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Yokohama International School English Department
A guide to the middle school English courses
How do we assess the middle school students?
As in the Languages, Science and Mathematics Departments, YIS middle school studentsare assessed by a letter grade A-D and F. The four departments, English, Science,Languages and Mathematics, report these grades at the end of semester 1 in January andthe end of semester 2 in May. Students will complete between 4 and 6 major assessmenttasks each semester, and the students will bring these home for you to look at, discuss,and add comments to if you wish. Please sign these sheets so we know you have seenthem. The students keep these assignments in a portfolio which follows them throughmiddle school.
How are the departmental assessment criteria used?
In middle school English classes, we encourage the students to refer to the relevantcriteria whenever they are working on an assignment. Indeed, we create individualassessment sheets for each major task. To help the students focus on the different skillareas, we create questions for them to consider as they are working. For example, for arecent grade 6 creative writing project the questions were:There are ten levels for each criteria and the students assess themselves and sometimespeer assess before the teacher adds his or her levels and comments. We then send thesheets home with the assignments to be signed by parents. These pieces are collated bythe student, creating a portfolio of their work that they can to refer to.
Self and peer assessment
In order to ensure the emphasis is always on the students improving their skills andreflecting on their understanding, they assess their own work and sometimes getfeedback from classmates. This process helps the students to use the criteria andconsider the real effectiveness of their work.Criterion AIdeasCriterion BStructuresCriterion CStyle and LanguageQuestions to help youHow entertaining andimaginative were myideas?Questions to help youHow well did I plan andstructure my piece of writing?How effective was my useof sentences, paragraphsand dialogue (if used)?Questions to help youHow accurate was myspelling, punctuation and useof tenses?How varied and effective wasmy use of language?
 
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How do we create a letter grade from this information?
We prefer the students to focus on the individual skill areas as much as possible, whichis why we sometimes leave the letter grade off assignments, but we do use grade boundaries to create YIS letter grades. These are:A 25-30A- 23-24B+ 21-22B 19-20B- 17-18C+ 15-16C 13-14C- 11-12D+ 9-10D 7-8F 0-6This is the same for all middle school students in English, but the degree of difficulty of the tasks, texts and levels of competence expected increases as the students progressthrough middle school. If you want to get an idea of a letter grade when you receive anassessed assignment, you can use these boundaries as a guide.When deciding the semester grades, as well as looking at the graded assignments, wealso take into consideration the students’ skill levels in day-to-day class work. Our aimis for the assessment levels to reflect, as accurately as they can, the true ability of eachindividual student at these stages in their development.
What types of assessment tasks do the students complete?
In order to give the students the chance to demonstrate real understanding of contentand skills, they complete a range of assessments, both formative and summative, overthe course of a year. These may take the familiar form of essays written in class or athome, or the mandatory end of year examination that normally focuses oncomprehension and literary analysis skills. However, assessment can also include arange of interpretative, expressive and creative tasks in the form of artifacts like posters,magazine articles, short-films, comic strips, transformations of stories, diaries orimagined responses to fictional contexts.If the students are making an artifact in a group, they often have to submit an associatedpiece of writing they complete on their own to help us evaluate their individualunderstanding. Sometimes we are looking for students to show understanding in newcontexts, one of the reasons we vary the format and composition of our units of studyand associated assessment tasks.
How can parents help students improve in English?
You can:
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encourage and help the students to review their work, using the questions from theassessment sheets as a guide (this is most effective when the student is creating theassignment)
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 be an audience for any of their written or oral pieces before they are due, and givethem feedback on how it could be improved and, as much as possible, highlightmistakes and have the students correct them themselves
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encourage the students to write rules, new vocabulary and correct spellings in theirlanguage books
 
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use the ‘Literacy Objectives’ books the students all have as a reference for languageissues and advice
Language skills
Our approach to teaching language and grammar is integrated into the units of studythat the students follow. Language skills are developed through a variety of activitiesincluding whole class directed teaching, differentiated small group work, one-to-onetuition and peer teaching. Students are also taught proof reading and editing skills, andare encouraged to use their own language books to support the development of theirability to communicate accurately and effectively.
Technology and Media Education
Students use technology regularly as part of their studies in the English department andeach middle school course includes at least one major IT task. Recent projects haveincluded desktop publishing, film-making and creating web-pages. These tasks alwayssupport core English literacy and literary skills as well as encouraging the effective useof technology.Our approach to these projects aims at enabling the students to be self-reliant andknowledgeable users of technology and web-based information. These tasks alsospecifically target problem solving, time-management and collaborative skills.
Website information, homework and communication
Our course outlines are available on the public part of the website and we havedeveloped the English portal pages to give us the facility to upload the task andassessment sheets for all the major tasks in middle school English. These will be postedon the class websites with the dates they are due to be completed.Grade 6 students should receive approximately 60 minutes of homework a week andgrade 7 and 8 around 90 minutes of homework. Teachers may set a wide variety of tasksto be completed at home, including reading, answering and creating questions, editing,researching and writing.To encourage student independence and self-reliance students use the YIS homework diary to record homework tasks, projects, deadlines and organize themselves generally,please support them in using this tool as effectively as possible.
Personal reading and library skills, author’s visits
Developing and sustaining a love of reading is a key part of our programme. To supportthis, the students do some silent reading in class, discuss their reading choices with theirteachers, and are developing their own reading and viewing blogs to share and practicewriting about literature.In conjunction with the library and readathon, we organize author’s visits and readingweeks. Award-winning writers like David Almond, Micheal Coleman and Donna-JoNapoli have visited us in recent years, visiting classes to read from, and talk about, theirwork.
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