Snapshots
There are a number of ways to get very quick, very informal responses on the fly from students. These include:
Fist to Five. This is a means of surveying a whole class and getting a quick sense of their understanding by asking every student to hold up one hand and raise from zero to five fingers as a form of assessment. For instance, when you are about to have students review their homework, it is often worth asking, “How well did you understand the homework you just completed?” A five would mean “I finished it and understand it well enough to be able to teach it”, a four might mean “I finished it, but have some questions”, a two might mean “I didn’t finish it”, and, of course, a fist means “I didn’t do it”. Similarly, while lecturing, you might ask for a survey about how well each student understood what you just said. And if you want to know whether the pace of the class is appropriate, ask them to rate it where five means “I’ve got it, let’s move on”, and one means “You are going much too fast.”
Stoplight. You can give little slips of green, yellow, and red paper to each student. During a lecture, you can ask periodically for them to hold up one color. Green means “I understand, keep going”, yellow means “slow down, I need to hear that again”, and red means “stop! I’m lost”.
Thumbs up. This is a variation on stoplight, where a student holds a thumb up for green, sideways for yellow, and down for red.
Digital snapshots. If you have access to the necessary technology, there are, of course, a number of digital ways to do quick, informal snapshots. These can be feedback to the teacher, but can also allow whole class polling to be made visible by projecting results onto a screen.
Check-ups
These are slightly more formal and detailed feedback structures than snapshots. They typically involve asking a student to answer a question or two to show her level of mastery. Techniques include:
In-class check-up. This is similar to the ticket to leave, but can be given in the midst of a lecture, for instance, or following the introduction of a new skill. This might consist of a problem to be solved on a quarter or half sheet of paper. Once it is collected, the answer can be handed out or projected onto a screen; this can lead to a differentiated activity or “sharing the wealth” through conversations between those who got it right and those who didn’t.
Ticket to leave. Have a student fill out a quarter piece of paper answering a question, or writing a short statement about what she has learned in class. She turns that in to you as she is leaving the class. You can have her answer a specific question or write about what she thinks is the most important idea she heard today. The ticket can also be a reflective exercise, asking her to write about her experience in class, for instance, or how she is feeling about the pace of the class.
White boards. If you are working with material that can be represented visually — problem solving, graphing, questions with single word or short phrased answers, map-related material, etc. — one way to check up on student mastery is to have each student write an answer to a question with a dry erase marker on an 8 by 10 or larger piece of whiteboard. Every student then holds her answer up at the same time. Each student will need a whiteboard, a marker, and a 4 by 4 inch piece of felt or some other form of eraser.
Structural feedback
Feedback can also be woven into the workings of the class without requiring any active participation by the teacher or other students. For instance, homework can include mechanisms like helpful hints and answer keys that help students assess their own level of learning. These techniques are discussed further in “The Role of Student Work”.
Reflective writing. Whenever appropriate, students can be asked to write about their comfort with the current material, the pace of the class, or the classroom structures themselves. Reflective writing is explored in more detail below.
Steering committees. As described in “Creating the Classroom Culture”, creating a sense of student ownership requires structures that give them a voice. One way is to create steering committees of students who volunteer to discuss and solve issues that you or they feel need to be addressed. This is primarily a form of feedback from the student body to the teacher, and it can be a very powerful tool, indeed.
Learning Contracts. Whether you are using minicontracts or unit contracts, it is useful to leave plenty of blank space in the margins for your comments.
Formative assessments. As described in “Making Tests Meaningful”, if assessments are truly formative — that is, if there is a way for students to directly learn from their mistakes — then the quiz or test itself can be seen as feedback. The question of how to help students to see incorrect answers in this way is explored in the chapter “Learning Contracts”.
Mid-quarter reports. Many schools require teachers to fill out forms to communicate with parents about their student’s academic progress. No matter how this feedback appears — whether it’s a selection from a list of attributes or a short written or digital communication — it is often possible for students to participate in the process. If you are required to choose at least 3 attributes from a list, for instance, you can have students choose 2 while you choose a 3rd. If you disagree with the students’ self-assessment, that can lead to an important conversation about their level of self-awareness.
Grade conferences. The purpose of grade conferences is to have a conversation between you and each student in which you can also give them feedback on their performance and how to improve it. They can also give you feedback on how you can better help them. Grade conferences are explored fully below.