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Module 9: Multimodal Assessment

Guiding Question: How can I use multimodal assessments to understand multilingual student

learning and inform my instruction?

After this module, I will better be able to:

• Implement a formative and summative multimodal assessment plan to support

multilingual student learning in my classroom.

• Utilize the data generated from my multimodal assessments to create strong learning

opportunities for multilingual students in my classroom.

Explore

Theory and Ideas

Assessments and Learning

Assessment can have a variety of relationships with learning. As discussed by Margo

Gottlieb (2016), a leading expert in multilingual learner assessment as learning can be highly

focused and individualized for students; assessment for learning can be deeply impactful as

teachers make decisions about their instruction; and assessment of learning is more standardized

and likely most helpful for administrators and others looking at evidence of learning across

multiple contexts. Obviously, assessment as, for and of learning all have important roles to play,

but the point that is most important here is that assessment should always have a close

relationship to learning.

In classrooms with multilingual students, this relationship between assessments and

learning is more complex due to the language heavy nature of many assessments. Several studies

have shown that content assessments in English for students who are still learning English are

more of an assessment of English than the content being assessed (Abedi & Lord, 2001). Further,

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traditional practices in schools can position teaching as “monitoring” or “surveillance” and

learning as “compliance” (Viesca at al, 2020). To counter the language demands of typical

assessment practices and teaching and learning practices that may actually be distant from a

sincere focus on rigorous learning, it is important for us to think about improved assessment

practices with multilingual students that hold close to our commitment to student learning.

Assessment practices that are deeply connected to multilingual student learning will be

responsive to who the students are and their background, allow for student agency in either topic

or format and generate information that is informative for improved instructional practices.

Responsive Assessments

We are often in classrooms and surprised to find out how little many teachers know about

their students and their backgrounds. Teachers receive information from schools and districts

regarding students’ English proficiency level and whether or not they have been identified as

having learning disabilities, but much of the information we need as teachers to be truly

responsive to students in our assessment and instruction practices requires additional work on

our behalf. It is particularly important for teachers to learn about students’ language proficiency

levels in the language(s) other than English in their lives across all domains: listening, speaking,

reading, and writing. We also need to know about the educational experiences students have had

before they enter our classrooms and what kind of interests and hobbies students enjoy. To learn

these things about students, as well as to create the context where students get to know each

other well, we recommend ongoing collection of data regarding who students are.

Getting to know your students does not have to be a formal research project, though that

is certainly a possibility too! In essence, we recommend that you consistently consider how to

learn more about students and integrate what you learn into your teaching practices. For instance,

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many teachers ask students to do some sort of introductory project at the beginning of the year.

Perhaps students make a flag to represent themselves and introduce themselves to the class, or

perhaps share a cultural artifact. These are important practices that we endorse, but they should

also be continued throughout the year. You should spend deliberate and systematic energy each

day and week to learn more about your students, their values, interests, ideas, strengths, lives

outside of school, etc. Structuring your instructional environment so that you can engage in joint

productive activity and instructional conversations with small groups of students is an excellent

way to do this. Continually implementing activities and projects that allow students to share who

they are and learn about one another is important too. The data you generate from all of these

activities (notes you take, artifacts students create, etc.) can be quite useful in making

instructional decisions. Information gathered from these activities might help you identify a

location in town that is familiar and beloved by your students where you could situate a math

lesson, for instance. The information from activities intended to learn about students’

backgrounds can help you lear n about the latest movies and songs that students are interested in,

which can provide a launching pad to help motivate and engage students in mastering the content

of your class. Additionally, the deliberate and ongoing interest you show in who students are

creates the context for strong relationships to be built between you and your students as well as

among the students themselves. Strong relationships in a learning community are foundational to

creating the context for rigorous learning and risk taking.

In addition to helping form strong relationships and drawing connections to familiar

places and youth culture, assessments (both formal and informal) can play an important role in

understanding the abilities and ideas that students have, before they start to engage with new

topics in your class. Rather than planning units decontextualized from the students who will

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engage in the learning you plan, you can spend time getting information from students regarding

what they already know and are interested in related to a topic and design a unit that builds off of

that knowledge and interest. Students bring so many ideas, so much creativity and a great deal of

life experience to all the things we teach. So, designing a classroom practice that systemically

and continually generates information regarding students, their background knowledge, interest,

etc. is fundamental to generating an assets based classrooms.

In order to do this well, we have to be sure that we are truly open to listening to what

students are telling us as well as to check the lenses through which we hear what students say.

Flores and Rosa (2015) illustrate how we often hear through a racialized lens. In our efforts to

get to know students, without being critically reflective of our own biases and assumptions, we

may end up hearing stereotypes and deficit ideas about individual and groups of students rather

than the abilities, learning assets, life experiences and interests that students are sharing with us.

