I was formally observed this week for the first time by administration. The principal decided not to tell me he would be visiting my class for an entire block and surprised me in the middle of my direct instruction and note taking portion of my lesson. We had just begun the unit on Exponential and Log Functions and were learning about the one to one property, reviewing a few exponent properties, and then working in groups on Kate Nowak‘s awesome awesome add em up activity. (On a side note, I will be using this activity again and again for many other concepts. It works GREAT! I had students write their name in the box of the problem they chose to do – then only their handwriting was allowed in that box. This way if they were the one that got it wrong the students in the group couldn’t just fix it for them. Plus, the rest of my department loved the idea and they also have instituted it in their classroom, thanks for sharing!)
My principal had a lot of great feedback to share with me – all of the students were engaged, my DI examples were scaffolded nicely, my transitions were excellent, students stayed on task (i.e. my pyscho evil Ms. P management style is starting to pay off). The students worked well together and the activity was clever and creative (Thanks Kate!).
The one piece of feedback that I found most valuable was the feedback on what I need to work on – assessment. Mainly during my lecture and direct instruction time. He indicated the questions that I am asking during this time are not meaningful and don’t lead to valuable feedback from the students. I am not getting a true indicator at any given moment whether the students are following or not. He said there are lots of ways to determine if students are understanding the examples and if I need to do more, to do less or to move on. He made me a copy of Madeline Hunter’s chapter on signaling for understanding and the four useless questions teachers ask – “Do you understand this – Any questions?” (whoops).
And I think he’s totally right. I don’t know how to gauge the temperature of my classroom at any given time as a group. I need a meaningful way (or multiple ways) to determine if I can pick up the pace or need to slow down. How do I know if they’re ready to go off and do individual or group work? How do I know if they learned this last year? What meaningful questions should I be asking to help them tell me what I really want to know? How can I get more feedback from the class rather than just the same three students who want to tell me they’re lost or they’re following along?
He told me about “thumb signalling” and I tried it and it sort of worked – but how do I determine how many side ways thumbs are enough to do another example? Is that just something as a teacher I have to decide for myself? How do I help those two students who always have a sideways thumb and yet we continue to move on – how do I make them feel like their feedback is valuable even though it might look like I’m ignoring it!?
So basically – what are the questions, signals, or other ways you get feedback from your students during direct instruction that allow you to determine the level of understanding as a big group? How do you use this feedback to alter your instruction?
This is nothing revolutionary but i like to say to my kids “turn to your partner and tell them one thing you don’t understand/aren’t sure about” many times they’ll sort issues out for themselves, if they cant i’ll get involved.
I usually think of formative assessment as something that happens throughout the lecture rather than afterwards – if I ask students ‘how’s it goin?’ at the end of the lecture and I get a bunch of thumbs-down, then I’m too late.
Anyway, I typically use hand signals as a way to respond to questions rather than as a gauge on where they stand. For example, if I’m introducing a new topic, I try and find a way to come up with some true/false questions then ask the class to answer using Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down (and I keep asking them until most students are getting them right).
Then, if possible, I make the questions multiple choice and have them hold up a finger for each of the choices (1 finger for first option, 2 fingers for second, etc…). Again – do a few examples until most are getting it right. I also let them check with their neighbors before they answer if they want. Then I have someone who has the right answer explain how they got it.
After that, I have some other strategies for students to show me what they know, but I typically keep forcing them to show me until most of the class has it – and, if a student is consistently getting it incorrect, I find time to check in with them individually.
Anyway – that’s what I do in terms of during-class formative assessments. Hope this helps.
Forgive me if I’m missing the point or maybe I’m just processing my own thoughts…
I just got feedback from a survey of my students with the question “what can I do to help you learn more?” Almost universally they asked for a bit more direct instruction or at least more time summarizing the learning from investigations. However, they also indicated they learned most while working in groups in class (not listening to me), go figure.
Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised, unfortunately I have no measure as to how important they felt this was, just that this was an area for me to adjust/improve. So I have been spending a good deal of thought trying to digest/interpret/adjust my DI approach. I spend almost no time at the board, maybe 10 minutes out of an hour? Often I just get them started and spend the class working with individuals.
A paragraph (link below) I read this evening talked about how lectures are much more useful as teaching tools if students have already attempted a problem and have need for more information. It strikes me that if students go into a lecture needing or better yet wanting information to solve a problem from that lecture. Then “checking the temperature” will happen naturally as the students ask questions to solve their problems or to satisfy their understanding.
Maybe rather than figure out how to cleverly get feedback during a lecture (I love iClickers for this) setup a scenario where you students will force feedback on to you? Certainly some classroom culture building required and maybe this can’t work every time, but this might be how I adjust my approach.
Just my two cents.
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/you-khant-ignore-how-students-learn/ – paragraph referenced is towards the bottom not far from the comments
I wrote a little about adjusting during direct instruction awhile back
http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/search/label/hingepoints
WRT to deciding how many thumbs are enough, what’s made a huge diff for me is deciding ahead of time on my threshold. So if something is really important I might say if I see more than 5 kids thumbs down/missed the question then I’ll reteach. If it’s something that might be more clear after we’ve moved on, I might say only half or less might need it. I saw a quote somewhere that was something like.. between 20-80% of the students is the cutoff point depending on how important the topic is.
So I think that for me, my prob was always just kind of inserting CFUing into random areas and playing it by feel (Hey I’m getting blank stares maybe I should ask a question now). That’s fine but it made a HUGE difference just planning out a specific time to set a go/no go time. It’s super easy if you’re using PPT or Keynote or whatever. Just set a question into a slide. If enough students get the answer, skip the next few slides, if not, continue on.