Year 8
Languages Support Materials
Overview
The central purpose of assessment is to understand where students are in their learning. Assessment refers to the broad range of strategies teachers employ to obtain information about their students’ skills and understandings, and ranges from asking students questions during a lesson to giving students a formal standardised assessment.
The assessments need to provide information about the depth of students’ conceptual understandings as well as their accumulation of knowledge. They should support teachers in identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses, and provide detailed diagnostic information about how students are thinking, so that the teacher is well placed to know what students have mastered and what they need to learn next.
Year 8 Languages
Assessment Principle 3 Assessment should be fair
Japanese: Second Language Barentaindei ga daisuki! バレンタインデーがだいすき！(I love Valentine’s Day!)
Languages/Japanese: Second Language/Communicating/ Informing/Understanding/Systems of language
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Access, summarise and share key ideas from a range of texts related to aspects of their personal and social worlds and present them in different formats for the intended audience Organise and present information and ideas to raise awareness of and inform others about texts related to aspects of their personal and social worlds, using descriptive and expressive language to compare perspectives and experiences Increase control of context-related vocabulary and elements of the Japanese grammatical system to express a range of ideas and experiences in written and spoken forms, including:
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Nature of the assessment
Written responses in English to information provided in two spoken texts.
Written text in Japanese and English in a bilingual poster.
Purposes of the assessment
To evaluate students’ ability to comprehend spoken texts by accessing, summarising and sharing key ideas in the texts related to Japanese celebrations. It also establishes their ability to interact in written form to present information about Japanese celebrations.
Stage in the Teaching sequence
At the end of the learning sequence as a summative assessment.
Background learning
Students have been:
- exposed to context-related vocabulary
- taught grammatical items, including:
- dates, for example, しちがつ みっか
- vocabulary related to Valentine’s Day and White Day celebrations in Japan for example, もらいます、あげます、おとこ、おんなのこ、チョコレート
- using masu verbs in the present and past tense for example, チョコレートをたべます。/チョコレートをたべました。
- provided with opportunities to read, listen to and write short texts related to special events which are celebrated in Japan
- taught the textual conventions of a poster, and provided with opportunities to practise them.
Assessment task
The teacher taught the lyrics of the song Se sei felice e tu lo sai … and the accompanying actions to the students. The teacher asked the students to think about how they could include another verse to the end of the song. Once they felt confident, the students demonstrated their speaking skills by singing the song in Italian, including their own verse, while performing the accompanying actions.
The teacher also assessed the students’ skills in comprehending spoken text by giving them classroom instructions in Italian and asking the students to demonstrate, through action, the instruction they heard.
Assessment process
The students’ performance of the song with the accompanying actions was recorded. The teacher observed the students and worked with those who had difficulty recalling or pronouncing the words accurately.
The students used actions and gestures to demonstrate their comprehension of classroom instructions given by the teacher. The teacher noted those students who had difficulty comprehending or responding to the commands. These students were supported through feedback and additional instruction.
Using the information
The teacher used the information to determine the students’ ability to comprehend information in two spoken texts and to write in the Japanese language. As the writing activity with illustrations/graphics was open-ended there was the opportunity for all students to demonstrate their Japanese language learning. Some students presented a poster with words and a few simple phrases, others used informative language and detailed information to describe the two events in their design.
The teacher’s observations were used to guide further lesson planning and to inform
end-of-semester reporting.