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There are several different assessing methods that I want to use in my future classroom. First one is “Five Finger Rule”. I actually learned about this method in one of my summer math classes in a different way. A teacher present one math problem and let students show their finger. Each finger means different methods of solving the given problem. Then teachers can see which students got how many methods. But, in this chapter, I really liked another way of “Five Finger Rule”. Stents put up 0 or 1 finger when they feel that they don’t understand the concepts or problems. And two fingers mean the students are starting to understand and 3 fingers, they are just right. Lastly, the students put up 4 or 5 fingers when they think they could teach it to peers. I think this can be great resource to assess students’ mathematical ability or readability.

The second tool is Kahoot. I really liked this tool, because I can control each part in this tool. I can make a question which I think is important in chapters. I can attach photos or videos on it too. Also, I can make multiple choices problems and can control the time limits on each question. Students will use their phones or ipads for this activity. One of the best thing for me was I can analyze the students’ work later, which part of the questions were the students confused. Then I can talk about this again on the next class. https://getkahoot.com/

I think both of these tools will be effective to assess literacy of my students in my future classrooms.

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One great formative assessment tool for a math class is Desmos (https://teacher.desmos.com/). This is a great resource as it allows the teacher to see in real-time where each student is in the assessment and it save student work for future analysis. For assessing content literacy in Math, Desmos can be used to give students a place, both to show their work and explain their math mathematical reasoning (as in the picture attached below which is an example of a desmos slide used by the math cohort in one of our lessons). It also has the capacity to allow students to circle, choose, or create an expression, graph, picture, etc. that summarizes the problem they were given. Students could even manipulate different graphs provided by the teacher. Thus, it's flexibility allows it to assess literacy within a wide range of mathematics topics. The main draw back to this assessment tool is that it requires each student to have a tablet, phone, or computer with internet access in order to use it. So, in case when these are not available, I would use an exit ticket. This allows you to get much of the same information, and it lets you keep the data to analyze, while being low-tech! It's main drawbacks would be that the data is harder to compile for analysis and students wouldn't be able to manipulate graphs or images.

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A tool I think has great potential in a geometry class is GeoGebra (https://www.geogebra.org). This could be used as a formative assessment tool for many parts of geometry. It allows teachers to create activities (assessments!) which students can complete. Each student will be signed in to GeoGebra with their own account, and their individual work is submitted to the teacher.

An example of using this in a geometry class would be an activity which asks students to create some triangles with basic properties. For instance, "create an equilateral triangle", then "what would be the measurement of each angle", followed by "show the measurements of each angles on your triangle. Does this agree with your prediction?" This single question can assess whether students understand what a triangle is (basic), what it means to be equilateral, and what the angle measurement should be in this case, and allow them to confirm this. You could also extend this to "what are the side lengths, and how do they compare". You could do this for another sort of triangle, for instance, a right triangle (what makes it "right", what are all the angle measures, what are the side lengths, is there a relationship between side length...".

GeoGebra can be a powerful tool for assessment in a math classroom, allowing teachers to assess both content and literacy in the subject. By giving students feedback on the activity as well as an opportunity to correct any errors, it truly becomes a formative assessment for learning.

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Formative assessments are an important and necessary part of a classroom. It's a great way to assess how a student is grasping a concept and my favorite way of giving back students feedback on how to to achieve the learning goals.

My favorite assessment tool is the exit ticket. This is usually in a paper format given at the end of class. In terms of Bloom's taxonomy, I prefer that the questions are used to apply and evaluate their content knowledge. I think that this is one of the most complete way of seeing a student's thought process, if the student is required to show their work & explain. The best part about an exit ticket is the ability of the teacher to return the students work with comments and suggestions. Unlike with most forms of online assessments, this allows you to pinpoint misconceptions, have students recognize this in their own work, and provide a pathway to learning. This dialogue between student and teacher also allows more students to be reached out to, and gets students on focusing on learning goals rather than the right answer.

Another assessment tool that I have seen in the classroom is a "green, yellow, and red cup" method. Each student has three cups at their table. The students work on a problem individually and they place one of the cups on top of their paper. If it's a green cup, then the student is confident that he knows how to do the problem. A yellow cup means that they got stuck somewhere or forgot the next step, but they know how to start the problem or what the goal is. A red cup signifies that they need clarifications before starting the problem or don't know where to start. Then they must talk to everyone in their group (2 to 4 students) and see if they can help each other out. After the group has talked to each other, the teacher goes to the group and asks one person to discuss what they have found, or where they are stuck and gives them feedback or guiding questions. This makes it so every member of the group has to know what is going on before they can ask questions to the teacher. I think this type of assessment allows students a more relaxed setting than just a regular assessment and makes it accessible for students that have a fear of asking a teacher a question. It's also a quick visual way to see where your classroom stands while they work on the problem individually. From there you can monitor the students that had a "red cup" to see that they are actually learning from the other students, or if there's a lot of red cups then you know that the topic has to be explained again.

