January 19th, 2021

ARE MY STUDENTS GETTING IT!?!?!?!?1?

Formative Assessment in a Distanced World
By Grant Euler, Assistant (to the) Executive Director 
​Welcome to the latest installment of The Distance Learning Playbook K-12 blog.  We are sharing tips and tricks around teaching for engagement and impact in any setting.  The ideas shared in this blog series come from the Fisher, Frey and Hattie book, The Distance Learning Playbook and their recent webinar.

How do we know if our students are getting it? That question was hard enough to answer when we saw our students in person every day. Now, seeing them less frequently or perhaps not at all, this question requires some new ideas like so much else in lives right now. 

The idea that struck me most about this section of the book was the idea that good formative feedback needs to be both actionable by the teacher and the student.  With less direct teacher contact, students must take more responsibility for their own learning, and if we think about the student making a change in their learning based on the feedback (in the same way we would change our teaching), then formative feedback could actually scaffold the growth of students’ personal responsibility for their learning! 
Here are some ideas to help implement this idea.

VIRTUAL EXIT SLIPS: Have students just respond with number corresponding to their level of understanding, such as

1. I’m just learning (I need more help).
2. I’m almost there (I need more practice).
3. I own it! (I can work independently).
4. I’m a pro! (I can teach others)

Then, in the next class, group students based on their answers. For example having #4s with #1s and #2s to help instruct, #3s in a room practicing with each other. As the teacher I could then bounce between rooms to see how well the students rated themselves. At the end of the group time, have the students reflect on how they rated themselves. Over time students will be able to more accurately gauge their own understanding, which increases the effect size for feedback!
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VIRTUAL STORY RETELLING: For younger students, orally retelling a story can remove the writing constraint when trying to measure student’s understanding. If students record themselves retelling you have shared (perhaps recorded as well), it allows you to rewind and hear the student’s retelling more than once as well as providing a record to show growth over time. This strategy could be used in any content or age, where students would retell a story or explain a concept from a reading (such as osmosis from a science text).
There are other ideas in the book as well. If you have any questions, please contact me, I would love to chat with you!!

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