Anna Reid

TCH LRN 409

Assessment Task Design
The activity I chose for the assessment task design was titled, Heart Rate and I adopted
it from an online database called WIDA. This database provides many lesson plans for ELLs of
all grade levels. I adapted this lesson by adding a warm-up worksheet titled, My Wonderful
Body to give the students important background information I felt was missing from the lesson.
I think this task is authentic because it is a performance assessment which accesses the students
performance of oral responses by one on one interaction between the student and the teacher
(OMalley, 1996, p.4).The oral assessment does match the objectives and goals of this lesson.
The objectives were that the student would be able to orally name parts of our body systems and
orally tell place values of whole numbers. The questions that the teacher asks the students
directly relate to the objectives, for example the teacher asks the student what the heart is by
pointing to the heart on the body diagram. If the student correctly names the body part they pass
that part of the assessment. The oral assessment sheet provided for the teacher shows the
questions that were asked in regard to the objectives and allows the teacher to record the
students performance. I think the directions are very clear and easy for any student to
understand, the vocabulary used in the lesson is appropriate for the grade level and for ELL
students.
The activity, Heart Rate did not provide a set time frame for the student to complete the
task. However, I think this lesson would take at least half of the school day because the students
would first have to complete the warm-up activity worksheet and then the teacher would have to
meet one-on-one with each student to complete the performance assessment. As a teacher
without any additional help, I think this would be a difficult assessment to administer and you

would need to keep the other students busy while you are administering the oral assessment.
Although this task may take some time to complete, I think it is important to orally assess ELL
students regularly, either for their knowledge in certain content areas, or simply their speaking
skills (OMalley, 1996, p.11).
The use of this assessment would benefit my instructional planning because I would be
able to gain an understanding of how well my ELLs can respond to questions, along with how
well they understand the content area. I think this lesson includes fairness, reliability, validity,
and usefulness as the four terms used by TESOL to describe the assessment process (TESOL,
2001, p.5). The assessment is fair because each student is being assessed on the same grading
scale and each student is given the same information to complete the task. This assessment
should prove to provide reliable results because as a teacher you are able to assess the results and
change your lesson plan if needed. Also, this assessment proves to have validity because the
information the teacher is collecting aligns with the objectives of the assessment, which are
language of math and science about body systems and whole numbers. Lastly, this assessment
proves to be useful because the teacher can evaluate where the ELL students stand when it comes
to oral responses and content area knowledge of our body and simple mathematical concepts.

References
ACCESS for ELLs Summative Assessment. (2014, January 1). Retrieved March 30, 2015, from
https://www.wida.us/assessment/ACCESS/
Malley, J., & Pierce, L. (1996). Authentic assessment for English language learners: Practical
approaches for teachers. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub.
TESOL. (2001).Scenarios for ESL standards-based assessment. Alexandria, VA: Author.