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THUMBOMETER
One of our math cohort teachers uses a formative assessment technique they call "fist to chest." They shows a question to us students, then give us a minute to think without writing anything down. When we have an answer, we silently put a fist to our chest, raising a finger for each additional strategy we think of.

Recently when teaching a math lesson to high school juniors, I was unsure whether students had grasped a concept from their scaffolded seatwork with a substitute the previous day. I had planned to summarize that concept briefly then take the majority of class to work on a new one. As I began talking about the review concept, I could get no sense of whether the staring faces found it familiar or not. Impulsively, I stopped explaining and asked for some quick feedback using a formative assessment I refer to as the Thumbometer. It is similar to Fist to Chest, but instead of using a fist and adding fingers, students simply show a thumbs up, down, or sideways to indicate how they felt about that concept. In about 10 seconds, I got a classwide scan. To my surprise, many students showed a thumbs down or to the side, and I was so glad I had asked! I decided to spend much more time exploring the previous day's topic before moving ahead.

Being able to get feedback that quickly made this approach very appealing to me, and I'll use it when I want to know students' general confidence with a concept. If I need to know what aspects of a concept students did or did not understand, I would turn to a more detailed formative assessment, like an exit ticket.

The most common variation of the Thumbometer is the "Fist to Five" technique shown below.
http://pldthenisway.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/6/8/15682018/fist_to_five.pdf

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Formative assessment is a great way for me to gauge how a student is doing in my agriculture classes so I use it regularly.  In my classroom, I try to use a few different ways to assess the students to make sure the material/class time stays engaging.   A few of my methods use technology and a few are regular pen and paper.

One of favorite assessment tools is using Nearpod.  Nearpod is an interactive presentation tool with built in assessments.  Within Nearpod there is 2 options for presenting notes; as a teacher you are able to either control the pace in which you go through the slides or you can give the students the option of going through them by themselves.  As you or the students are going through the slides, you are able to build in several different methods of assessment.  Some of these methods include multiple choice, true/false, short answer, drawing or matching.  This is a great tool to check the understanding of the students as well as a classroom management tool.

Another assessment tool I use for review in my classroom is Kahoot.  I am able to make or find different quizzes online and then the students are able to go through the questions and competitively answer review questions.  This is also a great tool to check students understanding while engaging them in the content.

The last type of assessment I use often is daily reflections.  The students do this with their last minute or two of class everyday.  I have a reflection guideline on each table where the students roll a die and they have to answer the question with the coordinating number.  By having the students do this, I get to gauge how the students are doing on a daily basis and check for any misunderstandings or areas where the students would like to learn more to adjust the lesson for the next day.  It is nice because the students get into a routine and enjoy seeing which question they have to answer that day.

Although there many different types of assessment tools these are my favorite. Assessments are an important component to the classroom and work best if used in an engaging form.

Dice roll reflection:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/237142736601452286/

Nearpod:
https://nearpod.com/

Kahoot:
https://getkahoot.com/

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One of my all-time favorite assessment tools is the use of mini white boards. These are a relatively low-cost way to get all students involved.  The thing that really draws me to the idea of using mini white boards is the fact that it allows both the high flyers and struggling students to engage.
In the mini white board assessment, teachers will ask questions to the entire group of students.  Rather than calling on a single student, the teacher will ask all of the students to answer on their mini white board and display it to the teacher when they are finished.  This formative assessment tool allows the teacher to see everyone's responses, not just a sample of the class.  This also gives teachers the ability to acknowledge the work of multiple students at one time.

