Quick Ways to Assess in Math
Assessment is a vital part of teaching. Without feedback teachers don’t have the information they need to see if a child “gets it” or not. However, most educators think of assessment in terms of tests such as those from the state, district, or school. In math daily quick assessments can be easily done without much if any more work on the part of the teacher. Consider these ideas for adding informal ways to gauge a child’s understanding of a concept.
Walk the Room-While students are working on assignments, walk around the room and note who understands the work and who doesn’t. “Is it simply computation? Is it not understanding what fractions are? Is it not checking back over work?” As you gather this information, what do you do with it? Decide whether to stop and teach at that moment, have another student help the child, or wait to pull small groups for remediation or for more challenging work.
Talk to Students-While you circulate around the room or work with a child one-on-one, you need to talk to your students to find out what they’re thinking. “Tell me what you’re thinking when you work these elapsed time problems?” “You seem to be working the problems using a different strategy. Describe it.” Hearing what children are thinking gives valuable insight into in how to help them or challenge them. Again, you decide whether it’s a teachable moment or requires small group work.
Quick Quiz-Give your students 5 problems to complete. They should range from easiest to hardest. Looking over the papers after students have turned them in gives you some quick insight into the level on which a child is currently working. Information like this, also, lets you know if you need to go back and reteach the entire class or work with students in groups based on where their comprehension breaks down.
Whole Class-Give your students the opportunity to work on individual white boards or large paper. Have every student solve a problem on the white board/paper. Then have them turn the board around to show you at a given signal. You can scan the room and see who is able to correctly work the problem and who is not. An example might be to have students draw an acute angle, simplify a fraction, show the answer using expanded form, or create a space with an area of 18 cm.
In essence quick, informal assessments yield the most useful information when you monitor your students as they work and see when they begin to struggle, have an aha moment, or gain a greater understanding of the material at hand. If we can reach children at the point of breakdown in comprehension, we are more likely to clear up the confusion.
When a teacher teaches, no matter how well he or she might design a lesson, what a child learns is unpredictable. Children do not always learn what we teach. That is why the most important assessment does not happen at the end of learning – it happens during the learning, when there is still time to do something with the information. Dylan Wiliam