Testing Strategy Share

We have been learning about ways to successfully take the MAP test.  We use Tungsten every month to practice these test taking strategies.  Before the Tungsten this month, I asked students to text in their favorite test taking strategy. It was a quick and easy way to review strategies.  While reading their responses, I was able to clarify any misunderstandings, and focus on the best strategies.  The students have grown bored with testing discussions, so using the clickers were a fun way to motivate their sharing.  My students LOVE using the clickers, even when talking about tests!

Clickers in P.E.

Our last lesson involving the clickers dealt with our "Food of the Week", which was potatoes. It was 5 questions and self-paced, primarily determining students' prior knowledge of the health benefits of potatoes. Students always must be in partnerships because of a lower number of clickers. They must agree on how to cooperate, whether it be passing the clicker back and forth for each question or just one person texting in answers, as long as both are reading the question and having a discussion about the answer they think is correct. Unfortunately, if they disagree then they have to come up with a compromising solution for which answer to select.

Assessment

For third quarter I used the clickers as part of our third quarter testing. I made self paced quizzes for the beginning sounds. I put pictures on the screen and the students had to type in the beginning sound for each of the pictures that was on the screen. We did one group of pictures each day so that they wouldn't be overwhelmed. I was surprised as to the difficulty of the task. I thought it would be easy since we had been using the clickers in math. However, it was not the easy transition I had envisioned. The students started yelling out, "What is that picture?" and we had to start over with new rules for testing. The second and third days have gone much smoother. It is so nice to have the information in a spreadsheet so I know exactly who needs to work on what letter sound. When I work in small groups with my students, I pull out the spreadsheet and work on letter sounds with games or flashcards.

We have been using the clickers the first 15 minutes of each day to do an informational scavenger hunt designed to sharpen the students' internet research skills. Each morning the students turn on their clickers to receive a 5-6 question self-paced quiz. The questions come from a variety of subject areas and are determined by current units of study. The students use their wireless laptops or their own devices to navigate the internet and search for the answers to the questions. Over the past three weeks they have become noticably faster and more accurate in their researching abilities. When we had Donuts with Dad Day, the students and their fathers participated in a trivia contest where the questions were delivered via the clickers and answers were allowed to be found via the internet. It gave the dads the opportunity to see and use some of our new technology. They experienced the frustration of wireless laptops not connecting or taking forever to load, just like their kids do. Many of them used their i phones and could also see the advantage of their learner having his/her own device to use at school.

We haven't really experienced many problems other than students being overly competitive and becoming frustrated by computer malfunctions. It is a great way to get them thinking and engaged in the morning while such mundane tasks as lunch count and attendance are taken.

Formative assessment

1. I have been conferencing more with students to discuss strengths and weaknesses with their content knowledge and their process of learning and sharing. The anonymous voting and sharing provides a chance for me to revisit topics or lead discussions without singling out students. I also like the kids give each other feedback. We had a debate and students voted on the winner, citing why they chose the winning team. This gave the debate teams feedback like which arguments were most effective or who cited key facts.

2. The clickers engage students. I used the self-paced questions which naturally differentiated as some students sought out more in-depth answers and other students generated answers more quickly. Challenge - some answers do not always show up on the results from using the clickers.

Formative Assessment

I use formative assessment almost every day in my classroom.  In the morning, as part of my first grader's morning work, I have "clicker questions" ready for them when they arrive.  Usually these questions cover the math skills we learned on the previous day or from the chapter we are currently working on.  When they are finished, I save and print the results and quickly scan them to see who needs more individual attention with those skills.  I then determine my small groups based on the clicker question results and work with those students during my math lesson later that day.  The success I've experienced is how this type of assessment lends itself to setting up my small groups during our math center time, and it gives me the opportunity to easily and quickly see which students "get it" and which ones do not.  The main challenge I've had is using the teacher created flip charts for formative assessment.  I don't find this as helpful as creating the self-paced assessments with the clickers.  I guess I need to force myself to use the flip charts more often. 



One of the formative assessments I use that helps me review for MAP is the Current Science Sci-Triv (like Jeopardy with Life Science, Earth Science, Health Science, Physical Science and Math for categories). Now that we have the clickers, all students can play at once and keep score. For Donuts with Dads, we had the dads help them with the questions! They loved it! Of course, I forgot to take pictures. Here is the link to a Sci-Triv game:
http://www.weeklyreader.com/SubscriberOnly/subscriberpages/digital-editions/cs_feb_022112/cs_feb/cs_feb.html

I also have my 4th graders making a flipchart about the different classes of worms. We are studying invertebrates and we could not find anything on Brainpop or Promethean Planet, so we decided to make one of our own and see if we could get it published.

Assessment

We have been reviewing heavily for the upcoming MAP test.  The picture above is of a review we were working on practicing main idea.  Using formative assessments has helped greatly to quickly spot which students are needing more help with a particular skill and they can either get the one-on-one help they need or work with a small group to solidify the skill in question. 

The major challenge with this is like always time.  It can be tough to find enough time to get through all of the material that they need to review.   The students have shown positive growth ising this form of assessment.

I have used the clickers several times, texting their names, answering questions in science,and math.  The students are very engaged and it gives me a "guick" view of their understanding.   I have to admit, I have been shocked a few times when they were "off the mark" and I really thought they were on track.

My challenges are - saving my questions after I have written them - I must be doing something wrong, go figure, but I have spent lots of time writing and then not being able to find them.