The second assessment tool that intrigues me is the popsicle randomizer.  In this technique, teachers determine which students will be called on by pulling out sticks with each of their names from a jar.  This allows the teacher to hear from more than just the same students every day.  I really like the popsicke stick idea because already in middle school I see the same 5 kids raise their hands for every question.  I would like to make one change to the popsicle stick idea: I think students should be given one "phone a friend" per day.  If a student is really uncomfortable answering a question, they can phone a friend for help.  If a student uses their phone a friend, the friend's stick is removed from the jar and the original student's stick is put back.  This is specifically available for students who fear answering incorrectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iD6Zadhg4M

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I'm a pretty big fan of using technology tools in the classroom in general, but especially as instructional aids and assessment platforms. I've used quite a few technology tools in the past for formative assessment purposes including student response systems, like Kahoot and Socrative, as well as more robust quiz, survey, or form submission systems, like GoFormative, Desmos, Geogebra, and GoogleForms. As far as more formal formative assessments go, each of these tools has its pros and cons. Kahoot and Socrative are quick, relatively easy to generate & administer, and conducive to student engagement with their game-like style, but lack some of the data collection & analysis capabilities which other platform have. GoFormative allows students to draw freehand as a response, giving more options for crafting questions other than multiple choice, fill in the blank, or short answer...but is kinda clunky to work with. Desmos has a lot of pre-made assessments and activities, which allows for things like matching and graphing, but are more time intensive in terms of student completion. However, for more informal formative assessments, I think it's worth mentioning a few other tools which I've found useful in helping document student work during monitoring. Terry, one of our cohort teachers, is a wizard with ExplainEverything, using it to take pictures of student work, take notes, and sorting & selecting student examples to share in full class discussions. I've also found GoogleSheets to be quite useful as a way to organize and compare student assessment response data, and (provided you have a pre made checklist of learning goals and common misconceptions) quickly documenting observations during monitoring.

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The proper use of formative assessment can impact students that we are teaching and help us grow as future teachers. The use of formative assessments can range from warm ups to exit tickets and such. Also as a part of formative assessment is the importance of feedback. It has been shown that when students just get a letter grade or a score that it is not that useful to the student. These check points from looking at warm ups and seeing exit tickets will then inform the teacher of what steps need to be done in the future. In the classroom formative assessment should be use constantly!

As I mentioned one of the tools I have used before in a few lessons that I have taught and seen other teachers use that I like is exit tickets. An exit ticket in math for example gives students a problem that is related to your learning/content objective. It is a great way to see if students understand the concept and also good way to see their thinking. Doing this on paper I also see as a more benefit to assessing students because one can follow their thinking unlike some of the student response systems where they only select an answer and no work is shown.

The technology SRS that I like and have used the most is socrative. http://socrative.com/, One of the reasons I like socrative is students get instant feedback if there answer is correct. I would need to play around with it more to see if I could enter feedback with problems instead of just correct answers. When students get instant feedback it helps with their learning and also it shows you as a teacher how the class is doing on a topic. Again formative assessment is such a major component in teaching and using it correctly helps students grow.

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I like using formative assessments as much as possible in the classroom. The descriptive feedback is the main purpose of using these techniques and grades will not be assigned based on the formative assessments. The descriptive feedback needs to have students understand be able to realize where they are in relation to a learning goal and how they are able to achieve it. The assessment also must be designed in a way that teachers are able to extrapolate as much information about their students relations to a goal as possible so they can make informed decisions about future class material.

I think there are 2 times in each lesson where a teacher can implement a formative assessment and not have it interfere with the class. One of these times is during the warm-up for the day. In many classrooms I have observed teacher use warm-up time to look at students homework. I think the mini whiteboards would fit well into this process. I also think the teachers could use the Popsicle sticks with students names on them to have that students explain the solution to the class.

The other time that I feel it is appropriate is during an exit ticket. This formative assessment would be filled out at the end of the lesson and would cover some of the major topics for the day. The point of this is so the teacher is able to get feedback and make changes to the next days material to account for anything the  assessment finds.

I understand that the end of the class is often the time which is the most difficult to fit another thing in but I feel like it is important. I also think that if there is not time to do this then the teacher might be able to have students fill one out that night as part of their homework. One website that I really like for this type of questionnaire is http://goformative.com/.

I think that this was easier for me to use than google classrooms and kahoot.

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I, as many others here, have had great experiences with Kahoot. When I was in high school, I remember my classmates and I would always get excited to play a "review game" the day before a test, and the students that I have been working with over the past couple of months have shown the same enthusiasm. They were learning content, but they were enjoying it. I really like the idea of making education more "game-like" where possible. Students are generally very enthusiastic about these sorts of games, so there is little worry of disengagement.