Being aware of our cultural lens, biases and assumptions as we get to know students while also

sincerely striving to learn about and understand who students are in order to embrace them and

assist students on their path to self-actualization is difficult, but important.

Further we have to recognize that any assessment will only ever show us the least of what

a student can do, not the most—especially when they are more structured. We should use

assessments to get to know student strengths, abilities and interests and build on those as we

work collaboratively to engage in impactful learning opportunities. Also, it is important to

remember that the multiple languages students use in their daily lives can be part of responsive

assessment practices. Unless you are specifically assessing English ability, the use of languages

other than English in assessment is both reasonable and useful. Multilingual assessment practices

in the classroom require some flexibility and creativity and the use of additional resources, but

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are opportunities for students, particularly at the lower levels of English proficiency to share

their knowledge and learning on content area topics.

Classroom Snapshot

A sixth grade general education teacher had two new students recently arrive from Nicaragua

without any English background. The students spent most of the day in the general education

classroom where they were expected to learn math, English language arts, science and social

studies, with short supports from an English as a Second Language teacher who would pull-out

the students for English Language Development support. The general education teacher was

often sad and frustrated with how little she was able to do with her newly arrived students

because of the language barrier, but was committed to their rigorous learning, even while they

were learning English. So, the teacher continued to relentlessly find ways to connect and include

these students in the various instructional activities across the day. The teacher recognized a

multilingual assessment opportunity when the final project for their unit on a book they read

together in class was an essay. She wasn’t sure what her new students would be able to do in

Spanish, but she knew they would be able to do more than in English. So, she encouraged them

to write their final essay in Spanish. One of the students literally cried in front of the teacher

when this option was given to her. She then also wrote the longest, most extensive essay—

beyond that of any of the essays written in any language in that class—which was translated for

the teacher to understand by a Spanish speaking paraprofessional in the building. The teacher

herself reported awe at the complex understandings the student displayed in her essay around the

book they had read together as a class in English as well as how engaged and excited her student

was to successful show her learning. The teacher committed to finding more ways to allow her

students to illustrate their learning multilingually moving forward.

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Resources: Informal Assessments – Teachers can create spreadsheets with students names and

the learning a teacher is looking for during a class period, week or unit and use that spreadsheet

to informally collect data throughout instructional activities on the demonstrations of students’

knowledge that a teacher observes. These observed demonstrations can occur during whole class

interactions, small group or independent work. The demonstrations may also occur orally, in

writing or through various in-class interactions. The point is for teachers to have a sense of the

kind of learning they are seeking evidence of students mastering and then systematically collect

data throughout various instructional activities to ensure all students are mastering the learning

targets. It is also possible to set varied learning targets for students to best capitalize on the

learning assets they bring to the classroom.

Resources: Gathering Background Knowledge – Many teachers start the school year asking

students to provide various amounts of information about themselves such as interests and

hobbies. However, as you gather information about your students, be sure to also learn about the

different languages in a student’s life, how they are used, with whom and to which level of

comfort. You should also learn about students ‘family background, where they have lived and

traveled to and the various cultural experiences that matter to them (religious or otherwise). For

students with lower levels of English proficiency, this information may need to be gathered

through one-on-one interactions over time. But with students at higher levels of English

proficiency, you can have students fill our information sheets, etc.

Resources: Multilingual Assessments – Unless you are assessing English language

development, any assessment can have a multilingual component. It’s best to work with your

students to understand what might be helpful in this realm as some students will not actually

have had the experience of attending school in their language(s) other than English and might

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therefore find it confusing or hard to show their content knowledge in a language other than

English. However, for students at lower levels of English proficiency who have had schooling in

their home language, multilingual assessments can be a freeing opportunity to showcase their

abilities. As a teacher, you are going to want to know the content of the assessment, so working

with school and district resources to help you with translation is helpful. Students can also be a

source of help with translation as well. Some multilingual assessments are multilingual in

process—the assessment begins in a language other than English, but over time is translated into

English. Depending on the level of English proficiency of your student as well as the varying

multilingual supports available to you and your student, this process can also be a great learning

experience to expand students’ English repertoire.

Resources: Assessment Interviews – In an assessment interview, the teacher finds time to talk

with students either one-on-one or in small groups to ask questions that either get at student

background knowledge or opportunities to discuss and illustrate learning that occurred in class.

Students can interact with teachers in such an interview using visuals, realia, drawings, acting,

etc. By using visuals, realia, etc., the interview does not have to only be oral language based,

which can be helpful for students at lower levels of English proficiency.

