Many teachers now have to include data showing student growth as part of their teacher evaluation. World Language teachers in Spanish, French, German, Mandarin, and other languages can track student growth during a 5 minute timed writing.

During the first week of class, I plan to give my students a prompt of a 6-image story sequence. I will ask students to write for 5 minutes. During this timed-writing students should write as much as they can without stopping (no asking questions, no going back to try and edit)

When the 5 minutes are up, have students count the number of words they have written. Instruct them NOT to count any English words they may have written. Have them write the number of total words on the top of the paper.

In a Spreadsheet, record each students’ total number of words under the date. Repeat this activity every month/quarter/trimester to see their growth. Use the same story sequence images.

Last year, I tracked the word count of my students’ timed writings after working with a story in class. Here’s what the results looked liked:

You see a steady increase between 1 and 2 and 2 and 4. But there was a significant jump in number 3. Something that I did different in number 3 is that before having the students do the timed writing, students read the story once, then did a Yellow Summary, and then we practiced on quizlet live with some target structures from the story.

Now, of course there is a big variable with this data because each timed writing was about a different story. This year, I plan to use the same story sequence to track the data.

We have put togther for you a ready to implement system that includes:
-A picture prompt
-Timed Writing Sheets
-Rubric (not to use to grade the writing, but rather to assess proficiency level)
-Excel Speadsheet which calculates percentage increase and classes averages, as well as a Handout to send to parents to communicate the students progress
-a Google Sheet to keep track of students data, which will automatically calculate averages AND generate a printable report for each student with a graph.

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So if you are looking for a Type 2 or Type 3 assessment to use as part of your evaluation of Student Learning Objectives (SLO) for Spanish class (or any World Language), consider tracking timed-writings.