Kahoot quizzes are a series of multiple choice questions, which award points to students based on giving correct answers, with more points awarded for answering quickly. Students can play on their smartphones or on tablets or laptops if they have them. One downside of its emphasis on answering questions quickly to get higher scores is that it could encourage sloppiness when solving equations, but it would likely still be a good, fun way to practice vocabulary for the last ten minutes of class.  I could ask questions about properties of various geometric figures, or the order of operations, or important formulas for things like area and volume.  Students really like these sorts of games and don't get discouraged when they get a question wrong. Kahoot also allows the teacher to see exactly how each student answered each question and how long it took them.

https://kahoot.it

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Clearly the lot of us love using Kahoot. I found out about that last year. I have found it to be a great tool as do many of us. It can be customized to what ever we feel we need it to be , especially for vocabulary. It can be used as a formal or informal assessment. When I used it for my fall teaching internship the students loved it. The teacher I was working with had never heard of it and may be using it in his future classes. The other thing about Kahoot is that it can be used either as a group or individual. It is much like a game and can engage the students well. https://getkahoot.com/

Another online resource I love using is Quizlet. This can be customized as well and can be used to make quizzes or exams. It has match games, flash cards, and many other options, especially when a teacher buys a subscription to open up the other options. I think this resource would be a better tool for reading and vocab because that is what is seems to have a platform on. Students can engage by playing the games and buy taking the quizzes or exams the teacher creates from Quizlet. https://quizlet.com/

Both of these resources can help with the understanding and remembering of vocab because you can add pictures and, at least in Quizlet, you can hear the words being pronounced.

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In our middle school class we have used a variety of quick checks for understanding including the following:
-Fist of Five: Students hold up either a fist or 1-5 fingers based on how well they understood the material taught (fist= completely lost, 5= totally understand and could tech it to someone else)
-Thumbs up or down- Thumbs up if they understand, thumbs down if they need more explanation
-Raise your hand if you understand what was taught
These are all really great ways to get feedback from students while they are in the classroom and you are actively teaching. They can help you determine if you can move on or if you need to spend more time on a topic

I also really like Kahoot!
https://kahoot.it/#/
Kahoot is a great review game/quiz style formative assessment that students really enjoy. They get to compete as individuals or as teams to answer questions and get points. Every time I have seen it used (even with Adults!) everyone has a great time. It also gives you feedback after the game so you can see who got which questions correct and a lot of other useful data.

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I find that formative assessments allow an instructor to really gauge how a classroom is understanding the material, or what common misconceptions may exist. This type of assessment is incredibly informative about whether a class is ready to move on, if there are minor corrections to be addressed, or if the content has not be relayed effectively. What I appreciate about this type of assessment is that it can be utilized very early into a unit and can be used to tie together old and new material.

While using technology can make formative assessments more interesting, I think that many online tools lack an adequate way to include what the student was thinking when completing the assessment. It is also difficult to implement online assessments when access to technology may be an issue in the classroom. Due to these concerns, I think that a paper exit ticket may be the most reliable way to record information. Time can be given at the end or beginning of class, where students can complete a question or two and include any thoughts for which methods may be used, or what information may be useful in solving this problem.

If consistent mistakes are present in answers, you may take time to address them as a whole class. This could be allowing students to correct a wrong answer or stepping through a problem as a class-- highlighting troubling steps. If there is a wide range of errors, the teacher can provide a question sheet and assign a question or two from it for each student to complete. This would allow everyone to be working on a question that targets their error, as well as asking students who understand the question to answer a deeper follow up question. I also like the idea of having students evaluate how comfortable they are with the material by circling a number between 1 and 10, or placing the assessment into one of four folders indicating their comfort level.

During the course reading online, I was especially captured by the Cloze assessment, in which a number of words are removed from a reading and students are required to fill in the blanks with words they think are reasonable. Instituting this in a math class may be difficult but I wonder if it may allow students to reach a level of abstraction when moving from a specific case to a formula.

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The use of formative assessments makes learning in the classroom go much more smoothly. Without this, it is impossible for teachers to understand what students know. As a result, ineffective lessons will be taught making the summative assessments much more difficult for the students. In my seventh grade classroom, there are no technology based formative assessments. The main formative assessment used is the teacher asking the students if they are understanding the material.

I like the thumbs up/thumbs down method, but there are much better online tools for formative assessments. I really like Kahoot and would like to implement it in my future classes. https://create.kahoot.it/#login?next=
Kahoot is an interactive quiz tool and is a fun way to get the whole class involved. Its engaging interface helps students test their knowledge in a fun way. This is much more effective than a verbal formative assessment. Middle school students are very competitive and Kahoot caters to that well. Having the review sessions be competition based gives students an extra incentive to learn the material.

