English can show you a thumbs down. A stage one student can point, and you get real-time data on comprehension that tells you whether to keep moving or to stop and reteach.

The mistake some teachers make with comprehension signals is accepting them without following up. When someone has their thumb sideways or down, that is information. What do you do with it? Maybe throw in a quick pair share, maybe remodel or do a modeling lesson, maybe a visual that was not there before.

The signal only has value [00:10:00] if you respond to what it tells you. Now, I'm also gonna add this in. I know in different teaching situations, I would say, "Well, all the kids are just putting their thumbs up because the person next to them is putting their thumbs up, and no one wants to put their thumbs down," right?

Wrong. It really depends on your classroom environment. Have you created that safe and trusting environment? If you have, your students are going to give you an honest answer if they are lost, if they are confused, if they have some questions, if they're unsure if they really understand it. That's the beautiful thing.

Set up that type of environment. And they don't have to hold up their thumb. Maybe they just put it right in front of their chest so that only you see it. Not everybody else around them has to see it. But again, the signal only has value if you respond to what it tells you. So if you're gonna use that, really take note of, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna pull these three kids who showed me that they had some questions or they were confused, or they weren't that confident in what we were talking about, [00:11:00] and I'm gonna reteach it. Use that data.

All right, strategy number three, partner talk as data collection. When your students are doing partner talk during a lesson, every single time you have an assessment opportunity that sometimes we miss out on if we're not intentional. So instead of managing the room during partner talk, your job is to circulate with one specific listening goal.

Not are they on task, not are they using English, but who is using the vocabulary from today's lesson? Who is using the language function we targeted? Who is still using only conversational language when the task requires academic language? Grab your notebook, grab a sticky note, grab your phone notes and take notes in there.

Go listen in on one student and write down one [00:12:00] observation. What did they say? Was it the content? Was it the language function? Was it both? Was it neither? And in a week of circulating with this kind of intention, you have real observational formative data on every student, and it costs you nothing beyond the partner talk time that was already happening.

So really use this time. I found this to be one of the most beneficial times in my classroom, listening in on students talking with a partner. That's where I got the best data, because the way that they respond and interact with you is gonna be different than how they respond and interact with a partner.

So use that time. In one week, you're gonna have amazing data on your students and just little observations here and there. That is where language growth happens, when you can pinpoint those different observations you make and then pair your lessons for the support that they need. Strategy number four, the [00:13:00] one-sentence writing check.

So instead of a full paragraph exit ticket, which can require a lot of language production and can take some time to complete and some time to read by you, try the one-sentence writing check. One sentence using the sentence frame from today, write it down. That one sentence tells you whether the student understands the concept.

It tells you whether they can apply the language structure from the frame. It tells you whether their vocabulary is accurate, and it takes 30 seconds to collect and two minutes to scan. This is especially powerful as a quick mid-lesson check. Not at the end, but in the middle. Three sentences into your instruction, pause.

Everyone write one sentence about what we just learned, what you just heard. You circulate, you read over shoulders, you know in 60 seconds who is with you and who is not, and that information changes what you do [00:14:00] next in the lesson. Not what you plan for next week, but what you do in the next five minutes.

So find that breaking point in your teaching, right? We don't wanna be lecturing for 20 minutes. Start off your lesson, give them some content, and when there's a good break in your lesson, have them respond with one sentence. Now, there is so much power in a sentence. My eyes were opened to this when I read The Writing Revolution.

If you have not read that yet, I highly recommend it. But there are so many different strategies within that book that will help you provide sentence frames and sentence prompts, writing prompts. The challenge and the complexity of sentence types, and also just what they pull out of their knowledge and their content through one sentence can be really powerful.

So if that is something that you wanna go deep on, that you can provide one sentence frame that all the students respond to, but finding a way that it's [00:15:00] complex, it's bringing out a different way they have to think about it, a way to challenge their brain, go and check out that book, because you will come away with so many different ideas of what you could do. All right, strategy five, separate the language from the concept.

Now, this is less a strategy and more a practice that should run through everything else on the list. Whenever you are unsure whether a student's response reflects content understanding or language limitation, give them a non-language option alongside the language option. Let me explain. So let's say draw it and write it.

Point and then say it. Show me and then tell me. Gesture first, and then use the frame. When a student can show you through drawing or gesture that they understand the concept and then cannot produce it in English, you know [00:16:00] exactly what they need, more language scaffolding, more access to academic English.

The content understanding is there, but the language production is not yet. When a student produces language fluently but cannot show you the concept through gesture or drawing, that is a different gap entirely. The language is there, but the comprehension needs more work. This distinction really is everything because the instruction you provide for each of the students is completely different.

So if you can really narrow in the focus between language and comprehension, you are going to be able to see where their areas of support are and provide that support with each lesson. Now, I want to spend a moment on this because formative assessment is only valuable if it changes something. So when your exit ticket tells you that three students in group B did not understand today's concept, [00:17:00] what do you do tomorrow?

Do you move on because you have a pacing guide to follow? Or do you create a five-minute reteach at the start of tomorrow's lesson, a different visual, a different explanation, a different partner talk before moving forward? When your one-sentence writing check tells you mid-lesson that six students are still using conversational vocabulary instead of the academic terms you pre-taught, do you acknowledge it in the moment?

Do you pause and say, "Let me show you one more time how to use this word in a sentence"? Formative assessment that does not change instruction is just data collection, and data collection without response is not teaching. It is monitoring. The WHEN framework, which we talked about in episode 210, is about observing, reflecting, and deciding.

Formative assessment is the [00:18:00] observation step made formal. Every strategy on this list generates evidence. What you do with that evidence is the deciding step, and the quality of that decision is what your students feel in every lesson that follows.

Now, I want to tell you about the tool that helps make everything I just described more precise. Because here's the challenge with intentional formative assessment: knowing what to look for, so that when you are circulating during partner talk, you're looking for specific indicators that tell you a student is at level two versus level three in speaking.

When you read a one-sentence exit ticket, what in the writing tells you a student is ready for a more complex frame? [00:19:00] When you observe a student during reading, what are you actually watching for beyond a general sense that something is or is not working? That is exactly what the language domain rubrics provide: clear, observable indicators for what language development looks like at each proficiency level in each of the four domains, speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

They take the vague sense that a student is doing okay or not doing well and replace it with specific, actionable evidence. So you can use them on your clipboard during lessons. You can pull them out for partner talk observations. You can bring them to a data meeting. You can share them with a homeroom teacher so they can start seeing what you see.

In order to get these free rubrics, just DM us the word "rubrics" on Instagram at Equipping ELLs, and we will send them straight to you right away for free. We wanna get these into your hands. They are a game changer in the [00:20:00] classroom. DM us on Instagram at Equipping ELLs with the word "rubrics," and those language domain rubrics are going to be sent to you right away.

So thank you so much for being here today. Knowing whether your ELL students are actually getting it is not a mystery, but it does require looking through two lenses at once, content and language, what they understand and what they can produce. And when you separate those two things in your assessment, you stop guessing and start responding.

If you love listening to these episodes, we would love for you to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you have a few minutes, we would appreciate it if you left a review. It helps other teachers just like you find the Equipping ELLs podcast. Don't forget to DM us the word "rubrics" on Instagram at Equipping ELLs for your free language [00:21:00] domain rubrics.

They make everything we talked about today precise and immediate. Keep equipping your English language learners. I'll see you next week.