Thursday, October 25, 2012

Tuesday Teaching Strategy - Index Card Assessment



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
-          Use this strategy as an exit slip from the classroom.
-          Integrate this strategy as a break during lecture or following a class discussion.
-          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
-          Watching videos is not a bad thing, watching videos without stopping for understanding is.  Use this strategy to check for understanding during a video.
-          This would be a helpful strategy in understanding primary documents or readings in the classroom as well.
-          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.

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