Resources: Assessment Observation – In an assessment observation, the teachers spends time

deliberately and systematically observing students engaged in an activity. This activity can be

done independently or in collaboration with other students or even with the teacher. The teacher

will have set, in advance, the understandings they are looking to see illustrated and will create a

spreadsheet or other data collection tool to be able to capture what is observed in a systematic

way. The data gathered from such observations can be used either formatively and summatively

for instructional purposes.

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Multimodal Assessments

Because of the legitimate challenge of assessments often being an assessment of language

rather than an assessment of content, we recommend using multimodal assessments to expand

what you can capture in terms of students background knowledge as well as their growth

around your learning targets. Many of the resources already described with accomplish this. But

in this section we are asking you to consider the specific modalities that can be utilized in

assessment beyond just the kinds of assessments that can be helpful. Multimodal assessments

can include multiple modalities (oral language, no-language, etc.) within one assessment, but

are often representative of the larger assessment program in a classroom. We encourage

teachers to employ assessment practices across their assessment program that are multimodal as

well as multilingual to gain the most comprehensive perspective on what a student knows and

can do. Examples of multimodal assessments for multilingual students are included below in

the resources that can and should be utilized across the systems of assessment you have in place

in your classroom.

Resources: Oral Assessments – Students may benefit from having the opportunity to

illustrate what they know and can do orally. This can be something formally done in front of the

class, or recorded via audio or video recording or through focus groups, interviews or

observations. It can also be something done informally with some of the resources described

above. The point is to create the context in which students can share what they know and can do

orally so that students for whom writing in English may still be difficult and a struggle and still

show their abilities. We encourage the integration of visuals, realia, etc. to assist students in their

success with oral assessments. These tools can be used to help generate oral responses, or could

also be part of what students use to illustrate their understandings.

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Resources: Language-Free Assessments – Students can often show what they know

and are able to without using a great deal of English. Considering implementing language-free

assessments from time to time, particularly for those students at the lower levels of English

development by asking students to develop images, posters, models, etc. that illustrate their

ability to use what they are learning in class productively. For each content area this can and will

look very different, but it can be quite productive to see students’ creativity and ability to apply

their new understandings from class in complex and varied ways. Also encouraging students to

see ways to show their learning without using language can also be a great learning experience

for all students, regardless of English proficiency, in and of itself.

Resources: Sentence Stems for Assessment – Using sentence stems for assessment is a

helpful way to reduce the language demand of an assessment so that multilingual students can

illustrate their content knowledge with less possibility of language getting in the way. Examples

of a useful sentence stem in mathematics is, “To solve the problem, first I _____ and then I

________.” Or “I used a ____________ (table, graph, drawing, equation, etc.) to solve the

problem.” We recommend teachers adopting the use of sentence stems across content areas in

order to reduce the language demand of assessments and focus on capturing information about

what multilingual students know and can do.

Resources: Portfolios – providing students the opportunity to illustrate their

learning across a variety of mediums as well as over time, is one of the greatest benefits of using

portfolios as assessments. A great deal of resources already exist about using portfolios in the

classroom for a variety of purposes including assessment. We see portfolios as an important way

for multimodality, multilingualism and students reflect to be an integrated and ongoing part of

the assessment process.

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Resources: Journals – Most teachers quickly realize the benefit of students

writing journals to reflect on their learning, ask questions, and have a one-on-one space to

engage with the teacher. Most teachers who implement journals quickly become overwhelmed

with the volume of material to engage with and desperately wish more hours could exist in their

day to be able to read and thoughtfully respond to student work. We suggest that the value of

journals doesn’t have to get lost in the reality of the demand on teachers time. First, journals for

multilingual students can be multilingual as well as multimodal. Actually, any student could

have a video journal, a podcast journal, etc. Journals do not have to be written and they do not

have to be in English. Further, everything that is recorded in a journal does not have to be read

by the teacher. Depending on the number of students you have and how many interactions with

the journal you and your students think is helpful, you can structure feedback to occur peer-to-

peer on selected pieces of the journal and then work through your students so that each week

some students get your feedback and over time all students do.

Student Agency

Even if Spanish is not your dominant language if you have ever had the chance to learn

some of it, you will likely know that the word enseñar means “to teach” when translated into

English. However, when you dig deeper you will see more about how Spanish speakers use the

word enseñar, you’ll hear and see it often used to mean “to show” in English. What a helpful

way to think about teaching! When we are teaching students, especially multilingual students, we

are showing them things that they are unfamiliar with and creating pathways for their ability to

use those things meaningfully in their lives. When we think of teaching as showing, we also can

shift the power hierarchies that so often exist in classroom contexts between teachers (the

knower and haver of knowledge) and students (the needers of knowledge that the teacher has).

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When we disrupt these knowledge power hierarchies and position students as knowers and

havers of important knowledge, particularly as it relates to their own learning, we can create

incredible learning opportunities that helpfully blur the line between teaching and learning. Such

disruption can also humanize students in the learning process as well as personalize academic

learning for each student. Essentially, we are arguing for positioning students as having agency

in your classroom, particularly around assessment, in order for them to have the best

opportunities to pick up what you show them and do something meaningful with it.

