Brandon Kinnaird

TPA Task 3

IUTPA: Task 3
Brandon Kinnaird

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Brandon Kinnaird

TPA Task 3

Table of Contents
Weather Evaluation

List of Informal Assessment Questions

Student Assessments
Landin

Jadyn
Katie
Assessment Commentary

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7
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Weather Evaluation

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Informal Assessment Questions

1. Qu tiempo hace?
2. Qu tiempo hace en el invierno?
3. Qu tiempo hace en el verano?
4. Qu tiempo hace en la primavera?
5. Qu tiempo hace en el otoo?
6. Qu da es hoy?
7. Qu da es maana?
8. Qu tiempo hace en (month)?
9. Cul es la fecha de hoy?
10.

Cul es la fecha de maana?

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Student Assessments
Landin

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Jadyn

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Katie

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Assessment Commentary
1. Analyzing Student Learning
a. Identify the specific standards/objectives from the focus lesson
plans measured by the assessment chosen for analysis.
i. State Standards
1. 1.2.1: Understand and respond to basic greetings,
requests, commands, and directions.
2. 1.2.3: Use cognates, familiar vocabulary, or
background knowledge to make educated guesses
about meaning.
3. 1.3.2: Write in simple, complete sentences to
describe objects, self, and others.
ii. Lesson Objectives
1. Students will be able to identify weather and seasons
in Spanish.
2. Students will be able to match types of weather to
the seasons in which they occur in Spanish.
b. Provide the evaluation criteria you used to analyze the student
learning.
i. Students were evaluated using the objectives from the
lessons in this segment. The first part of the assessment
required students to provide the teacher with the correct
English translation to the Spanish weather word/phrase
provided.
The second part of the assessment required the students
to provide the teacher with a logical response, in Spanish,
to the questions that were provided. Two of the questions
were based on the weather vocabulary that they have
been learning and two of the questions required students
to think back and to past vocabulary and respond with the
correct response.
Students were evaluated based on both their correctness in
their responses and their ability to provide complete
sentences when asked to do so. The students were asked
to provide the correct translations in the first part. If their
response was missing the verb part of the response, they
received half-credit for that response. It was emphasized
during class that It is is important to the phrase because
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the word without the verb is a different Spanish word. If
they had the incorrect weather in their response, they
received no credit.

In the second part of the assessment, the students were

asked to respond logically in Spanish and in complete
sentences. If the student did not respond in a complete
sentence, they received half-credit for the response. If the
student provided the wrong day of the week or an illogical
weather expression for the season provided, they received
no credit for the response. If the student provided a correct
response but their sentence structure was incorrect, they
received half-credit.
c. Provide a graphic (table or chart) or narrative summary of
student learning for your whole class. Be sure to summarize
student learning for all evaluation criteria described above.
i. Students in this class did a great job at picking up on
weather and how to talk about it in Spanish. This can be
seen by the class average of an 11.12 out of 13 on the
formal assessment. This class is optional for students so
the students in this class are high-achieving and motivated
to learn. This means that the students that are taking the
class actually want to be in the class because they chose
Spanish as an option. They asked many questions and
were thinking logically when talking about the weather.
At the beginning of the learning segment, students picked
up quickly on the weather words that are cognates. They
also were very responsive when responding to questions
about the weather. The biggest struggle at the beginning of
the segment was the seasons. Students mixed up el
verano and el invierno often because they sound similar
when spoken and look kind of similar to learners. Students
also struggled with accepting the fact that the weather
phrases that do not start with Hace also contain It is in
their English translations. This was a widely missed
question on the assessment and can be seen in Landins
assessment.
By the end of the learning segment, most students had
fixed their errors when it came to simple mistakes such as
mixing up the meanings of words. The high-achieving and
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average students already had these errors fixed or did not

have the errors in the first place. Most students also had
fixed their issues with leaving out It is. I tried to
emphasize this as much as I could. I would make an extra
effort to point this out when talking about the two phrases
that do not contain Hace.
d. Use evidence found in the three student work samples and
the whole class summary to analyze the patterns of learning
for the whole class and differences for groups or individual
learners. Consider what students understand and do well, and
where they continue to struggle (e.g., common errors,
confusions, need for greater challenge).
i. The class average for this assessment was an 11.12 out of
13. The three scores for the chosen students were 9.5, 12,
and 13. These three assessments gave me a good view as
to what the students were still struggling with based on
what they had missed on the assessment and their
achievement in the class.
The majority of students had a very easy time with the first
part of the assessment. Not many students missed
questions on the first part and when they did, it was due to
their lack of It is when talking about Nieva or Llueve.
This can be seen on Landins assessment. Only two
students missed questions on the first part of the
assessment that were due to having the incorrect weather
response.
The second part of the assessment was where the most
points were lost. Approximately 1/3rd of the students did
not have the first half of the complete response in the first
two questions, which was En el invierno or En el
verano. This was something that was emphasized during
class and during questioning. I chose those two seasons
specifically because they were the seasons that the
students mixed up the most.
The second two questions provided mostly positive results.
Most of the points that were missed came from students an
incorrect sentence structure or not using complete
sentences. This can be seen in the assessments from
Landin and Jadyn. Landin did not use complete sentences
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and Jadyn mixed up her word order. Another point that
needs to be added, and can be seen in Katies assessment,
is that students often missed their accent on sbado. I
chose to not mark off for this missing accent because it
was important that they had the correct day and not the
accent.

