Formative Assessment

Bismillah wa salaatu wa salaam 'ala rassolulah . . .

In sha Allah, I'll be posting videos, links and other information about Formative assessment.  Choose those that interest you.  Even try those that don't interest you.  You or your students may enjoy them.  So many unlimited options.  You may even create your own or just modify those you read about.

Formative Assessment 

DEFINITION from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments: ·   help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
·   help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately
 Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. 

Direct Instruction

We do a lot of this:

It is an effective teaching strategy, but we must begin to implement new methods, in sha Allah, 

So, this is the first of many posts to help you and me learn something new.

Appointment Clock Buddies 

Students are assigned a buddy for each hour on the clock. When the teacher chooses an hour, the students discuss higher order thinking questions with his/her buddy.  The teacher circulates throughout the classroom to listen to the discussions. This method is an excellent way to check for understanding during the lesson.

Described excellently here:  http://www.readingquest.org/strat/clock_buddies.html

Here are some templates for you:  

http://www.ronnashandassociates.com/pdfs/Appointment%20Clock%20Partners.pdf

http://www.teamstraus.com/SchoolDaysBorder_files/Teacher%20Farm/clockbuddies_Lower_El.pdf

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Think-Pair-Share

Students are always blurting out answers in your classroom.  Use this technique as an option to have students reflect on a concept before responding.

Think - Students are provoked to think about a prompt, question or concept for a few minutes.  (Students may write down their original ideas to avoid forgetting their idea when it's time to share.)
Pair - Students discuss in pairs (with a clock buddy or another method)
Share - Students can be called on round robin to share their ideas

This method (developed by Frank Lyman and his colleagues in Maryland)  is often helpful for students who are shy to share in the group.  The shy students tend to feel comfortable sharing their ideas with a partner,  The more vocal student may, then share the ideas of the pair with the class.

He explains it well in this video :

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Four Corners

Students love multiply choice questions.  This throws some kinetic action into your classroom.  The teacher may use a controversial topic.  Students can choose either A, B, C, or D ( Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree) .  Each corner of the classroom is labelled with A, B, C and D.  Students then move to the corner of their response.  While in the corner, students may discuss the reasons why they choose their responses.  A spokesperson is chosen to present the group's sentiments to the entire class.

I would love to vary this for younger students who have so much energy.  I would try it as above or ask questions or give problems in which the process has to be shown in writing.  Then, once the students chose their answers.  One of the students from the group with the RIGHT answer would show the class on the board how he find the answer.

Be sure to prepare your questions before the class begins.

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Answer these questions in the comments section:

Have you used any of the methods above ?  How did it work for you ? 

What variations do you suggest ?  

I'll be back soon with something new, in sha Allah.