Even though I really enjoy hearing the conversations that go on when my students do a Hexagonal Learning activity, my students will tell you that the playlist assessment is actually their favorite when it comes to demonstrating their understanding of a novel. According to them, they enjoy being able to work independently on this assignment, and … Read more
Even though I’ve already mentioned Hexagonal Learning a couple of other times on this blog, it definitely bears repeating. If you want to listen to your students having rich conversations about a topic and to discover how well they understand something they have read or that you have taught, this activity will deliver. And, although … Read more
I am attending SXSWedu in Austin, TX this week. You can see the posts that I’ve published so far to summarize my learning here and here. Our K-5 school is about to embark on an interesting journey. We are working on “throwing out the grades.” Instead of averages in each subject, parents will be receiving feedback … Read more
If you are reading this post because the title excited you, I am sorry to say that I do not know of a simultaneous back channel/polling app. This post is to request your help in finding one! I recently got a great comment on my post about using Socrative as a Back Channel. The commenter, a … Read more
I love getting informal feedback from my students during lessons, and usually use the Socrative app for this in my classroom. Socrative is wonderful, and works on practically any device, but it certainly works better if you have more than one device in your classroom. Obviously, not everyone has this luxury. So, I was very … Read more
In this blog post by Kathleen Perret on “Learning is Growing”, she gives a list of great ideas for informally assessing the learning of your students. These are quick techniques to use at the end of a lesson just to check if your intended message got across. Although I have used some of these, there are … Read more