2. Feedback to Guide Further Learning

Refer to specific evidence of submitted feedback you provided to
support your explanations.
a. Describe how you provided feedback to the 3 focus students,
i.e., written comments on work samples, verbal conference.
a. Most of the feedback was provided to students on their
assessments. I fixed their mistakes and in most cases,
showed them how to get the correct answer. For example, I
drew arrows showing the students where certain phrases in
the questions need to be placed in their answers and when
words need to be changed in order. Feedback was also
provided when assessments were being returned to the
students. I told the students what they had messed up on
and what they need to pay attention to in the future. I also
commended the students on what they got right. Students
need to be told what they got right as well as what they
got wrong because if they are only told what they got
wrong, they will be under the impression that their
correctness is not as important. The class as a whole was
also addressed after assessment were returned to discuss
what they were incorrect on the most and how I graded it.
Instead of taking individual questions on why responses
were wrong, I addressed the class and told them my
evaluation criteria.
b. Explain how feedback provided to the three focus students
addressed
their
individual
strengths
(consider
personal/community/cultural assets and how you described them
in Task 1 here) and needs relative to the standards/objectives
measured.
a. The feedback that was provided to the focus students used
positive reinforcement and constructive criticism as well as
an emphasis on what the students missed and how they
can correct these mistakes.
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Katie was praised for receiving a perfect score on the

assessment. Her Spanish skills are some of the best in the
class and it was important to give her as much
encouragement as was possible. The only error that she
made was one missing accent. She was told that this is
something that can be easily fixed and as time went on,
she would know where accents should be placed on certain
words. She was then told that she did an amazing job and
to keep up the good work.
Jadyn was also praised for receiving a perfect score on the
first part of the assessment. She was told that this was
impressive and she should be proud of what she did on the
assessment. I then reviewed her errors on the second part
of the assessment with her. She was told that her errors
were something that many students her age have and can
be easily fixed. She simply needs to remember that in a
declarative sentence, the subject comes before the verb.
Word order can be tough for new students so she should
keep her spirits high because she did an amazing job.
Landin was praised as well for what he did correctly. He
was told that I was proud of him for what he accomplished
and that his errors were, for the most part, minor. The
errors were then reviewed and he was told that he needs
to remember the It is of Nieva and Llueve because
just the words Snowing and Raining are different
Spanish words. These are errors that can be easily fixed.
The second part of the assessment was then reviewed and
he was told that his errors here were due to a lack of
following instructions. He did not put En el invierno or
En el verano at the beginning of the first two sentences
when they were told that that constituted a complete
sentence before the assessment was taken. For the second
part of the assessment, it was discussed that he needs to
review his days of the week in Spanish because he used
the wrong day on one response. He also did not use
complete sentences for either of the responses and this
was emphasized because it was stated before the
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assessment that this would be looked at. He was then told
that all of his errors can be fixed, that he did a great job,
and that he was looking good for the final exam.
All three of these students are doing a good to great job in
the class and are popular among their peers. That is why
the feedback that was provided was focused on
reinforcement. These students have high self-efficacy and I
wanted to play to that strength by focusing on what they
did right while subtly mentioning what they did wrong and
how they can improve.

Self-efficacy is the measure of how much a person believes

that they can complete a task or reach a goal. This concept
has been studied by psychologists, specifically in Albert
Banduras social cognitive theory, for some time.
c. How will you support the students to apply the feedback to guide
improvement, either within the learning segment or at a later
time?
a. Landin needs more practice with the material due to him
being the student that struggled the most with this
assessment and material. An extra emphasis will be placed
on him through the use of specific questioning during
warm-ups that will further advance his knowledge on the
content.
Jadyn is very motivated and high-achieving but has
problems with sentence structure during a lot of content
practice. An emphasis will be placed on her during future
segments with structure. She has not fully grasped the use
of Spanish verbs and nouns and when the noun needs to
be before the verb and when it needs to be after.
Katie is one of the highest-achieving students in the class
and has a bright future in Spanish. A discussion has already
been had about her future in the language and what she
will be doing next year and in high school. The big issue
Katie has is accents. This is a common problem with
students of this level, however. She has already made

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progress from the beginning of the class until now and will
continue to improve through the future.

3. Using Assessment to Inform Instruction

a. Based on your analysis of student learning presented in prompts
1cd, explain next steps for instruction. Support your explanation
with principles from research and/or theory.
As was stated before, the students in this class have high selfefficacy. They believe in themselves and are invested in their
own learning. Further instruction will play off of this through
positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. By
reinforcing the students self-efficacy, they will reach a higher
level of learning by further building their own confidence.
The next segment that the students work on is large numbers
from 0-100. This can be hard for some students because they
tend to look at the task of counting that high in a foreign
language as a large obstacle but these students have shown
in the past that they can take on difficult tasks and make
them look easy because of their own beliefs in their selves.
This is partly due to their high self-efficacy because according
to Banduras social cognitive theory, students with high selfefficacy are more likely to view difficult tasks as something to
be mastered rather than something to be avoided.
This will ring true for the three focus students as well. Katie
has the highest self-efficacy in the class because of her
natural abilities with the language. I will continue to push her
in further instruction because she has the potential to reach
great heights with the language if she puts her mind to it. I
want to try to get her to a point where she will be able to view
any task as a challenge that she can master because she has
the capabilities to overcome any problem that she puts her
mind to.
Jadyn has the lowest self-efficacy of the three focus students.
She is a smart student and has a B+ in the class but she has
her moments where if a concept is too difficult, she will start
saying that she cannot do it. She will do it however because
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she wants to succeed. She will not give up on the concept if
she is struggling. Once she has started working with the
concept some more, she becomes more confident and does
well on assessments. To help her improve, I will increase her
confidence from the start by reinforcing how well she does
after practicing new concepts.
Landin is the lowest-achieving of the three focus students but
he still has high self-efficacy. He has potential to do well in the
next step of his learning, but he has problems focusing. He
knows that he can do it but he has a hard time staying on-task
in class. I will further his learning by directing specific
questions towards him that both require him to think and keep
him on-task.

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