Incorporating Level Objectives and Order Thinking Skills over Grammar's Formative Assessment Exercises

Assessment for learning or formative assessment’s  practices in the English Language classrooms are pointless without the application of intertwined level objectives and order thinking skills that reciprocate each other in the teaching and learning process. In order to ensure learning through assessment exercises, both order thinking skills and level objectives should be prioritized through their integration in the activities. It is crucial to integrate both since formative assessment should be outcome-based not to mention that  with the incorporation of macro skills, grammar exercises will yield interactive and   collaborative tasks.

Systematic Performances of activities especially to foundation English learners evaluate and increase the latter’s cognitive levels. Assessment in the classroom has to be anchored with the cognitive domain since objectives are always linked with the thinking skills of the students. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy by Anderson, L. (2001) is an essential theoretical guide to employ thinking skills that are arranged to indicate learning progressions through corresponding objectives. To   emphasize, the principles embedded in the   said taxonomy will be methodically applied.

To elucidate this practiced concept in a lesson, we employ the basic sentence patterns as models in anchoring   both objectives and order thinking skills. Execution of these activities needs sequencing from easy, moderate and difficult in order to cater to learners’ individual levels of comprehension and to be able to monitor the order thinking skills’ levels conforming to specific objectives.

The order thinking skills   arranged in ascending form   contain the increasing level objectives   through the instructions which simply means that in every order thinking skills, are activities to apply level objectives. The order thinking skills are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.

The following   are assessment exercises on   sentence patterns

1. List three (3) sentence patterns that you have recently learned. 
2. Name five (5) elements that are important in creating the sentence patterns. 
3. Listen carefully to the sentences and state the subjects and the verbs that you hear.
4. Listen and repeat the subjects and the verbs cited by your classmates.
5. Point out the subjects, verbs and objects that are found in the sentences.

The first series of assessment activities engaged five (5) level objectives under remembering. The lowest level objectives such as list, name, listen, repeat and point out are employed. While these verbs are used in the tasks, the lower level thinking skills of the learners are performed such as listing, naming, listening, repeating and pointing out. These are low indicators of knowledge that create learner’s initial stage by accomplishing   activities that indicate remembering learned lessons.

A. Assessing Sentence Patterns Integrating Understanding

1. Explain why the underlined words in the sentences are subjects, verbs and objects. 
2. Identify the sentence patterns by labelling the words as subjects, verbs, subjective compliment, direct object or indirect object
3.  Restate the sentences by using the objects as subjects. 
4. Summarize the five (5) sentence patterns by writing the correct elements that are used.

The second series of assessment activities used four (4) level objectives under understanding. The second lowest level objectives such as explain, identify, restate, summarize were manipulated. While these verbs are used, the second lower level thinking skills of the learners are exercised such as explaining, identifying, restating, and summarizing. These are low indicators of knowledge that establish initial stage for learning through their abilities to manifest understanding of the lessons.

B. Assessing Sentence Patterns Integrating Applying

1. Use a sentence pattern with direct objects in the noun forms and indirect objects in the pronoun forms. Limit these to five (5) sentences. 
2. Order the words in every number in order to form the correct sentence patterns.
3.  Classify the words according to verbs and nouns and use them in sentences as subjects and verbs. 
4. Modify the sentences from S -V-O patterns into S- V- DO-IO patterns.

The third series of assessment activities activated four (4) level objectives under applying.  The first higher-level objectives such as use, order, classify and modify were manipulated. While these verbs are used, the first higher level thinking skills of the learners are highlighted such as using, ordering, classifying and modifying. These are higher indicators of knowledge that constitute learners’ manipulation of what they know to search or advance new discoveries.

C. Assessing Sentence Patterns Integrating Analyzing

1. Contrast the two sentence patterns by identifying their elements through a Venn diagram.
2.  Analyze the sentence structures by completing the given table for subjects, verbs, direct objects, indirect objects and subjective complement.
3.  Classify the sentences according to the sentence patterns.
4. Relate the given nouns and verbs by constructing sentences in the SVO patterns.

