We had another good session on setting objectives and providing feedback with the specialists and the second grade team. Although we talked about different objectives, we still found that we could use similar strategies to receive feedback from the students when we are checking for understanding.
We talked about ways to write the essential question. We found that we could have one broad question for a unit and then more specific questions for lessons within the unit. We would keep the unit EQ up for the duration of the unit and the day to day EQ's would change based on the desired objective. These can be displayed on the board, on sentence strips, or posted on a unit board.
We then talked about ways to check for student understanding in closing the lesson. There are several good ways to assess if students learned the objective. A few of those are: 1. A ticket out the door- ask students to write down a sentence answering the essential question. They then hand it to you on their way out the door. 2. Think-Pair- Share- Students are asked to think about their answer to the essential question, or whatever objective you are checking. Then they turn to their neighbor to share their answer, then- they chose which answer to share with the group. 3. 3-2-1- You ask students to think about three things they learned in this lesson, write down 2 of them in their journal, paper, card, then share one thought with a partner or the group.
What other ideas do you have to add to closure activities to check for understanding of objectives?
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One thing that continues to come up during our learning team meetings today is concerning the essence of time. If you don't have time to do the "think" of a Think>Pair>Share, at least have them turn to one partner and share at least one thing they've learned from the lesson.
ReplyDeleteI do that often, giving them 15 seconds or so to discuss with an "elbow" partner what they have learned. Also, by giving them a short burst of time, they don't have the opportunity to get off topic.
ReplyDeleteI think the more often you do these quick activities with your students, the more used to it they get. It will become almost second nature to them to do these quick checks throughout the day. I also think you will be surprised how much more they remember or incorporate into their other lessons when you do these closing exercises.
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