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I feel the best types of formative assessment are when the teacher gets immediate feedback from the students while they are teaching the lesson this gives the teacher the opportunity to adjust the lesson to better help the students understand the content they are reading about. I feel as an ag teacher we are expected to make adjustments on the fly just like the people who are in the careers we are teaching about do everyday.

I enjoy using the formative assessment of I clicker I feel this is a great way to get feedback from students without singling anyone out. It allows students to answer anonymously and not have to worry about what the other students will think of them.  This is a system where you give every student a clicker and during your presentation you have questions embedded in the lesson for students to answer. This will help you know if the students are understanding what you are teaching about and if you should change something.
https://www1.iclicker.com/

The next from of assessment I have seen used and that I feel works well in the classroom is the fist of five. This is a fairly simple form of feedback and works well for immediate feedback. What you so is have students put their heads down and then hold up a number for how well they are getting the material you are teaching them about. Five means they completely understand and one means they have no clue what is going on. This can work great when they are going over new content to gauge how well they understand the content they just read about or that you discussed.

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The 6th Grade classroom uses a variety of useful formative assessments.  We use the “Thumbs-up Thumbs-down” tactic to see if students need more time to complete an activity.  This is assessment has been very effective in our classroom.  This assessment allows for students to respond quickly without having to voice if they are caught up or need more time.  This assessment is probably most effective for younger students.

The most popular assessment we have used is Kahoot  We recently had our student take the following Kahoot on catapults: https://play.kahoot.it/ - /?quizId=6b537adf-ebcd-4c69-b00f-8e11bf2b763f

The best part about using Kahoot is having students are extremely engaged in class material.  Students can participate in Kahoot by using any electronic device.  This assessment brings out a competitive attitude among many students.  They can “compete” as individuals or as teams.  Kahoot also offers great feedback for teachers.  Below is a graphic that shows the class results of the Catapult Kahoot:

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Using formative assessments in the classroom is vital to understanding that students are comprehending the material on a daily/regular basis. This way, no students are left behind in the dust, just because they fell behind on a certain concept.

However, just as important as it is to assess the students- it is beyond important to makes sure that the style of assessment is appropriate for content understanding and age groups.  I think that the idea of using the "Stop, Slow, Go" lesson assessment, https://www.thoughtfulclassroom.com/PDFs/TIP_2_TTA%20Tools.pdf would be very effective, however some students might be more shy to admit out loud, in front of their peers that they do not understand.

And that's where I would love to rely on KaHoot, https://kahoot.it/#/ or TopHat http://get.tophat.com/winter-engagement/?gclid=CJ7Ly6atuNACFYU2gQodHoULFQ to privately allow students to answer questions, alone so that I understand where each student is at in their learning.

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I really like the formative assessment where a teacher can conduct on going assessment in class.  The teacher can also evaluate a student’s comprehension, their learning needs and to follow their academic progress. It will also help assess students who are having difficulty understanding. Formative assessment will also help me to make adjustments to the lessons and during instruction.

I really like the way kahoot is used in the classroom. This is a great way for assessing students with the content being present. When I was instructing a floriculture unit I used kahoot to assess students’ knowledge of content being taught. Every Friday we would review by asking questions and students can answer the questions on their phones in front of them and give feedback to students immediately. At the end of the class period I could see which students are struggling and could use some one on one help to better their knowledge.
https://getkahoot.com/

Watching the video on The Classroom Experiment Formative Assessment Techniques I really like the cup formative assessment.  The green up tells me that the student is getting the information in the article or the content being presented, the yellow up tells me that they kind of get it but need better explanation and red tells the teacher that the students does not get it at all. This assessment can also be used at the end of the class, this will give students time to work on a problem and if they need help they can use their cups to tell the teacher.  This is another good assessment the teacher can use during the presentation of the content is hard are students understanding it, does the teacher need to explain the content in depth or are students totally understanding it. Students can put the color on their desks and can tell the teacher to stop with red, slowdown with yellow and green to keep going. One drawback I can see with this is students will play with the cups.

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Using formative assessments is key to understanding how you need to modify your teaching of a concept. As teachers, we do this naturally through our probing questions to gauge students' understandings. This basic formative assessment lets you know if students are comprehending an activity, but we can go further using different formative assessments to see how the whole class is responding to your instruction.

