FA#1 Exit Ticket for 7th grade Earth Science Class: Topic H2O on Planet Earth. For this FA I wanted to capture students emerging ideas about fresh water on Earth's surface as they were leaving a lesson. An Exit ticket is a classic FA to garner this sort of information. My Exit ticket asked some pointed questions that strove to gather both factual and affective data. My reviews for this FA were positive and I received one constructive bit of feedback, that is whether I needed to scale back the amount of questions I used so that students would be able to finish the exit ticket in an appropriate amount of time. I could have included that I give students 10-15min to complete my exit tickets so they usually have enough time to get them done. With that said that, at times, can be too much instructional time spent on a FA. Based on this feedback I will have a quicker Exit Ticket prepared for when there is not as much time at the end of a class session. For example, I will have one exit ticket with 5 questions (see example #1) and one with only 3 questions (see example #2). In this way I will be prepared for situations where I do not have the full 10-15min to conduct the FA at the end of class. I will subtract questions depending on how well the class went and which questions I think are most important in unearthing the students knowledge.
EXAMPLE #1 EXIT TICKET (07/19/18): Earth SCIENCE Class_ Earth’s Surface Water: Instructions: Please carefully read the following questions and respond based on your own understanding, your reading last night and from what we learned in class today. Once you are done please place your Exit Ticket on my desk and you are free to go to your next period.
(1)What are the main sources of freshwater on Planet Earth?
(2)Which water source is the most important? Why do you think that?
(3)What are the main steps in the water cycle?
(4)What will happen to a puddle of water on a sunny hot day? Describe in detail (3 or more sentences).
(5)What do you find most interesting, thus far, in our unit on Earth’s Water?
Example #2 EXIT TICKET (07/19/18): Earth SCIENCE Class_ Earth’s Surface Water: Instructions: Please carefully read the following questions and respond based on your own understanding, your reading last night and from what we learned in class today. Once you are done please place your Exit Ticket on my desk and you are free to go to your next period.
(1) What are the main sources of freshwater on Planet Earth?
(2) What are the main steps in the water cycle?
(3) What will happen to a puddle of water on a sunny hot day? Describe in detail (3 or more sentences).
In addition to improving this exit ticket I want to continue to explore other ways to improve my use of this formative assessment tool. One way to do this is to tie it into a daily performance goal. For instance, in the Earth's water unit I could have had the students read that one of the goals for the day was to understand where most of the Earth's fresh water was located. At the end of the day they could "self" assess what they learned about this question in the form of the exit ticket questions. I could have the students at the end of class read off this performance goal before writing their response on the exit ticket. In this way my teaching goals are directly linked to the questions in the exit ticket. Here is a VIMEO of a teacher tying their exit ticket to the days performance tool.
FA#2 Card Sort for 10th grade Biology Class: Topic Viruses VS Cells:: Card sorts are an excellent way to determine how well students can categorize academic ideas and also collaborate with other students to make sense of how the pig picture (the models) of the ideas fit into the scientific compendium. For instance, it can be difficult for beginning Biology students to note some of the subtle differences between a cell and a virus as they have some similarities, even though their ultimate purpose is very different. To modify this FA I would use Sean's suggestion to have students discuss , as a whole class, "why" they decided to put certain cards in certain piles. In this way, as he says- the class can "correct" for students card misplacement and allow other students to come up with reasons why cards go where they do.
FA #3 - Jeopardy Game for 12th grade AP Environmental Science Class: Topic Climate Change:
I very much enjoy the days my classes do Jeopardy game formative assessments. During these classes students get animated around the competition and also get to share and learn from one another around some of the more difficult academic concepts that will be coming up on future tests. I do worry, sometimes, about the over "gamification" of education but I see the affective benefits of this sort of formative assessment (I appreciate Sackstein's (2018) thoughts on the value of "playful" formative assessment- read some of his ideas by clicking here)). I did not receive any specific suggestions for modifying the Jeopardy FA but it was noted by Sean the format can be confusing for 'younger' students. I think this is very true and even my high school students need to be reminded each time we play the game of the importance of phrasing their responses as questions rather than as answers.
FA #4 - Kahoot for 7th grade Math Class: Topic -Single Variable Equations:
As I mentioned in my FA write up, I am relatively new to Kahoot and have not used too much as a formative assessment in my classroom. Kahoot is another, more advanced way to gamify the education experience. I think now, after using it a few times I'm convinced of its authenticity as a useful tool that does not make light of the important content goals in science education. Even so, I know there has to be a balance between FA tools that use technology and those that are good old fashioned pen and paper (or white board and marker). Interestingly, some research has been done on applying Kahoot as a FA in Science Education. In one study (Ismail, Muhdai and Mohammad, Jamilah, 2017) found that Kahoot made learning "fun and enjoyable" and motivated students in a pre-med class to learn. Where it was less effective, said the authors, was in simplifying complex topics that required more rigorous steps to unpack (p.19). I have not used Kahoot very much but I imagine that it would be difficult to use its format for formatively assessing students knowledge of complex, multi-step biological process such as in understanding the human endocrine system.
With all of my formative assessments a big strategy I use is to collect and archive them all in a systematic, easy to access and utilize format on Schoology (my learning management system of choice). By having all of my FAs available and connected to the day, student and topic being taught I can see how individual students are progressing over time. For qualitative data that I collect some of my data is more of a written summary and can at times be less specific to a particular student and more a generalization about how the class worked together (such as on teams during a jeopardy game). Other sets of data (such as with Kahoot) are more quantitative and give me more specific data that I can track by looking at their scores after playing a particular Kahoot game on a particular day covering a particular topic. This data can also be used in discussing student progress with parents who can then better support their learners at home. Here is a link to the Schoology LMS if you are not familiar with it.
After reading in the cohort discussion thread about others ideas for using portfolios as a way to collect FA's I wondered how many people combine the power of a LMS with the benefits of students engaged in portfolio learning. I can imagine that putting them together could amplify the benefits of both, for one allowing there to be a central place for portfolio work to be stored (on the LMS) and for another the search-ability of a LMS like Schoology for portfolio information could make the portfolios much more useful both to the teacher as an assessment tool and for the students to determine where they are at in building their portfolio.
Works Cited:
Ismail, Muhdai and Mohammad, Jamilah, (2017). Kahoot. A Promising Tool for Formative Assessment in Medical Education. Education in Medicine Journal. 9 (2) 19-26.
Sackstein, Starr (April 3,2018). Creating Epic Moments with Playful Formative Assessment. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2018/04/creating_epic_moments_playful_.html
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