Topic 7. Ed Teach Journal 1

The technology that I integrate the most is student response systems and the active board.  I find them a useful tool for formative assessment.  The students like them because they receive immediate feedback.  An active board, a set of student response systems, LCD projector, and a computer are required. 

The most recent lesson using the student response system was practicing with multiple choice questions and thesis statements.  A few days before the first test, I could tell the students needed more practice with multiple choice strategies and writing thesis statements for change over time essays. 

I gave the students a 5 question multiple choice quiz at the beginning of class.  They completed the quiz on paper.  Once all students were finished, I had the students text in their response to the first question.  I then displayed the results.  We noted which answers were most popular and then minimized the results.  The question was already typed on the screen.  I then modeled how to eliminate distractors to arrive at the correct answer.  As we eliminated distractors, students were given feedback about why their answer was incorrect. 

Since I know which voter each student is using, I can tell which students are consistently answering incorrectly.  After class that day or the next day, I asked them what was happening during the practice quiz.  Some said they simply didn’t know the information and realized they needed to study more.  Other students struggled with the multiple choice questions, but said they felt more confident after the explanations I gave. 

After we finished with the multiple choice quiz, I divided the students into groups and had them write thesis statements about political changes in India.  The students had already been working on outlining this essay topic the day before.  Each group was instructed to write a thesis statement.  Each group then texted the thesis statement using the voter.  I copied and pasted each statement onto a flipchart page.  The groups then used the voters to rank the statements:  1.  no credit, 2.  partial credit, 3.  full credit.      After reviewing the results, students came to the board to suggest improvements to statements that did not score a 3. 

Most of the statements ended up being 2s and a few were 3s.  Students who scored 2s were able to see where they were making mistakes.  Most of the students had a correct thesis or at least a correctly formatted thesis on their change over time essay later that week. 

While this lesson took longer than going over the quiz and statements verbally, most students got more out of the lesson.  Some of the students who are good at multiple choice were bored during that part of the lesson.  However, the students seemed more engaged in the writing lesson than they normally are.