A classic, if something that is 3 years old can be deemed so, is Kahoot!,  accessible at https://kahoot.it/#/. This formative assessment tool is a competitive quiz based web interface where students' are posed with a question to which they respond with their technological device. Students are often engaged with the game as they compete for the high score and the noise level always rises when playing. As a teacher, I can easily see which questions students are getting with the instant responses and which questions students are struggling with by looking at the distractor that they are choosing. To address a students' comprehension of a text that I have my students read, a quick Kahoot quiz could easily show if students understood or not.

While many of us know Kahoot, not all of us are in schools where students have one-to-one technology access. When this is an issue, something like Plickers, accessible at plickers.com, could be used. Plickers works very similar to Kahoot where students are posed with a multiple choice question and they must choose their response. However, instead of responding through the use of web browser or phone, they respond by holding up a QR code that is then scanned by the teacher on their phone, tablet, or other device. Each QR code is different, so students cannot see what other students are responding with and can easily be scanned in good lighting conditions from the front of the room. As a teacher, you get instant feedback on students' responses and can do data analysis later by exporting the data into Excel to see general trends. Again, this could be used to gauge students' understanding of a text, or even as practice at reading a scientific graph of figure. Below, you can see the scanning interface when used on a phone and the QR codes one would print out.

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Using formative assessments instead of summative assessments seems to be a more efficient and effective way to improve student’s thinking and understanding of a concept. When using formative assessments, I like that there is an opportunity for the teacher to give critical feedback that guides the student’s understanding. I feel it’s important that students are not just assessed in terms of letters or out of a number of points. They need to be given written feedback in the areas that they can improve in.

Some of the formative methods that I’m most familiar with are Socrative, Kahoot, and Google Forms. For the CI 5452 Technology Course, I used Google Forms to create a formative assessment about the Wonders of the World and an algebra quiz. When using Google Forms, it would be a great use for an exit ticket or a quiz assessment tool. For the algebra quiz I created, there were ten questions and they are all on the same form. I also could add pictures and diagrams to the questions I created. In terms of assessing literacy within math, this would be a great tool for assessing students pre or post learning of a lesson. You can create multiple choice, true and false, and short answer questions. Within my quiz, I have a variety of questions that assess procedural fluency as well as conceptual understanding. I would be the only one who could see the results unless I wanted to share the quiz with other gmail account users. Some of the cons about Google Forms would be that you need to be a gmail account user and all of the questions appear at once on the same form. It is also difficult to make it interactive with all of the students in class, which you’re able to do with Socrative or Kahoot. https://docs.google.com/a/umn.edu/forms/d/1BUNzjgvuLF2au7Ubjp_Mc3ODTQY5nRuhcIEpgds5Y-s/edit

(My Algebra quiz example)

I also really enjoy using Desmos, an application on the web for math understanding. Our professor for the Math content class showed us an example of how we could use Desmos as a formative assessment. I really liked this as you sign in with your name like with Kahoot or Socrative and then there is a problem per page. If the teacher wants to discuss a certain problem before leading onto the next, the teacher can the stop students from writing (only on the teacher user). I also like that after each problem, students can click on other students’ solutions and compare and contrast how other students solved the problems, similar to the Pear Deck application. There are no points given for each problem you do. The teacher will give that feedback after looking through the solutions. Another great aspect is that the teacher can turn on all students’ solutions for a certain problem and compare the solutions. (This is great for problems on graphs!) I also feel that this application connects to literacy. The teacher is able to create problems/questions that assess conceptual understanding, in which students get to graph and show their solutions.  The fact that the teacher can control students’ writing and stop them anytime is great for talking about a specific problem that most/all students may have finished and giving feedback/discussing each student’s solution. Thus, desmos could be a great exit slip activity, pre-assessment (warmup), or post-assessment in terms of a quiz.

https://www.desmos.com/

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I really like using formative assessments in the classroom, because they allow the teacher to reevaluate the effectiveness of their teaching method with each unique group of students.

One of the formative methods I really like is GoFormative: https://goformative.com/
This website is really useful because it allows the students to take a "quiz" that walks them through a problem, and then displays their live results for either the teacher or rest of the class to interpret. The students can choose to be anonymous or be proud of their work and enter their real name.  I like this because this allows the teacher to view the work of their class as a whole, and also allows students some self-assessment based on how they fair compared to the rest of the class.  This relates to literacy because implementing vocab practice as well as fill in the blank practice will allow teachers to assess how their class as a whole can read each assignment.

