USING STICKY NOTES IN THE CLASSROOM
In our busy lives, we can sometimes lose sight of some of the essentials. Feedback, from students and colleagues, is vital so that you can apply remedial measures if they are required.
In Part 1 I would like to share a very interesting article with you. It looks at ways in which you can easily access feedback and commentary from your learners.
In my first year of teaching I taught the way I was told to teach: deliver content to my students, assess at the end, remediate if necessary. With that cycle, I always had kids who were behind, who never seemed like they could catch up.
I was talking with a teacher friend the summer after my first year and she suggested something simple. Put a large piece of paper next to the door. Give every student a pack of sticky notes. On the way out the door they could put their thoughts about what they didn’t quite get or what they were still having trouble with. They could leave their name or not. Either way it gave valuable insight to how the students were learning but also could help shape the lesson for the next day.
What a difference that made!
The following school years that ‘board’ became an important place for myself and my students. It provided them a way to tell me what they needed and a place for me to reflect on my teaching and give my students what they needed.
Now, as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is taking over our schools, it’s becoming even easier to formatively assess what our students know and for our students to leave feedback as to what they need.
Formative assessment is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve the performance of their students. It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance.
Here are a few sites and apps to help with formative assessments…
Online Sticky Notes – Just like the physical space in my classroom there are lots of virtual sticky note sites out there. Give Lino a try. It provides a virtual corkboard for students to leave notes, questions or comments on their learning. Easy to set up and free. Learners don’t have to have an account to leave a note and they can do it any time, anywhere. All they need is the address.
Understood It – The teacher creates an account (for free, 5 questions per month) and gives the students a unique address. Then during the lesson the kids can hit a button to show they understand it or they are confused. The teacher can see the results in real time. The more kids who are confused, the higher the graph. Instant feedback that the teacher can use to change the scope of the lesson.
Poll Everywhere – One of my favorites, simply because of the variety of uses and methods of submitting responses. Similar to the others, the teacher can create a simple feedback poll or leave the question open ended. The students can respond via text message, website or even Twitter. Again, the point here is we can capture the feedback from the students using a variety of methods, almost instantly. Another great feature of Poll Everywhere is the data analysis you get. You can export results to create more ways of analyzing data.
Socrative – This one is quickly becoming the go-to app for formative assessments for me. The teacher creates an account and a room (for, you guessed it, free). Then the students go to the site (either through the app or through a browser), enter the room number and they see a question or an open response question to answer. I like this one a lot because of the variety of choices for questions to answer. One is even called Exit Ticket where kids can quickly summarize what they learned and tell you what they need for tomorrow.
Part 2 will be posted on 19 August