Are you taking grading home with you regularly? Do you feel overwhelmed just looking at the student turn-in basket? It’s time to streamline your grading, and I’m going to help you save hours of time! When I was a new teacher, I felt like I had to grade everything students
As a teacher, formative assessment (ie: ungraded check-ins) are something you should be doing every day. Yes, every day. If that sounds overwhelming, it shouldn’t. You do not have to check in every day with a fancy exit ticket or Google form, it can be something simple (more on this
Bell work… Bell ringers… Do-nows… Warm ups. Whatever you call them, it is important to have some sort of routine at the beginning of the class period. Your day will run so much smoother when students walk into class and know what to begin working on without being told. I
As we near the end of the school year, it’s fun to change up the way you assess students. Students’ brains are fried from state exams- lets give them some other ways to demonstrate their learning other than a multiple choice assessment! Here are some ideas to get your juices
Have you ever tried out choice boards with your students? I love them because they give students some voice and choice in their learning. Choice boards provide a variety of ways for students to demonstrate they have mastered a concept. Your students that love to write can choose to answer
When I was in college taking education courses I had 2 professors who harped on rubrics. Their logic was that rubrics placed students into a box and didn’t allow for any flexibility and creative thinking. I left college thinking rubrics were a terrible way to assess students. Fast forward to
If you haven’t used small student whiteboards in your classroom, I promise you, you are missing out. As soon as the whiteboards come out, I have automatic buy-in from students. Students love writing on them, and as a teacher I love them because they are great for visual learners, and
When we ask students to review each other’s work and give feedback, we often hear…“Why did you do that?” or“It’s just wrong.” or“It’s good” (even when it’s not). Teaching students to give effective feedback is hard and takes a lot of student practice. And then more practice. If you are
Card sorts are one of my favorite tried-and-true ways to formatively assess my students. I use them all the time!1. You can use them at the beginning of a lesson to check for prior knowledge2. You can use them in the middle of a lesson as a checkpoint for the
Want a fun way to change up how you assess your students? While there is value in giving multiple choice assessments (students need to have these test taking skills to pass the ACT and SAT), I also like to change it up. Not all students do well with multiple choice
Since I started teaching, I always got my students trained pretty quickly to start working on bellwork when they came in to class. It is a great way for them to have a few minutes to settle down, remember what we learned the previous day, and also gives me time
