Online Assessment Tools for Spanish Class

Some days we’re out of the classroom and want to check in on our students and see if they’re making progress. Whether it’s because you suddenly came down with the flu for three days, or planned a family vacation for a long weekend, here are some ideas for online assessment tools for Spanish class!

Digital Exit Tickets

A quick formative assessment is just what you need to direct your plans and see how your students are doing! They can be as simple as asking one thing they learned, but it offers the opportunity for the student to communicate how they are doing with the material. Google Forms are one of my favorite online assessment tools for Spanish class because they are so simple and give you a great data breakdown!

There are many different things you can ask in an exit ticket to measure student learning! You can also use them to increase engagement in a story or reading activity by doing simple prediction activities based on what has happened so far. Click here to read my post on exit tickets and see some more examples!

FlipGrid for Assessment

If you’re looking for a quick speaking assessment, FlipGrid is a great option! You can upload a video or text prompt, then students respond. There’s a short example of one in this post on attendance!

If you’re new to FlipGrid, don’t stress! It’s very user friendly. Maris Hawkins has a free video tutorial here to help you get started using the site with your students. I think once you’ll try it, you’ll really enjoy it and may even start using it on a more regular basis!

Writing Assessments

Ufda. This one has the potential to be a doozy. How do you assess your students’ writing while they’re out of the classroom? How do you trust that they’re not going to just Google Translate the whole thing? Let’s talk about that a bit and which online assessment tools for Spanish can help us here.

Double-Check Your Assessment

First off, I’m a big fan in trying to make sure the task is as level appropriate as possible. I think that students are most often tempted to look elsewhere for support if they feel overwhelmed by the task. If you’re not sure what that should look like for your students, check out the Get a Scoop of Proficiency from Spanish Plans for a great visual and examples of what different proficiency levels look like. I try to really think about what I’m asking them to do, and if it’s appropriate for where they are at before I give them a task. Emily Erwin has some other great ideas about limiting their writing here!

Next, if the goal is to show comprehension of material, consider having them write in English! I really like the quick quizzes from Señora Chase (click here for her digital versions!). I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and I’ve landed pretty firmly in the camp of using L1 to show comprehension of the L2. I think using L2 to demonstrate comprehension of L2 leads to them just pulling out chunks straight from the reading or listening, not necessarily proving that they comprehend, instead showing off their parroting abilities.

Putting Some Measures in Place

Okay. So, you’re sure the task is at their level, and it’s not a task to demonstrate comprehension. You really want to see some output from your kiddos? Alrighty then, have them write. Yep. Just write.

I personally would assign a prompt (or whatever the assessment is) within Google Classroom and have them write something in Google Docs. Then they can turn in via the assignment feature. If you want to look at what they’ve done in another way, you can check out the “Draftback” extension for Google Chrome. Essentially, it’ll play the document’s revision history back for you like a quick little video. If large chunks of text “appear” magically, chances are they are getting pasted in from somewhere.

Is this foolproof? No. Are there other ways for kiddos to cheat? Yes. If you have a ton of fishy writing samples, I’d revisit the whole “level appropriate” task thought process. Honestly, I would probably label any writing assessment done this way as a formative assessment anyways.

EdPuzzle for Listening

In terms of listening assessment, I love EdPuzzle for listening! I have a post here on some of the different ways I use it in my classroom if you are not familiar with it. Basically, EdPuzzle is a website that allows you to insert questions to videos you link or upload. Super handy! Maris Hawkins has shared this amazing spreadsheet of EdPuzzles by topic and level. It is absolutely worth bookmarking!

If you have some time, making your own videos for EdPuzzle is a great way to engage your students! Meredith White is the queen of app smashing for this and has shared this example of one she made, as well as a tutorial(scroll to where it says “social media” in the title) for how to get started making your own! Honestly, check out her whole playlist because it’s amazing professional development! I followed the tutorial and made a video to do some storytelling with my students a while ago and it was SO fun!

Online Assessment Tools for Spanish

I hope this post gave you some great ideas for online assessment tools for Spanish class! What other tools do you like to use for assessment? Did I miss any of your favorites?