Despite the fact that our school has had AFL as its Professional Development focus for the past 4 years, there is still much that we can learn from one another about how best to use assessment to increase learning. To foster continuous learning and improvement, we will start many of our faculty meetings with an AFL-related discussion question. The results of our discussions will be posted on a Forum Discussion such as this so that our ideas can be archived and better shared with one another.
Question for 1/22/13
When you find that you have several minutes left in class and you have finished your day's lesson or activity, what is an example of an AFL-ish activity* that you "pull out of your hat" so that you can teach until the final tone?
*(AFL-ish activity refers to activities designed to give you and/or your students feedback so that you and/or they know specifically how well the day's lesson was understood.)
Replies
- ask students to summarize what they learned at the bottom of their notes
- gives kids an "outline" of what is coming next
- have them answer "what you know, what you don't know, and what you are going to do if you are stuck"
- ask a linking question to previous concepts
Depending on the program plan of the day, We find that having the students refer to Virginia Wizard Web site, can cover various areas of career, college planning, financial planning, college search and have the student find a career of choice and give a quick over view of the career of choice, or find a college of choice by using a college search, or one way to finance college. ect.
-student led review and/or key concepts discussion
-share a current event that relates to the day's lesson
I have index cards with student names on them. When I have time left, I sometimes start playing cards -- drawing names and asking questions.
FROM CAT: I use smart pals and have the students answer questions by holding their smart pal up or when we are studying diagrams they will practice drawing and labeling them. Sometimes we have flashcards that they can use to review terms or pair up concepts.
On behalf of English teacher table #1: We do things like asking review questions and jumping around the room, using exit tickets to have everyone write down one thing they don't understand or still have questions about, and practicing concepts like writing a sentence using whatever grammar/punctuation rule we practiced in class.
I give students a "Got it?" problem and walk around to see how well they are getting it and assist them if needed and address problems I see to the whole class. Sometimes I choose a random student to demonstrate the problem if time allows.
Jeff Bird uses Navigator software (practice SOL questions on computer) to review.
Get started on homework, exit ticket, discussion on current topic - related higher level thinking questions, getting to know kids time, quick quiz on vocab(verbal) calling on students individually ( from a few of the Science Department educators)
In Spanish, we call out vocabulary words and ask them the meaning or ask them to spell them. Some of us use exit slips in our dept or ask questions about the day's lessons. Another idea....use a small, soft ball to throw to a student to ask a question about the lesson in the target language. Then that student throws it to another student to ask a question.
1. Use individual white boards to check for understanding, 2. students individually assess their performance on a certain piece based on a scale from 1 to 5 showing with their fingers, and then make suggestions on how to improve their performance based on instruction given during class, 3. rapid fire questioning pointing at random students
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