Options that are not discussion-based
EL Education Core Practice 29: Checking for Understanding in Daily Instruction
Teachers…
- Ask sequenced, pre-planned strategic questions that deepen critical thinking and build students’ understanding of the concept or skill in the lesson.
- Require students to use evidence from the text or data sets to support their answers.
- Debrief lessons to help students reflect upon their individual or collective progress.
- [Monitor] what students collectively know or can do and identify common misconceptions; periodically pause instruction to address misconceptions.
Text-Based Formative Assessments
Using Inner Orbit
+ Next Generation Science Standards aligned
+ Provides opportunity to create do nows, exit slips, quizzes, and tests through text-based tasks
+ Wide range of topics to pick from
Using Actively Learn
+ Allows you to chunk a text and embed questions
+ Integrates with Google Classroom
+ Teacher can upload a text or use something from a library of published texts (classics, nonfiction, etc); great for world language tasks
Using News ELA
+ Similar functions as Actively Learn, including the ability to embed close reading questions
+ Offers up to 5 different lexile levels of the same text for differentiation
+ Creates quizzes for all texts
+ Has bank of readings related to EL Education Literacy Curriculum (separate level of access and may not be free to schools)
Audio-Video Student Responses
Using Flipgrid
+ Allows students to respond to a prompt through a brief video and respond to each other’s videos through a video
+ Easy to launch, no accounts needed
+ Cell phone compatible
+ Videos are taken directly; does not require use of data from devices to upload
+ Students have option to add “stickers” to their video (emojis, words, etc)
+ Helps you add variety to the types of tasks you assign, switch modalities
Δ Students are able to see each other’s videos without teachers’ prior review
Δ May require some preparation and norming. As video is a relatively new classroom format, students may unintentionally demonstrate behavior deemed “inappropriate,” feel self-conscious about their appearance, etc.
See More Tools & Resources
Online Tools for Virtual Project-Based Learning
Discussion Tools
Asynchronous Teaching Tools: Facilitating Students Leading Their Own Learning