The Best Low-Prep Formative Assessment Ever

In every class there are students who avoid participating because they are shy. In every class there are students who fear to give a wrong answer. In every class there are students who think they’re the only student who is confused. In every class there are students who are completely convinced that they understand. And they don’t. 

In every class there are students who, if allowed to do it, will refuse to engage. So if you ask a question, do you really know what every student knows?

If you ask the question as an invitation to the class, you'll find out what the volunteers know.

If you ask a particular student a question, you'll find out what that student knows. 

But unless you ask every student every question you don't really know what every student knows, or thinks they know. But there's no time to do that, right?  

But what if there was a way to do it?  What if you could do that without giving or grading a single quiz?  What if you could know what every student knew in seconds, in the middle of a lesson, in time to correct misconceptions?  You can.  I'll show you how. And then I'll give you a free gift to try it out.

Suppose you want to quickly assess what students remember about the metric system.  Each student gets a set of cards (usually between 10-12) like those pictured below (right).

You ask a question like, "Which metric unit would you use to measure the volume of a liquid?"  Each student has time to select the card they think shows the correct answer to the question.  Give plenty of wait time especially the first few times you use the cards. Remind students to hold their cards like they would if using playing cards, and to not reveal their selection.

After asking the question and giving some wait time, you count down, "Three, two, one, UP!" And every student in unison raises their response card.

It's important that students raise the card in unison.  You'll need to practice that a couple of times. Holding up the cards in unison accomplishes several things. 

First, it prevents students from looking around the room to see what card other students held up.  If they do that, if they hesitate for even a second or two, you'll see it.  Secondly, you'll be able to see if a student raises a card and quickly substitutes it for another. And you'll also see if there are students who are stubbornly holding on to a misconception when they see the correct card being held up by other students but don't switch their own card.

Any of those things gives you a chance to follow up with that student.  If you have students who just refuse to raise a card, they quickly learn that it will guarantee your attention, which most students find a little uncomfortable. I've honestly never had a student who refused to participate more than once.

When you use response cards, you keep kids engaged in the lesson.  After students get used to using the cards, you'll notice they're paying more attention because they know they're going to have to demonstrate their level of understanding. And you will be a more responsive teacher in real-time if you use response cards. But don't overdo it.  Don't use the cards every day.  Have sets prepared ahead of time so that if you have any reason to doubt that students understand what you're teaching, you can quickly hand out the sets (I used zip-close bags for each set, but you could also put them on binder rings).

To give you a chance to try response cards, click on the link for a free set of Metrics Response Cards.  

I'd really appreciate it if, after you've tried the Metrics set, you'd return to leave feedback on it.

Stop Teaching Vocabulary Words in Science. Seriously.

Stop teaching vocabulary words in science.  It doesn't help students to achieve academic success or independent word attack skills.  It doesn't prepare them for testing either.

There are 3 "Tiers" of words in the English language. Most science vocabulary words are Tier Three words.

• Tier One words are high-frequency and usually don't have multiple meanings.  "Kitten" is a Tier One Word. We don't have to teach Tier One words to most of our students (the exception might be ELL or ESOL students who have had no exposure to English).

• Tier Two words are high-frequency and also have multiple meanings. Like the word "revolution".  When you read the word revolution, did you picture an armed uprising, or did you picture the path of Earth in orbit around the sun?  Revolution is a Tier Two word. They're very important in academic language settings. They're worth teaching, but not the way you might be teaching them.

• Tier Three words are low-frequency (low use) and have domain-specific meaning.  "Exothermic" is a Tier Three word.  And it's one of the words most science teachers would teach in the context of chemistry or zoology.  But in and of itself it has virtually no academic function across subject areas. Students won't use it in conversation.  They won't encounter it in their history class or their English class. Copying its definition from a textbook or dictionary is completely useless. Stop teaching those Tier Three vocabulary words.

Instead, teach the words that make our words. Around 90% of science vocabulary is based on Latin and Greek.  Teaching the root words prepares your students to understand new scientific vocabulary on their first exposure to it.  It will help them in your class, but also in history, English, math, art, music, and every other class. It will make them better readers and better writers.

Think about the word revolution again.  "Re" is a prefix meaning "again".  "Volv" is a Latin root word meaning roll, or turn around. Why is the word "revolution" meaningful in both history and science? Because it means to roll or turn. As in a complete turn in government, or a complete turn around the sun.

Similarly, if you teach the root word "vert" which means "turn" (as in direction), you've prepared students to make a good guess at the meaning of words like invert, revert, and divert on their first exposure to those words. They will know the unfamiliar word has something to do with turning or changing direction.  
You'll change the academic futures of all of your students by teaching them Latin and Greek root words in your science class.  




Don't wait until the end of the school year to have that OMG panic attack about how your students are going to do on the year-end testing that causes you to spend a couple of weeks cramming vocabulary review into your students.

Start as soon as the school year starts.  Do it regularly. Practice often. Keep going through the entire year. 

Here's one way to do that. The Frayer Model is a well-researched tool for teaching vocabulary. And it's pretty easy to implement.

Typically, Frayer Model cards are used by students to create personal dictionaries or word study cards. Often, students will add vocabulary words to the cards as they encounter new words in authentic contexts. 

(The card pictured is in a set of Latin and Greek Root Words Every Student Should Know.)

The new word is written either in the center (as pictured) or in one of the top boxes. In the remaining boxes, students write a simplified meaning, some examples from different classes, etc.

