The best tool for formative assessment - the humble clipboard!

You've probably got a few of them sitting around your desk and have used them for various activities over time, but have you considered the power of the humble clipboard for assessment?

To be able to adequately assess each student in the class, we need to see what they are doing - observation is still one of the best assessment strategies, because it allows us to delve deeper with each student by asking them questions to see if they truly understand a concept or whether they are parroting back what they have heard. Think of all those questions you ask in class, by the time you walk out of the room and walk to your next class you've forgotten most of the comments students have made a clipboard provides the opportunity to quickly capture those golden moments.

Surely the advent of technology has allowed an easier way to capture this? With all the great things that technology has done, it cannot improve on the speed and ease of using a pen and writing on a piece of paper as you walk around the classroom, that is of course unless you have a Tablet style device and a Pen that mirrors writing on paper anyway!

Of course for all this to work, you are hopefully still not talking 80% of the time (like the research has shown) and have moved to let the students do most of the talking!

What to have on your clipboard?
There is a strong argument to have blank writing paper and that is all, after all, it is easy to set things up. Without too much work though, you can create a single sided A4 sheet with 2 columns - each student's name in the first and space to write in the second. You may like to include their photos at the start of the year. You may be tempted to take this a step further by having criteria that you can tick off and whilst this seems like a great idea, experience tells me that this is not sustainable as you would have to set up a new sheet every lesson. Stick with the simple class list and room to write - set it up once and print a whole heap.

For more info on how you could use clip-boarding, see the video below from TeachingChannel.

Assessment Tools to drive Learning in your class (no ICT required!)

A few days ago, I published an article on ICT tools to assist with assessment for learning. Here are some other techniques worth investigating that don't require ICT. Future posts will detail some of the benefits and cautions with using these techniques.

• Fist to Five Feedback or thumbs up, thumbs sideways, thumbs down - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/getting-instant-student-feedback
• Exit Tickets - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teacher-assessment-strategy
• Twitter Style exit tickets - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/quick-student-assessment
• Using clipboards for informal assessment - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/informal-assessment-strategies
• Fist of Five - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/getting-instant-student-feedback
• Discussion - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/assess-listening-speaking-skills-ousd
• Maths Journals - https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2016/05/24/math-journals-as-formative-assessment/
• Four corners - http://wvde.state.wv.us/teach21/FourCorners.html
• Stoplight - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/daily-lesson-assessment
• Index cards and 'My Favourite No' - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/class-warm-up-routine

Assessment Tools to drive Learning in your class

In working out whether the tools below will work for you, consider the following:

1. What type of question would you ask students?
2. When would this technique be appropriate to use?
3. What is the benefit of this technique?
4. Can this relate to the learning intention of the lesson?

Here is a list of free ICT tools that can assist with assessment for learning. Future posts will touch on some of these, their benefits and difficulties.

• Kahoot - https://kahoot.it/
• Formative - https://goformative.com/
• Office Mix - https://mix.office.com/
• Zaption - http://www.zaption.com/
• Edpuzzle - https://edpuzzle.com/
• Geddit - http://letsgeddit.com/
• Lino - http://en.linoit.com/
• Padlet - https://padlet.com/
• ThatQuiz - https://www.thatquiz.org/
• Quizlet - https://quizlet.com/
• A Web Whiteboard - https://awwapp.com/
• Poll Everywhere - https://www.polleverywhere.com/

Why we should give students quizzes every day

There are many benefits to regularly quizzing students. What I mean by this is the 3-5 questions at the start of a lesson. This can be very beneficial to students in their learning as they can get regular feedback on their progress, the depth of their knowledge and if they have any misconceptions.

This regular use of quizzes had been shown to reduce test anxiety (Agarwal, D'Antonio, Roediger III, McDermott, & McDaniel, 2014). It is important to note that this should be a regular routine part of your lesson and not pop quizzes which not only increase stress but are in nature designed to catch students out. The use of these quizzes should be to build confidence in the students own ability because that is a key ingredient to future success.

What to do with the marks?

Even the very nature of this question undermines the very purpose of quizzing regularly. Students need to see assessment as  assisting students in their learning. But  to answer this question upfront, there are several different approaches that you can take. It is worth considering which approach you will take as there are benefits of being consistent.

• Students mark their own work
• The teacher marks the quiz during the lesson
• The teacher marks the quiz after class

The results students get can be used for multiple purposes:

•  They can be shared with parents on a learning management system in real time
• They can be for students information only
• They can contribute to the students final grade (consider not including the worst three results, which could also assist in dealing with absent students)
• They can contribute to a students work habits grade on a report card

How to provide feedback

The benefit of these quizzes is that students can get frequent feedback on their progress. You could consider the following ways of providing feedback:

• Go through the top few errors the next lesson (this will take a large amount of your lesson time)
• Record a video (flipped learning) that students can watch depending on which question they got wrong.
• Have students work in pairs to resolve any difficulties
• Students can complete them in OneNote Class Notebook so that you can start marking immediately and provide individual feedback

What types of questions should you ask?

• Open-ended questions can help to assess student actual knowledge and understanding of the content and also reveal any misconceptions.
• Questions that assess the basic straightforward content as opposed to questions that require students to apply their knowledge  to a new and unfamiliar situation (this helps to build confidence). Applying knowledge to common situations that have been covered in class is fine.
• Multiple choice questions - As these are often time consuming to write consider using an open ended question that had been on a previous quiz and use common misconceptions as the distractor answers. After students attempt the quiz, you could let them work in pairs or groups to compare their answers - students will quickly be able to argue why their answer is correct over the other options.
• Short answer questions - anything that takes the students too long to complete defeats the purpose of this type of quiz.

A few other considerations:

• Design a quiz template that you use for the quizzes, so that students come to know what to expect and be comfortable and relaxed with the process.
• Quizzing is best done as a review activity rather than immediately before or after teaching a piece of content, thus a quiz of the prior days work does not gain the same benefits - (McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L., III, 2011/2). Whilst there may be some benefit to quizzing the day after you have taught something, for consolidation, it is important that this is not eh only type of quizzing that you do.
• Make sure that whatever you decide to implement is sustainable and manageable within your context.

References:

• Agarwal, P. K., D'Antonio, L., Roediger, H. L., III, McDermott, K. B., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Classroom-based programs of retrieval practice reduce middle school and high school students' test anxiety. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3(3), 131–139. Retrieved from http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/TELC/Agarwal_DAntonio_Roediger_etal_2014.pdf
• McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L., III (2011/2). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology. Retrieved from http://psych.wustl.edu/learning/documents/mcdaniel_jep.pdf