If we define “formative assessments” as those that impact instruction, I am hard-pressed to decide what is not a formative assessment! This year, my PLC teachers have developed a targeted, proactive system of reteach and retest. Students cannot retest if they have not had a new learning experience, and a student cannot keep a grade lower than an 80. While… Read more →
Students can be like quicksilver in the computer lab. You have firewalls in place, you’re observant, but you turn your back for a second and find one of them reading the wikipedia article on the Bloods and the Crips. (True story. But at least he wasn’t editing the article for accuracy.) Symbaloo allows users to create a graphical list of… Read more →
This app by Riley Lark, et. al. is nice for gathering data or engaging students. You visit the app at http://activeprompt.herokuapp.com/ and upload an image. Students visit a link (Symbaloo, anyone?) and place a dot on the image according to your prompt (where will these lines intersect? Which best represents your solution? the prompts are limitless!). Then a teacher link… Read more →
…it serves no purpose to a student with limited conceptual understanding. If they evaluate their answer and decide that it doesn’t make sense, they don’t know how to fix it. Their options are to start over completely, or ignore the issue. Is it any surprise they choose ignore?
Shawn Cornally over at ThinkThankThunk shares an idea for showing students that units matter. He has a graphic that contrasts Degrees Kelvin, Degrees Celsius, and Degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a good idea and I think kids should see the contrast between other units they often confuse…