Inspire & Innovate: A Podcast for Educators

It’s easy to teach a unit.  The hard part is designing the right assessment to see what each student has absorbed, individually and collectively.  The even harder part is finding time to analyze what they turn in to see what has been learned.  And the nearly impossible part is then following up to provide each individual student the missing piece of the puzzle.  This week, the very not-sexy but oh-so-important question:  How can we best check for student understanding? 

 

This week, hosts Toby Lowe, Rachel Scott, and Julie Rust were joined by an amazing crew of educators: Tiffany Busby (second grade) Burton Williams-Inman (ninth grade history), and Kari East (middle school learning facilitator).  Our conversation ranged from the importance of articulating foundational learning objectives to the joys of sticky notes and desk pets. Listen to the whole chat, or jump to what you are interested in below:

 

3:33-6:37: Think high school teachers only lecture? Think again.  Burton reminds us there are so many ways for youth to access information outside of passively listening; and has the reassuring news that as a teacher “you are probably [checking for understanding] all the time . .  reading the room to see what kids are picking up and not picking up.”

 

6:38-9:00: On the value of student talk, and the importance of documenting what we learn from it. 

 

9:20-11:30: Tiffany shares her genius one-standard-per-sticky note check for the day strategy!

 

11:37-13:47: The importance of co-constructing “big rock” standards as a school to know whether what you are teaching in your grade level is foundational, spiraled practice, or an end-point of full proficiency.

 

13:53-18:38: Why Toby considers learning facilitators like Kari, “like a teacher but HELPFUL!”; and the vital importance of creating a low stakes/no stakes safe environment in your classroom to encourage student questioning. 

 

18:40-23:05: How centers or stations can carve out precious time in any grade level for small group check-ins with groups of students.  

 

23:05-23:42:  The surprising reason teachers of middle and upper school students are sometimes pressured into traditional lecture style classes.  

 

23:43-28:15: What it really means when students say a particular teacher “doesn’t know how to teach,” and how realistic are our expectations for students in monitoring their own understanding and clearly articulating the questions that they have? 

 

28:20-32:32:  Why we should all be making THE MOST CRINGEY POSSIBLE videos with our teaching teams to model question-asking strategies for our students.

 

32:33-35:50: Rachel’s favorite strategy for checking for understanding: teach the teacher!

 

35:50-37:15: How making a class newspaper is a powerful way to facilitate individual research that moves into a collaborative project.  

 

37:17:37:37:  What we are really talking about in all of this is building toward student agency: kids having the ability to teach themselves.

 

38:10-39:03: Burton’s commercial for the many varieties of the classic and very basic google form exit ticket! “It can serve in so many ways: beginning of class from previous lesson, open ended question about the day . . . You can make it closed note or open note”; the possibilities are endless!

 

39:22-41:22: Tiffany’s embrace of “challenges” to do a quick check of what students did and didn’t understand immediately following a lesson . . . and the surprising motivational value of deskpets!

 

42:33-43:33: Why Kari advocates for a good low stakes/not stakes self check in which students do a 5-7 question worksheet and then check themselves; also shout out for non-permanent vertical learning spaces (VNPS)! 

 

43:40-44:44:  No wiser words from Toby were ever said: there are no shortcuts to doing this work well. “You just need to strap in for ‘it’s gonna be more work, but it’s gonna be worth it.’”