The Whip-Around

I just finished discussing ideas for checking for student understanding with a teacher I'm coaching and, of course, found myself bringing up one of my all-time favorites: the Whip-Around. I believe I blogged about this particular strategy last year, so it may sound familiar to those of you who are loyal readers. But, trust me -- it bears repeating. The Whip-Around is a great way to quickly and easily check for understanding (and you know how much I love CFU) and use that check to inform instruction.

[I must give credit where credit is due: I first learned about this strategy while reading Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey's awesome book, Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom -- I highly recommend it!]

Here's how it works:

1. Ask students to write down 3-5 things (the amount will probably depend on where you're at in the lesson) in response to a particular question. For example, if I'm teaching Lord of the Flies and we're on chapter 4, I might ask students to list 5 attributes of William Golding's writing style (especially if analyzing writing style is an objective of the unit).
2. Once students have completed their list, ask all students to stand. 
3. Now, call on a student randomly (or not randomly -- you may have certain students you want to make sure you touch base with directly). Ask the student to share one item from his/her list. 
4. Once this student has shared his/her one item, ask the rest of the class to check to see if they had the same item on their list. If they did, they should place a check mark beside it. If they did not, they should add it to their list.
5. Proceed in this fashion. Once all the items on a student's list have been shared (either by that student or by another), that student may sit down.
6. Continue to call on students until all students are seated.

A couple really important things have happened here. One -- students have had a chance to self-monitor their understanding a bit; they were able to add to their list items that they initially had not included. Two --you've had a great opportunity to check for understanding and to potentially adjust your instruction accordingly. As you were listening to students share their list items with the class, you may have realized that there were 2 or 3 things that no one brought up that you feel are really important for students to understand. Now, you can address those things with the whole class -- and maybe even check for understanding again, with a different method (I told you I loved CFU!!).

The Whip-Around works great as a summarizer to a lesson, but it can also be an effective activator when used to review as a class something learned the day before. You can even use it as a way to check for understanding during class -- perhaps 15 minutes into a content-heavy power point presentation.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!
(Watch out -- you might love it so much you get whiplash . . .)
(Sorry, that was a pretty bad joke.)