Another tool I really like in the classroom is Desmos:
https://teacher.desmos.com/
Desmos is extremely useful for connecting terms and ideas to visual representations.  Desmos is probably my favorite supplement to every lesson, because the teacher mode allows me to collect all of the student thinking processes as they go through the lesson.

Lastly, I really love using Kahoot, especially because the majority of the students I talk to say this is their favorite class activity:
https://kahoot.it/#/
Kahoot's are really useful for review days and also for classroom warm-ups. These would be really great for reviewing old vocabulary, and starting discussions about new terms.

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I like the idea of using mini formative assessments.  These can take place as warm ups or exit slips.  One tech tool I like to use is Socrative.  I also like the app Geogebra for student projects in geometry.
This past week, during class we created a warm up called "Which does not belong." (A good example of this type of problem has many items that do not belong for various reasons. The example we came up with is attached below. Every one of the boxes could be chosen as something that does not belong based on some criteria.) This warmup was terrific for understanding how students look at problems, connections they make, and connections they are not quite making. I think it is a great tool to use as a warm up for an authentic assessment, but, it would also be great to have students create their own as a more in-depth formative assessment.

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I’ve really liked using formative assessments. The assessment strategies I’ve used the most in my middle school teaching have been non-technology related, because our students don’t have individual devices. My favorite to use how been a simple exit ticket, such as a “tweet” (see below), a 6-word summary, or answering a question and explaining why. This has been a great way for me to assess where students are, and if there are any lingering misconceptions. Next semester I hope to use a few more technologically related assessments!

I’m really hoping that my school next semester has an account for PearDeck. This is a great instruction/assessment tool, but it’s expensive. There are many great options for interacting with students, and students can be assured that their answers are anonymous, taking away some of the scariness of being wrong. This also allows for an immediate assessment of where students are at, so teaching can be slowed down to re-explain, or move ahead because students are understanding. https://www.peardeck.com

One assessment tool I haven’t used in teaching, but am looking forward to using is EDPuzzle. This app takes a video of your choosing and allows you to create questions/elicit discussion at whatever points in the video you would like. You can share it with your students, so they can access from home, as well. It also lets you know which students have watched your video, how many times they watched the video, and the answers they gave. One of the best parts though -- the video stops playing if you move to a different tab or window! https://edpuzzle.com/

This class also made me a fan of Google Forms. I really like all the options we had when creating the form, and seeing who and how everyone responded. And since it’s Google, again, students can access this from anywhere. https://www.google.com/forms/about/

All of these assessments can be used to assess vocabulary recognition, determine how well students comprehend a reading assignment, concept, or lesson, and even gauge the efficacy of a lesson on the fly. Google Forms would also be a great way to survey students about their thoughts on certain lessons: what was easy, what was hard, what was confusing. This could help in my own reflection of future lessons, and clear up any remaining issues in class. I feel like the options are endless for what we can achieve using these assessments. How times have changed since I went to school!

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I think that formative assessments are a great way to keep lessons relevant to student learning. If, as a teacher, I do not know what my students are understanding I will be unable to assist them in furthering their learning.

A very cool and interactive tool for formative assessment that I had not heard about until reading the "6 Tools for Real Formative Assessments" was the tool called Pear Deck. (https://www.peardeck.com/) This is a great way to see if students are understanding the lecture slides throughout the course of a lesson. This tool would allow me to spend more time on the information that students understand less. I especially like that students can answer questions on the slides and then I can present all of the answers anonymously to the class. This will allow for me to talk about my "favorite mistakes" in order to point out common misconceptions that many students may hold. In conjunction with this tool, I would use the Desmos online graphing tool for activities that require more precise graphing. I think that these tools would work very well together as a way of formative assessment in a mathematics class.

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Formative assessments are a great way to be sure that what you are teaching is actually reaching your students. It helps us to know if there is something that we need to rethink or reteach.

I love the fast feedback of Tophat. This is an online quiz that the whole class can take using a phone, computer, or tablet and give immediate feedback of results and also gives you a report of the answers. It allows me to generate questions to gauge the students understanding for the areas that I find important or to ensure that before moving on there is a solid background.
https://tophat.com/

I also really like the formative assessment of STOP!SLOW!GO! Students are given a red, yellow, and green sheet of paper. Red being they didn't understand at all and are lost, yellow is they kind of understood but need some clarification, and green is they got it and are ready to move on. You can also have them right on the paper one thing they know and one question that they have. This isn't as immediate as an online assessment but it does give you an immediate general visual representation with the color of paper. This can help me to know if we need to reevaluate what we are going through, maybe find a different activity or reading.