There are several ways to give students agency in your classroom, but as we focus on

assessment some of the best ways to do this are to co-construct assessment with students as well

as design collaborative assessment. Both of these practices are described further below.

Classroom Snapshot

A teacher (preferred pronouns they, their, theirs) working with 3rd graders was concerned about

the drill and kill nature of the mathematics assessments their curriculum required for them to

give week after week. They decided to try co-constructing a mathematics assessment with their

student as a way to break the monotony as well as to review concepts across several weekly tests.

The teacher brought their idea to the class and together they reviewed the content tested over the

last three weeks in their regular tests and talked about what areas there appeared to still be some

weaknesses because of the test results. Together as a class, they decided to work on an area of

weakness, equivalence of fractions. This was not a new concept for the class, but one several

members of the class were still struggling with. So, the teacher suggested a couple of

performance assessments that they could work towards and the class discussed the possibilities,

eventually deciding on students designing a way to illustrate the equivalence of fractions with

something tangible as their assessment. Together they decided on the success criteria for this

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assessment: (1) Materials that illustrate equivalence of fractions could be existing materials

(blocks, cubes, other manipulatives typically used in mathematics class) or created (a number

line, shapes from paper, etc.); (2) Materials that illustrate equivalence of fractions must be

clearly labeled to illustrate the equivalence. These labels can be written, but could also include a

video or audio supplement. If the labels are incorrect, students will have a chance to integrate

feedback and improve final product before final grade is determined; (3) Students can work in

pairs, but can also work independently, according to student preference; (4) Final product should

be easy to understand and well organized.

Based on this conversation, the class got started with their work. The teacher designed lessons to

support students and they also created a rubric based on these collectively determined success

criteria. As students were working towards completion of the assessment, the teacher asked

students to self-evaluate their work and that of their peers on these success criteria. The teacher

also situated themself as a collaborator with individual and pairs of students as they were

working on their assessments to ensure they were making progress towards a quality final

product. In the end, the grades were collaboratively determined with students as they provided

feedback to their peers as well as self-reflected on their own work according to the co-

constructed success criteria.

Resources: Co-Constructing Assessments with Students – When students are

given a clear sense of what they are supposed to learn, they can also be strong

collaborators in determining how to illustrate that learning. This can help with

motivation, engagement as well as helping students link their in-school learning to their

out-of-school lives. Even if students do not help co-construct the entire assessment, they

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can certainly play a role in helping to determine the quality or success criteria for a

teacher constructed assessment. This can also help ensure that students have a strong

understanding of the assignment/assessment and how they can be successful completing

it.

Resources: Collaborative Assessments – We often think that assessments have

to be completed individually. However, there can be great benefit in allowing students to

work in groups to show what they know and can do. Collaborative assessments can create

the context for continued learning as well as multilingualism. Further, students can

participate in the final grading via self-evaluations as well as evaluations of their peers.

Assessment Information for Improvement: Connecting Assessments to Learning

Putting great assessment practices into place for all students, but especially for

multilingual students, means using the data you learn from assessment to inform your teaching

and your learning. We realize that in some places where there are strict pacing schedules and

scripted curriculum that teachers are required to follow, this can be particularly difficult.

However, even in those spaces, we urge you to find space to link assessment results to

instructional decisions and document the value of such approaches. Data and documentation can

become powerful advocacy tools to open up more space for responsive and impactful instruction

and assessment where those opportunities do not currently exist. Further, where they do exist, we

encourage you to look at the data you collect via assessments and draw clear connections to your

instructional plans.

To do this well, you have to have a strong sense of the learning outcomes you and your

students are focused on. And of course, these learning outcomes should have both a

content/academic focus and a language focus as well. When you know what students are striving

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to learn, then you can develop an assessment program that checks for those learnings and creates

spaces for you to differentiate for students according to their learning trajectory towards those

learnings. And when you know what you are striving to students to learn, you can quickly link

meaningful check-ins on those learnings to next steps in instruction.

Resources: Assessment Data Analysis for Instructional Decision-Making –

When you are deciding on the kind of assessment data you will be collecting, plan for

how you will analyze that data so that it can inform your ongoing instruction. Grounding

your assessment data collection and analysis in the learning outcomes you are working

towards is the most productive way to link assessment to instruction.

Resources: Contextualization – It is important that students can draw

connections between what they are learning in school to their lives outside of school.

Strong assessment practices are particularly helpful in achieving this.

References

Abedi, J. & Lord, C. (2001). The language factor in mathematics tests. Applied Measurement in

Education, 14(3), 219-234.

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