The fourth series of assessment activities initiated four (4) level objectives under analyzing. The second higher level objectives such as contrast, analyze, classify and relate were manipulated. While these level objectives are used, the second higher level thinking skills of the learners are activated such as contrasting, analyzing, classifying and relating. These are higher indicators of learners’ ability to turn knowledge into components or parts so that their relationship with the whole can be comprehended.

D. Assessing Sentence Patterns Integrating Evaluating

1. Determine and score the errors and correct responses in the sentence patterns.
2. Revise the correct sentences in S-V-O pattern found in activity one by using S-V-O-IO pattern. 
3. Select the sentences that suit the given sentence patterns.
4.  Prove that the doer of the action is the subject through four (4) sentences by using S-V-O pattern.

This fifth series of assessment activities stimulated five (5) level objectives under evaluating. The third higher level objectives such as determine, score, revise, select and prove were employed. While these level objectives are used, the third level thinking skills of the learners are activated such as determining, scoring, revising, selecting and proving. These are higher indicators of knowledge through learner’s ability to create decisions and find a way to render assessments of what they   have been learned.

E. Assessing Sentence Patterns Integrating Creating

1.  Construct five (5) sentences each showing the S-V-DO -IO and S-V-SC patterns.
2.  Assemble and arrange the following words to create the given sentence patterns.
3.  Compose a paragraph that contains the five (5) given sentence patterns. 
4.  Arrange the five (5) groups of jumbled sentences and formulate sentence patterns.

This 6th series of assessment activities stimulated four (4) level objectives under creating. The highest-level objectives such as construct, assemble, arrange and compose were manipulated. While these level objectives are used, the fourth level thinking skills of the learners are triggered such as constructing, assembling, arranging and composing. These are the highest indicators of knowledge that elucidate the ability of the learners to combine knowledge and principles.

Formative assessments offer materials and ideas for the enhancement of learning and teaching. It is a procedure to check how learning took place, how learning is taking place and how learning will take place. Through the teacher’s observation of the students’ performance of the exercises, the teacher can make adjustments of the lessons. The teacher can additionally employ some types of assessments such as reviewing them or reiterating the concepts through the creation of schema to stress points. Incorporating some assessment   tasks will address the dominant weaknesses of students displayed in the process.

While this type of assessment are not marked, it should still focus on the intended learning outcomes. This supports the idea of blending order thinking skills and level objectives in the series of activities. Furthermore, assessment activities must be collaborative. The teacher can make the sentence patterns more of an interactive lessons by making some changes on the activities without displacing the levels of objectives and order thinking skills and by grouping the students with assigned roles in the performance of these series of tasks to manipulate their macro skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Applying these procedures is more innovative and practical aside from the common assessment activities employed such as drawing a face, reflection time, mixed open and close questions, peer assessment, a minute paper, observing, journals, posters, learning wall, self-assessment forms, observing and many more.

One recommended way to incorporate level objectives of the cognitive domain with order thinking skills exploiting formative assessment is to distribute the levels of the activities in terms of easy, moderate and difficult. Perhaps, the teacher may opt  two (2) activities from remembering level, then two (2) activities from understanding, two (2) activities again from applying, two (2) activities for analyzing, two (2) activities for evaluating and two (2) activities for creating which are intertwined from the first level to the last level. The teacher may repeat the process by choosing different pairs from each level as reinforcement to the lesson. As an important reminder, it is not suitable to apply assessment activities focusing in one level. It is best to apply ascending process than to stay in one level which means, it is not sensible to perform all activities in remembering since other levels are neglected. Moreover, it is not advisable to start from the top to bottom for it is necessary to consider the types of learners with lower thinking skills except if all of your students’ comprehensions belong to the higher order thinking skills.

Finally, since thinking skills through the level objectives are the main core for the conduct of lessons, teachers   should be fully aware of these two essential components. It is recommended that current teachers who obtained courses not aligned with the College of Teacher Education and without earned credits on the Foundations of Education should intensively consider revising these principles for professional development. It is a mere fact that teaching language is not just a mastery of the subject matter but it is coupled with  the mastery of methods where teaching objectives thrive for the  enhancement  of students” order thinking skills.