Language courses and the end of the year
Paul Jennemann having fun while reviewing Spanish with his students
Throughout White Station, students everywhere are reviewing for their end-of-course exams. However, one type of course has an exam that is different from all others: language. Without an EOC, reviewing for the end of the year is much different.
“In some other courses, EOC courses for example, they may have stopped learning their curriculum, and started learning from a certain point on… it’s not really that way with language, because we continuously bring in objectives, continue studying, reviewing, continuing to learn, there’s no just stopping learning the language.” Spanish teacher Paul Jennemann said .
High school language classes have no EOCs, and instead, they show their student’s proficiency in a portfolio.
“The language teachers, whether they have an EOC or not, show their overall fitness as a teacher through a teaching portfolio… We pick a representative sample [of students] for different areas of performance to show,” Latin teacher Reagan Ryder said.
Teachers all across the school agree on similar mindsets on what is important to prepare students to be assessed at the end of the year.
“It’s understanding vocabulary, it’s understanding grammar, it’s understanding syntax,” Ryder said.
“We want to make sure that we not only hit those [proficiency] targets, but move past them and exceed them,” Jennemann said.
Language is an subject in which the courses flow directly into each other. After a language student demonstrates his/her knowledge and command of their language at the end of the year, it is imperative that he/she does not forget everything. The students must be always ready to strive for higher mastery of the language for his/her following year taking a language.
“We want to make sure our students have polished their skills, and they continue pushing on to the next proficiency level so they’re ready to start in August,” Jennemann said.
If a student plans on taking another year of language in the 2016-2017 school year, then their 2016 final exam isn’t really final- it’s just another step in their journey.
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