Transcript: Young Dual Language Learners: Screening and Assessment

Assessment of young dual language learners really should be ongoing. In other words, there shouldn’t be just certain times during the year when everybody decides they’re going to take stock of where the children are or how the program is working. And, in fact, we as human beings are constantly engaged in various forms of informal assessment all of the time. From the minute you get up in the morning until the minute you go to sleep at the end of the day, you’re constantly assessing what’s going on around you in order to decide what to do next. “Should I wear this tie, or should I just wear a t‑shirt?” That’s a form of assessment, because you’re saying, “Well, what is it that I need to do in order to be effective this morning?” And if I’m going for an interview, I need to wear a sports jacket. But if I’m just going to mow the lawn, a t‑shirt is fine. So that’s a form of assessment.

And in their interactions with children, Head Start personnel, whether they recognize it or not, are informally assessing these children all the time. They’re assessing the situation all of the time in order to decide what to do next. So I think the challenge in assessment with young dual language learners is to help people realize that’s happening and to hone their informal assessment skills so that they give themselves credit for assessing and also so that they are able to use that kind of informal assessment information all the time. I think that it can be very useful from a program-development point of view if assessment is done at certain points during the implementation of certain activities. So if personnel in a particular site are wanting to try some pre‑literacy activities with children, especially dual language learners, then it can be useful to do a kind of semi‑formal assessment of the children before the activity starts. And then while the activity is being implemented and while the children are engaged in that activity, personnel can be looking at, well, is this activity working? Are the children engaged? Are they engaged in an appropriate way? And then as the activity comes to an end, informally again, assess are the children learning or are they behaving or engaging in the way that we wanted them to? Is the activity working the way we wanted? Are the children learning the new kinds of skills we want them to learn?

So if one is going to recommend certain times when assessment might be useful, it seems to me it’s most informative if it’s done in relationship to the features of the program that people are interested in, because then it can inform people, well, these activities work pretty well. No, these activities didn’t work very well. They really didn’t have the effect we wanted. And that kind of assessment is really, really useful, because it’s helping people in the program evaluate themselves and whether what they’re doing is working on behalf of the children. But it is something …so there’s different kinds of assessment when it does. And when one does, it varies. It’s going on all of the time, every minute of the day, but it can also happen more periodically at the beginning and end of certain special activities that they might be trying out. And, of course, I think when children start a program or when they’re going into a new group, it’s good for people to do, if not formal assessments, informal assessments of these children’s language abilities and social abilities and so on.