My favorite formative assessment – The Pit of Despair

I’m reading the book Focusby Mike Schmoker. One of the keys, he says, to improving learning in schools is for teachers to make checks for understanding often – multiple times in each class period.

Some common teacher practices to check for understanding that are not effective, according to Schmoker are:

·         Asking the class a question and only calling on those with their hands raised.

·         Asking students to raise their hands if they have a question.

·         Waiting until the end of a unit to give a quiz or test.

Fortunately, the methods of daily formative assessment that are effective are very doable. They include:

·         Wandering amongst students as they work on a new concept, checking their work. Offering additional, individualized instruction when you find a student doesn’t understand.

·         Asking the class a question and having them use prearranged hand signals to respond. I sometimes use a “thumb vote” – up, down, or in between. Sometimes I ask students to raise the appropriate number of fingers for the answer.

·         Asking the class a question and randomly calling on students. For this I use what I call, “The Pit of Despair.”

Each class that I teach has a pit – a repurposed frosting can with a tongue depressor for each student with their name on it. Anytime I want to randomly choose a student, I draw a name from the pit. I do this to randomly check for understanding, as Schmoker advocates, or perhaps to simply choose a student to run an errand to the main office. Either way, I’ve found that all students pay attention when I’m about to draw a student’s name from the pit.

 

. . . And the pit says that Sommer would like to answer. Sommer, what did you put down on that question? . . .