OFLA had a wonderful Central States Extension Workshop presented by Lucas Hoffman in October. The topic was “Making Sense of Writing”. There were 21 participants from around the state. Lucas covered the following topics: Why are students expected to write and what are they writing? and Are they writing to practice language or writing to communicate with others to touch the world? Language teachers are increasingly finding that they must be prepared to teach students how to write in the second language classroom. It is important in this time of high stakes testing that language teachers are familiar with the work that is being done in other disciplines. Emphasis was placed on the writing process and teachers engaged in strategies that allow students to begin to express their own thinking as they write. Strategies for writing at different proficiency levels were shared. Teachers also examined best practices for scoring and discussed ways that teachers can minimize the paperwork involved. Thank you, Lucas, for a successful workshop.

Are you being slowed by SLO’s?

Recently, OFLA worked with the ODE and now has a sample Student Learning Objective (SLO) online for level one. This SLO can be used for any language. It uses LinguaFolio and Integrated Performance Assessments as a measure of student growth. In the near future, half of the teacher evaluation will be determined by the amount of student growth in our classes. When developing a SLO, you must align it with our state standards. Since our standards are all proficiency based, our SLO’s must also be proficiency based. If you are not familiar with the ACTFL proficiency guidelines, please check the ODE site or the ACTFL site and become familiar with them.

In order to help you understand the SLO’s, LinguaFolio and IPA, there will be several workshops throughout Ohio. Workshops are already scheduled for Saturday, February 23, at Miami University; Saturday, March 2, at Hudson High School; and Saturday, March 9, at Delaware Dempsey Middle School. Please check the OFLA listserv and website for additional workshop locations, dates and times. Registration is available from the OFLA website. The cost of the workshops is $25 for members and $50 for non-members. Please consider being a member of OFLA to keep this type of work going on for all to share. You can sign up for membership on our OFLA website.