Before assessing your student:

• Try to find information from other sources such teachers, family, or student records about what your student knows and what he/she has to learn.
  Ex.: colors, numbers, shapes, alphabet, holidays, personal information, body parts, spatial orientation, school vocabulary, classroom words, clothing, safety terms, time, money, everyday directions, home words.

• Decide in what areas you are going to assess the student: Listening and speaking, reading, writing.

• Create a stress-free testing situation. Start with an informal conversation to try and make the atmosphere less stressful and to help lower the affective filter.

• Use a translator if necessary to explain why you need to find out what he knows already. Tell him/her this will help you to plan what to teach them, that way they can learn the English they need faster. Explaining why he needs extra tutoring is very important so they do not feel less "smart" because they need to receive special attention. Let them know that if you were in their country of origin you would like and need lots of extra hours to catch up with the language you need to do what is required in school.

• Make the testing time at a period when the students are not involved in an exciting or “fun” part of class.

• When creating the test, try to include at least one item you know the student is capable of doing. If the student is given a list of tasks, none of which he/she can complete, most likely the student will give up and their self-confidence will be hurt as well.

• Stop testing when the student seems frustrated or tired. At that point the student is not performing to the best of his/her ability and the test should be continued later.

Click below for examples of the steps to follow for assessing your students:

Example

Example