The Exit Ticket of the 21st Century

I love exit tickets. I think they are a simple, quick way to check for student understanding during or at the end of a lesson, and, through some simple, quick analysis, can inform further instruction. So, please know that in no way I am advocating we say good-bye to the exit ticket.

Instead, I'd like to offer up a new way of thinking about exit tickets, in case you want to tap into some technology and mix it up a bit. I often recommend teachers vary their ways of checking for understanding and their activators and summarizers, because I think variety can keep students engaged and invested. So, "modernizing" the exit ticket is just one more tool to add to the ol' toolkit. 

I can't take any credit for this idea -- I stumbled across it via the following blog from Edutopia. Check it out by clicking here. Heads-up: you may or may not agree with everything this blogger states (check out some of the post's comments for some interesting debate and extensions to the ideas). But, the ideas included about using some digital exit tickets are worth some thought. If you've got the digital means and access, why not try some out and see how it goes? I'd love to hear from anyone who's either interested in doing this OR who tries it out and can report back on how it went.

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.)

CFU -- My Favorite Educational Acronym

Alternate title #1: One Great Way to Use a Whiteboard
Alternate title #2: Can I Have an Academic Crush on an Object?

Hi there, readers!

I'm taking a break from my series on Kelly Gallagher's ah-may-zing reading instruction ideas to divulge to you a little secret: I have yet another academic crush, and this time it's on an object. I know what you're thinking . . . after all, this is the fifth or sixth (losing track doesn't make it worse, does it?) academic crush I've written about and now I'm confessing to crushing on, of all things, a mini-whiteboard (but did I mention it comes with its own marker and adorable mini-eraser?). Rest assured, readers, my marriage is healthy and intact despite these academic crushes. Even those on objects. But you can't judge me too harshly for this one -- mini-whiteboards are so fun and great. AND here's the kicker -- they are so useful to CFU.

(Gasp! You're not familiar with mini-whiteboards? Here's a link to the website for The Markerboard People, which is where I got mine: http://www.dryerase.com/.)

Because what the education world needs right now is another acronym, I thought I'd tell you about my personal favorite (yes, I have academic crushes and favorite acronyms, but who doesn't?). CFU stands for Check for Understanding. And since I'm obsessed with ways to informally and formally assess student understanding (especially those opportunities to assess mid-way through a lesson), I find myself talking about, thinking about, and writing about checking for understanding so often that I just had to abbreviate it to its lovely acronym.

Here's where my two loves, CFU and the lovely mini-whiteboard, intersect. Mini-whiteboards offer an amazingly simple and effective way to check for understanding during a lesson.
Here's an example:

I've been coaching a teacher lately on finding more ways to CFU during a lesson. This way he doesn't have to wait until the very end of a lesson to see if students have been following him and understanding what's being taught. This teacher is lucky enough to be blessed with a class set of mini-whiteboards (and markers and mini-erasers . . . have I mentioned how adorable the mini-erasers are?), so I was psyched to show him how he could use these to CFU.

Yesterday, we tried it out. After a certain portion of the lesson during which a new term had been explored, we wanted to know if students really understood the meaning of the term. So, we posed a multiple choice question to them with four options defining the term. We asked students to write their letter choice (A, B, C, or D) on their boards (they keep these boards under their seats -- markers and erasers are also kept under their seats in pencil cases) and to hold them up on the count of 3. At 3, all students held up their boards and we were able to see that all but 2 of the students chose the correct answer. This let us know that the majority of the class could move right along with the next task -- some practice with partners on the topic being taught -- while the teacher could work with the 2 struggling students until they fully understood the term's meaning, at which point they could rejoin their classmates in working on the next task.

You can also do this kind of CFU with a Smartboard as long as you have those fancy clickers (that's the correct technical term, right?) handy. It doesn't matter which you use, really . . . the really important piece of this is that you've found a way to quickly and informally CFU. This doesn't have to only happen during a lesson as in the above example, either. Use the mini-whiteboard as a way to pre-assess before a lesson begins, or as a way to CFU at the end of a lesson during a summarizer.

My biggest practical tip involving this strategy? Only use the mini-whiteboards as a CFU tool if you can ask students something that requires a very short answer (such as a multiple choice question for which they only have to write their letter choice on the board). With very short answers, you can easily and quickly scan all the boards as they are raised and determine where students are at with their understanding. Longer answers are harder to quickly scan -- you may need to think of another CFU tool to use if this is the case. But don't worry -- there are so many great CFU tools -- I've got a million of 'em! (Hyperbole alert -- I don't really have a million CFU tools, but I do have a decent amount.)

Have you joined the mini-whiteboard fan club yet? I hope so. As president, we're always looking for new members.
Happy Checking for Understanding!