Tag: formative assessment
-
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…
-
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…
-
Quick-writes to bring it all back to you
(In case the headline doesn’t bring it all back to you, here’s the song that’s currently playing in my head that inspired it) Quick-writes, a cousin to free-writes, is a strategy that gives students a chance to dive back into an idea after a long break, bring forward ideas from the previous night’s reading, or…
-
Point-of-view thinking as a response activity
Helping students to translate academese to everyday-human language is often one of the foundational goals of our classes. Yet, there never seem to be a lot of strategies for higher education teachers to target that particular need. Here’s where point-of-view responses can help. What is it? The point-of-view strategy allows students to think like a…
-
“Explain Your Choice”: Metacognition as a form of reflection with student work
I’ve spent all my teaching career working with students on production skills–writing, design, audio, video, photo, social media, and others. And throughout the last decade+, I’ve wrestled with how best to (1) have students reflect thoughtfully on their production work, (2) integrate more metacognitive practices into my classroom, and (3) find more opportunities for students…
-
Integrating classroom interactivity with Pear Deck
Finding the right classroom tech is difficult, especially when so many schools provide different types of access or have varying resources–and many have none. This post reflects on accessible educational technology (with premium trial and option) and easy to integrate into your classrooms using either Microsoft or Google. For transparency, I use the Google-based platform,…
-
Revisiting the syllabus: Paths toward successful course design
Constructing a syllabus can feel much more daunting of a task than the “syllabus week” sentiment carries. The power packed into that semi-annual document requires significant time and attention. This post provides a seven-step process to think big about your course and transform that thinking into your syllabus. Use this table of contents to jump…
-
Keeping up with the conversation: Assessing your discussion leadership
The fifth strategy of a five-part post about discussion strategies. These five strategies will help students to improve small-group communication while also allowing them to synthesize important course content in large-group discussions. It is appropriate and fair to see setting up discussions as one of the most difficult instructional strategies in our lessons. The easiest…
-
Keeping up with the conversation: Fishbowls
The fourth strategy of a five-part post about discussion strategies. These five strategies will help students to improve small-group communication while also allowing them to synthesize important course content in large-group discussions. It is appropriate and fair to see setting up discussions as one of the most difficult instructional strategies in our lessons. The easiest…
-
Keeping up with the conversation: Speed dating
The third strategy of a five-part post about discussion strategies. These five strategies will help students to improve small-group communication while also allowing them to synthesize important course content in large-group discussions. It is appropriate and fair to see setting up discussions as one of the most difficult instructional strategies in our lessons. The easiest…
Patrick R. Johnson, MJE 