MAP practice/Formative Assessment

1. How have you been using the principles of formative assessment in your classroom? What instructional practices have changed?
I have been using the clickers daily in the morning work, end of math time, end of the day. I will use the question generator for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing practice. I have created several sets of questions that range from easy to hard. I use them to include decimals. This is a good way to practice basic facts and problems with MAP approaching. I have been using them with a premade flip chart about MAP vocabulary. As we review the vocab in the beginning of my SMATH class, then I can quiz them at the end with the clickers and flipchart questions. It's great because I can really see if they understood the terms and how much I still need to review. They are easy to use as a center as well.

2. What successes have you had? Challenges?

I feel as if the use of clickers has been a major success just because of how engaged the students are. The excitement of the clickers hasn't worn off yet. They still come in ready to use them and ask for me to put a clicker activity on throughout the day so they can practice when they finish homework. The challenge is just having the students slow down. They think it has to be a race.

Using the clickers to support formative assessments

I use the clickers daily in my classroom.  The students continue to be more engaged in their learning and I find the collected data to be very helpful in guiding my instruction. 
After our last session I wanted to figure out a way to efficiently use the "question series" format.  We have been doing several MAP math practice sets of questions.  With the first two I used the clickers with the whole class and we went through one question at a time looking at the data together as a group.  They were very interested in the bar graphs that displayed their choices and we had great discussions as we reviewed.  They were very excited and motivated when we had 100% agreement.  However, this takes a lot of time.  So, I decided I would make up the question series and keep it short and simple on my prep end.  All I did was write question 1-8 and then I put in the correct answer choices.  The students were able to enter their answers very quickly once they completed their work on paper.  I loved the data that I received after I exported it to the excel spreadsheet!  Now my groupings and focus for my next review lessons are at my fingertips!  As we continue to practice over the next several weeks I plan to do this again.  I will save these flip charts with the questions for next year, as we will probably use these same review assessments again.  I found it very easy to look at a copy of the practice assessment while I looked at the excel data.  

I will need support with saving the flip charts, because I no longer see the directions page that I created.  I do have the results, though.  

Formative Assessment with the Clickers

I have found that the clickers provide a great opportunity to quickly assess students knowledge, recall, and understanding of our daily curriculum. With MAP testing around the corner, I have been using the clickers to do a lot of review activities. The clickers allow me to assess who has the concepts, who may need some additional instruction, and which concepts need to be totally retaught. This is formative assessment at its best: the students benefit and learn in the process, and I can adjust my instruction to improve learning.

I have used the clickers with various BrainPop lessons to introduce concepts in Science and Social Studies. I love that using the clickers assesses all the students (not just the one answering the question) and keeps the students engaged.

At this time of year, we do some extra Math review during Social Studies (fondly called SMATH). The students enjoy using the clickers to answer a variety of questions, play jeopardy, and respond to the flip charts that I have been using. I can quickly tell who is struggling with and who has mastered a particular skill. I have also used the Mulitiplication Facts Review (under question generator) to challenge the students to see how quickly and accurately they can answer their multiplication facts. They loved this activity and want to do it again and again.

Clickers in Algebra

With End of Course Exams at the high school level, the clickers have been a vital part of my class. I use them a few times a week and am able to keep good records of who gets what. The best part about it in my opinion is you get instant feedback. Do you need to reteach something, touch up on little details or do they completely understand it. In math, we generally take free response type tests, but the End of Course Exam is all multiple choice. This helps the students understand how to take a multiple choice test in math.

Success and challenge

During our last Elite training session, I found an effective ActivInspire flipchart and was able to use it successfully that same day. Yeah! I found it easy to use in presenting new material (the passé composé) to my French 2 students, and students seemed to really pay attention. Students also used their clickers to respond to multiple choice items included in the flipchart, helping to keep them engaged.

Inspired to try something new, I tried www.fotobabble.com which lets you upload a picture and narrate a description. You can publish it, imbed it in your Facebook page, and/or send the link in an email, for example to a friend or the teacher. It worked pretty well at home, although it seems to limit the length of the recording to about a minute. A newer feature of the website is the ability to create a narrated slideshow, but you have to make it public. For our students, the option of “private” is probably safer. Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t get the audio to play at school! Here’s the link a student sent me ( http://www.fotobabble.com/m/N3RzVGVLRzMrOVk9 ), but no audio comes through. So, scratch that idea.

So, what can I recommend? Reading through the emails from my technolanguage group, I came across a website for a free online textbook called Interactive French -- http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi/. French teachers may recognize the website, but it’s now enhanced and has more links for students.

Other sites I’ve found:

Short blog from “School beyond walls” : http://horslesmurs.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-t-on-le-droit-de-manger-en-cours-1 (Should students have the right to eat in class?) Pretty interesting.

Another blog which includes a number of ideas for using technology in the classroom: http://isabellejones.blogspot.com/2012/02/ict-into-languages-conference.html

Kathy

Clicker Assessment

I have been using the clickers for assessments in math and social studies lately.  It has been great getting the results immediately.  Also, it was beneficial to see which questions were most often missed.  Also, I saw quickly that I didn't teach a concept very well because most of the class answered the question wrong.  SO, I went back and was able to reteach directly that day and we were able to discuss it immediately following the assessment. 

I have been using and loving the clickers daily.  I still find that the flip charts are great for re-teaching a concept and are great for review.  The self-paced clickers are also great to review with, it really lets you see how concrete your teaching is or isn't.

It is sometimes hard for the students to be able to read all the questions and answer choices in first grade.  But as the year progresses, it gets better.  Also, it took some time for the students to learn they have to scroll down to view the whole question at times.