Tag: assessment
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Four corners strategies: Using the room and movement to your advantage
When you first enter your classroom, what do you notice? Is it the location of all the exits, the types of seating, or the technology opportunities? Is it something else? Have you thought about the walls? This strategy helps us to use the corners in the room to help students to work through questions and…
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Cased-based teaching to promote critical process thinking
There are two types of case study-focused teaching. The first is the common practice of using case studies for deeper and more nuanced thinking about larger topics using a specific case to illustrate it. The second, the subject of this post, is creating cases to highlight critical thinking, process-focused learning, and student growth. This approach…
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Contract grading and the role of professionalism
When you ask educators what one of the worst parts of their jobs is, they will usually respond with “grading.” While it doesn’t have to be the worst part of our jobs, it certainly can be. And for those of us in professions-focused departments, schools, and colleges, grading doesn’t seem to reflect the professional expectations…
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How to elevate connections between students and their terms
Utilizing the Frayer Model provides unique chances to engage students with important vocabulary while formatively assessing their comprehension of reading and course concepts. One of the most common assumptions many of us make in our teaching is that students are on the same page as us when it comes to the terms we are using.…
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Using formative assessment to think in stairs, spirals, and scaffolds
Setting a foundation for thinking is essential for helping students build toward success. One of my favorite frameworks I learned in teaching school as an undergrad was the Zone of Proximal Development. It comes from educational theorist Lev Vygotsky’s (one of my most beloved thinkers) work in learning development, particularly his theory of sociocultural cognitive…
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How to shift point-focused reading assessments to engagement
Utilizing trivia and incentives provides a mix of enjoyment and encouragement for student learning. To begin, I am firmly against the way in which we frame grading and scoring currently. I think it is entirely unfair and unprofessional to tell students that nearly 60% of all of the potential graded outcome is labeled as “fail.”…
Patrick R. Johnson, Ph.D., MJE 