Alternative assessments - CELEBRITY PROJECT

Last year, instead of giving a typical final exam -- 10 photocopied pages, mostly multiple choice --  I decided to offer my Spanish 1 class an "alternative assessment."  I figured a paper exam would only show me a portion of what they could do with the language.  I wanted to create a more dynamic opportunity to test their skills.  What would they really need to do with the language in the real world?  What could they realistically achieve, given that they were at the novice level?  What 21st century skills could I incorporate into this assginment?  I collaborated with Michigan Teacher of the Year Matinga Ragatz, as well as my own colleagues in Boston, to create a final exam that centered around the creation of a celebrity fan page.

The basic project was for students to work in pairs to create a website about their favorite celebrity.  The content of the site was based off of 32 questions, which I gave the students ahead of time, and which covered the content of the beginning Spanish course:

• What is his name?
• Where does he live?
• How old is he?
• What does he look like?
• What is he like?
• What does he like to do?
• And so on...

Students used these questions to build their site.  They knew the end-goal was to talk about their celebrity and website for 3 minutes at a time.  Their classmates drew index cards with the questions printed on them, and they had to respond in Spanish using the website as a visual aide.

The exam itself was divided into two parts: an oral component and a written component.  The oral component took place over several days because each student had to have a turn.  The written component took place during one 1.5 hour period a few days after.  For the written exam, students read through a "print out" of a celebrity website.  I had created a mock website on Word about a Spanish soccer player, and they had to read through the packet and answer many of the same 32 questions in written format.

The video up top is of a student pair answering questions about their favorite celebrity, Will Ferrell.  They make some grammar mistakes, but they understood the questions and spoke with fluidity, which were two categories I strongly emphasized on their rubric for this project.  The screen shot below is a picture of the top half of the home screen for a celebrity project on Taylor Swift.  I even changed the formatting of my own blog to have this look because I liked the way the students designed their site so much!