Students are usually asked to create a symbol or icon in one box to help them remember the meaning of the root word.  Research shows a powerful memory effect if words and images are linked during the process of learning. The drawing is usually done in the bottom left corner. (But it doesn’t really matter where you ask students to draw them.) Here's an example from a set of Root Words For Bulletin Boards:







I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the improvement in your students' retention of scientific vocabulary if you start the year (and keep going) with this method.  And you might even consider trying to recruit your colleagues in other subject areas to a joint effort with using the same cards in every class.  Best wishes to you as you start another school year.  I hope it's WONDERFUL!

 Qui docet discit  (Who teaches, learns.)  

How to Make Grading Student Work More Accurate and Less Time-Consuming

Does it feel as if your holiday break never even happened because you're already getting overloaded with work to grade? Would you like to reduce the time you spend grading?

Most of us assign work for two reasons:  1) assessing learning 2) collecting data for grading purposes.  So in theory, we want the work we give to help us measure mastery of important skills and knowledge, and help us give accurate grades.

The problem is that not every question on an assignment is equally valuable as an assessment of learning.


I’m going to share a strategy that will help improve the accuracy of your grades AND reduce the amount of grading you have to do.   

Think about typical worksheets.  The kind you might give to go along with a reading assignment or while watching a film.  They usually have two types of questions:

Lead Up Questions – These are questions that help students go through a step-by-step thinking process that will help them answer other questions.  Or they can be questions that are written for the purpose of making sure students complete a reading assignment or stay on task during a film in order to be able to answer other questions. They are questions that don't address critical skills or content.

Target Questions – the questions that require a student to demonstrate an understanding of critical content or the application of critical skills, often as a result of having completed the lead-up questions.

For purposes of grading, we should focus on the target questions. But usually, when we grade assignments, all of the questions on the assignment would be treated as if they were equally important. That can have bad effects on the accuracy of grades as a measurement of mastery.

Here's why. Suppose a worksheet has 10 questions on it.  Suppose that only two of the questions are target questions. One student might answer correctly eight of the questions on the worksheet but answer the two (most important) target questions incorrectly.  You’d enter 80% in your gradebook.  But did that student demonstrate 80% mastery of content? Or just 80% accuracy of answering the lead-up questions?

Another student might only complete five questions, but answer all of them correctly, including the two target questions.  You’d enter 50% in your gradebook. Does a student who correctly answers the two most important questions - the ones that really require a demonstration of mastery - really deserve an "F" for the assignment?  And would that "F" be an accurate measure of their mastery of the most important content?

Which of those students really understands more of the critical content? And will their grade reflect it?  Not all questions are good assessments of mastery.  If you include all of them in a grade, you’re diluting the accuracy of the score as a measure of mastery.

So here’s something to try.  It’s not a silver bullet.  You shouldn’t use it with every assignment. And it won't suddenly make all of your students do all of their work. But used judiciously it will improve the accuracy of your grades and may also have the effect of improving turn-in rates for assignments. And it will definitely make grading less time-consuming and more efficient for you! 

Create a half-sheet form like the one pictured.  If you subscribe to my email list before 01/11/2019,  I'll send you the form. The form should include the student’s name, class, and an area for writing answers. The half sheet form will be stapled to the front of a completed assignment.  

Prior to the beginning of class, identify ­target questions from the previous day's assignment.  Try to limit the number of questions to four or fewer. Give students a very short amount of time to copy their answers to those selected questions onto the half sheet form.  You shouldn’t allow more than a minute or a minute and a half for students to do this. That’s enough time to copy answers but not enough time to hastily attempt to write the answers that aren’t already written down.  And since you’re watching them while they complete the half sheet, they’re unlikely to cheat right under your nose. 

When time is up, you can either have students turn in the half sheet, or have the students staple their half sheet onto the full assignment and turn it in (so you can make sure they were really copying work they’d already done, and that they really had completed the assignment.)

You grade only the questions on the half sheet and enter that score into your grade book.
If you feel strongly that a grade should reflect responsibility as well as mastery, you could give points for having completed the entire original assignment.  Just be thoughtful about doing that because it dilutes the accuracy of grades as a measure of content/skill mastery.

The reason you don’t use this strategy with every assignment is that if you do, some students will start trying to guess which questions you’re going to select and will only answer those. And you certainly wouldn’t use this strategy to score quizzes or tests.  But when you know that not all of the questions on an assignment are equally important, and if you are buried by paperwork, this strategy will really save you time and improve the accuracy of your grades as a measure of mastery.

If you use this strategy, you will probably find that a few students actually do more work for you.  I wish I had a nickel for every student who didn’t turn in an assignment because it wasn’t complete and they know they’ll get a failing score whether or not they turn it in. It’s a shame that students feel that way, but they’re right if the teacher scores every question. With the strategy I’ve described, students have a chance of getting better than a failing score if they’ve answered even some of the questions you selected for scoring.

You’ll also find that some of your really bright but unmotivated students who refuse to do what they consider to be “busy work” will probably at least do some work if the odds are that doing some of it is going to pay off for them even if they don’t do all of it. Getting kids to do some of the work should always be a goal when the alternative is that they do none of it.

This process, used judiciously, gives you what you need for assessment, improves the accuracy of grades as a measure of mastery, and honors the work that students have completed while reducing the time you spend grading less meaningful work. You might even have an occasional weekend free from grading!