Engagement Checks
Engagement checks are
effective ways of both getting your class involved and completing quick formative
assessments. None of these are
particularly new, but some of them may have fallen off your playlist and are
worth bringing back.
Get Up and Move: I have signs on three walls of my class—Yes,
I know it. Maybe, I think I know
it. And No, I haven’t a clue. On any given activity, when I sense that
students are either tapering off (or just need to get up and out of their
seats), I have them stand up. I
introduce a concept (ie. Developed versus Undeveloped Characters) and ask them
to move to one of the three stations, and to talk with others in that group to
review or learn the concept. I then call
on a few students from Yes and Maybe to discuss the idea. After that I repeat the process two more
times, and send them back to their chairs.
Give One / Get One: I hand out a half sheet with five spaces for
“Give One” and five spaces for “Get One.”
I tell students that they must identify five ideas, facts or details
from the days’s lecture / reading / movie and write them out under “Give
One.” After five minutes, I tell them to
stand up and visit five people. For each
encounter, they must “give” one of the details they wrote down, and “get” one
from their partner. I ask them to put
names next to their “get” ones so we can trace the information back to
others. I also tell them that the ideas
must be unique. In other words, you
can’t record a “get one” detail if it is one you had already written in “give
one”.
Fingers: I use finger reads for a wide variety of
occasions. Sometimes I use a finger read
to get a feel for the emotional levels of a class. I say, “give me five fingers if this is the
best day ever, four if you are feeling pretty good, three if you are doing okay
but not great, . . .” etc. I also do
fingers on occasions when I want to see what options students are thinking
of. “Give me one finger if you plan to
do option one today, two fingers for option two, and three fingers for option three.” And sometimes, I use the finger activity to
determine their understanding of a task.
“Give me five fingers if you are confident about what to do next, four
if you are fairly certain, three if you think you know but are unsure, two if
you are confused, and one if you have absolutely no idea what is going
on.”
Concept Checks: Similar to the finger activity, I make a
chart on a half sheet of paper with four columns. In the first column, I list four or five
concepts or ideas we have studied. The
other columns are blank, but top rows are labelled, “I Don’t Know It,” “I Know
It,” and “I Know It So Well I Could Teach It.”
I have students indicate their current level of understanding by
checking the boxes that best apply for each concept. Then I have them turn and talk with a partner
to share what they know (specifically from the “I know it” category or “I know
it so well I can teach it” category).
Then I randomly call on three people to teach the class one of the
concepts.
Again, the beauty of an engagement check is
that they both allow the class to become more active, but they also give you
the means to generally assess their understanding as a class.
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