More Strategies to Monitor Student Understanding:)

How can teachers be sure that 80% of the students in their classes follows the lesson?  When can a teacher assign homework knowing students are fully prepared to do it?  How can a teacher know when a student is struggling?  The answer to all of the above is ongoing monitoring through formative assessments aka checks for understanding.  Though this topic has been addressed in this blog before, it never hurts to have a few more instructional monitoring tools in the teacher tool belt.

So here is one site with a new look at how to check for understanding for ELLs in all classes.  Simply check on an activity used in the class, and see it can be adjusted, expanded, or scaffolded for ELLs in mainstream classes with ease.  The descriptions of the approaches are short but thorough.  Further, there are additional instructional weblinks embedded throughout. 

This last list, more easy to implement checks for understanding, offers 11 approaches that are quite popular at many grade levels in all disciplines.  Note that none of the approaches are new. They are still actively used throughout classrooms everywhere because they are easy to implement and kids love them!

Denise

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Informative Assessments a Must for Common Core!

As national standards are fully integrated into class curricula, regular on-going informative assessments will become a necessary component of every lesson.  With such monitoring on the part of the teacher, students (especially ELLs) receive steady feedback on their progress in working through the activities.  When the teacher sees a student struggling, s/he can step in immediately to offer support/further explanations/additional examples, etc. to make the content more accessible.

Now, here are some additional tools to make checks-for-understanding even more engaging for all:)  In this clip, the instructor goes beyond the traditional tools such as using whiteboards, identifying strugglers by walking around the room and looking for students having problems, asking for show of hands, etc.  One is free and the other is $20.00.  Both are easy to use!  INFORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS (though Google Forms are listed, I didn't include them since they are a bit more complicated to use than the other two sites mentioned and listed below).

SOCRATIVE ASSESSMENT TOOL (FREE)  Watch the demo here.  "Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets." (from site).  It is easy to use and students can respond via cell phones, laptops, iPads, tablets, etc.  Teachers receive quick responses and, in the process, no student is signaled out as not knowing the correct answer.  This opens up the floor to discuss why certain answers were picked and why they were wrong/right.  Since no one knows who picked what, it becomes a risk-free discussion for all.

TESTMOZ  ($20 a year) is similar to Socrative.  Teachers generate quick multiple choice questions for students to answer.  Teachers can monitor how well their lessons went by having students use any device of their own choosing to take the mini-assessments.  Quickly, the teacher sees what questions students had difficulties with and what ones were not a problem.  Such rapid feedback helps a teacher keep a "finger on the pulse" of the class with ease:)

Denise

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COMMON CORE SUPPORTS REGULAR CHECKS-FOR-UNDERSTANDING

With the start of the new school year, holding students accountable for learning with the new common core standards will be every teacher's goal.  To pull this off, teachers will need to have a few CFU (checks for understanding) strategies in their toolkits.  Though there are lots of them out there from the internet, colleagues, students themselves, etc., teachers will need to find the ones that most resonate with them, their personalities, and teaching styles.  CFUs respresent forms of formative assessments--the assessments that guide instruction.  These tools tell teachers what kids know and how well they know it.  They also reveal to the teacher how close the class is to taking a summative assessment.  After all, what is the point of giving a summative assessment at the end of the lesson only to find out that a majority of kids failed?  Instead, by giving several mini-cfus throughout the lesson, teachers are in effect preparing their students for test on the lesson.  CFUs will build student confidence along with content knowledge.  This is a win for both the teacher and the students (ELLs benefit greatly here).

PRIMER FOR CHECKS-FOR-UNDERSTANDING  Here is one that though geared to elementary school works equally well in upper grades.  In fact, many of these tools have been in use in grade school for years.  They are not necessarily new.  However, for upper grades, it is a fairly new area:)  When common core is fully implemented, long lectures should be a thing of the past.  Mini-lectures are far more effective because they hold and maintainstudent interest unlike long ones where students stop listening after 10 minutes (lecture is too long).  If teachers mix up the routines and do random call-ons, they will see test scores improve since students will be more focused in class.

HOW TO HOLD ALL STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR LEARNING
This video shows a teacher doing a common (and highly effective) CFU with popsicle sticks.  Notice how kids are all sitting upright because they know that they could be called on.  Also, if called on, the popsicle stick with the student's name goes back in the cup.  Message here?  Stay alert because you can be called on again:)

I also have another CFU on facebook (ELL TEACHER PROS).  Please note that there are NO duplicates so feel free to LIKE US and explore there as well:)

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS