A couple days late...been out of the office....
Index Card Assessment
An index card assessment takes
advantage of the small size of index cards to quickly construct a portrait of
students' understanding. On one side of a card, students write something
positive in response to the day's learning, such as a summary of the class, an
interesting fact learned, or a concept that finally makes sense. On the
opposite side, students identify what they do not understand by describing
their confusion or asking a question.
With an index card assessment,
identifying the person who does not understand a concept is less important than
discovering what is not understood. Therefore, consider reinforcing anonymity
by creating a drop box in which students can place their index cards as they
exit the classroom. Upon collecting the cards, list students' comments and questions
and use the list to identify patterns in students' understanding.
Index Card Assessment provides a
valuable tool in progress monitoring, formative assessment, and
re-teaching. The information from the activity can be used to determine
what needs to be retaught the following class to ensure understanding.
This teaching method allows you to tally which parts were misunderstood the
most.
Potential Implementation
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Use this strategy
as an exit slip from the classroom.
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Integrate this
strategy as a break during lecture or following a class discussion.
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Need to fill time
at the end of a quiz or test, ask students to explain what they found easy and
what they found difficult
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Watching videos
is not a bad thing, watching videos without stopping for understanding
is. Use this strategy to check for understanding during a video.
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This would be a
helpful strategy in understanding primary documents or readings in the
classroom as well.
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Math problems
often require multiple steps and some students struggle with certain
steps. This could be a way to find out which part they don’t understand.