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I have used Socrative in the classroom on a daily bases as we do a Daily Science Review. The students all log into Socrative and then we display the teacher side on the SMARTboard to show the students how many got the questions right or wrong and then go over the answer. It has been really helpful in gauging where the students are each day. The website to get socrative is http://www.socrative.com

Another online assessment tool we have used in class is Kahoot! Kahoot is something the students seem to really enjoy playing during class. We use this as a review and it shows results right after the question is answered and gives you the opportunity to go over things the students may not fully be understanding. https://getkahoot.com

Another formative assessment I like that does not involve technology is white boarding. This gives students an opportunity to write their thoughts/answers down and then show them to the teacher. This way most other students aren't paying attention to others but the teacher is able to see a lot of the students thoughts at one time. This tool can be used in a variety of different ways to

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Online formative assessments I've used/seen are Kahoot, Google Forms, Pear Deck, It's Learning, and Quizziz. The students really seem to like Kahoot, it has a competitive edge, and I think it can give you a good idea of whole class understanding. However, other assessments allow for better data collection on what students know. I prefer google forms so far. It allows easy to make assessment and allows for a basic look at student responses. I haven't had as much experience with other forms though, and I believe getting a lot of data in a quick consumable way is important. Google forms allows students to give  more explanation behind their responses, but you have to read a lot of responses.

Beyond online formative assessments I have seen notebooks turned in, documents or images uploaded for submission. Relating to the strategies from the Classroom Experiment we have used pop-sickle sticks for name drawing. This use, however, hasn't been done to the strict degree of reformatting a classroom so it's engagement hasn't been as effective. It does get students involved that are not as ambitious or confident as the "high-achievers" but some students are not engaged unless called upon. Though allowing them the opportunity to hear the question again and getting them to share is a good way to include them in the conversation.

I wish there was a way to get students to pair and share and record all of those conversations. I think that would be the easiest and best way to informatively assess student knowledge. However, I think finding ways to engage the whole class and being able to hear ideas from a variety of learners can really help gauge where students are. I would like to use more whiteboarding in class to get students thinking more and it could be an easy way to check understanding.

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I really find these short/sweet/to-the-point articles and videos helpful because I can bookmark them and return to them later as a refresher!  There are two formative assessment tools I've experienced already in the classroom, and one I want to try.
1) Socrative has been a very effective tool we use everyday in the classroom for 'daily science review'.  This refreshes the students on what we learned in the previous class.  We see the students every other day so it's easy to forget what we learned.  The Socrative app is used in combination with a paper form of the questions so students can go back and study the questions for the exam.  They not only write down the question and what they think the answer is but they also write why they believe that's the right answer or another clue for remembering the answer.  Each student uses their individual device and the answers are kept anonymous.  This allows students to answer without fear of being chastised for a wrong answer.  The program keeps a running tally of all the students who have answered.  When the teacher chooses, he/she can reveal the right answer along with what percent of the students answered each option.  This allows the teacher to identify misconceptions the students might have, and it facilitates a discussion in the moment about why one answer is better than another.  This form of assessment is very good for multiple-choice answers although you can use short-answer responses as well.  http://socrative.com/
2) The second tool we have used in the classroom is Kahoot! (a tool many other students have mentioned).  The students actually request this all the time-- it's a fun, engaging, interactive game.  It also encourages fast thinking because the speed with which the students answer is factored into their score.  I am a little cautious about this feature too though, because I know it can be frustrating for students who aren't always the quickest to the answer (like me) but they still have the knowledge.  The app provides feedback for them on incorrect answers, and it's a great way to assess students' preparedness for a summative assessment.  https://getkahoot.com/
3) The third tool I came across in this week's reading 6 tools for real formative assessment is PearDeck.  I would be really interested in applying this to a life science lesson. In this content area, visual representations of biological processes are very important, and how we convey those representations makes a difference in student learning and comprehension.  The visuals in textbooks are too stale and not interactive, and drawing on the whiteboard or even the Smartboard is distant.  Some students' line of sight from their desk to the board may be blocked by another student, and I've seen in class that this leads to disinterest in the lesson.  PearDeck appears to bring the interactive component of the lesson to each students' device but the pace is still controlled by the teacher.  There are also opportunities for student feedback that can be scattered throughout the lesson.
https://www.peardeck.com/

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There are quite a few different ways of assessing that I know I want to use in my future classroom. Here they are:
1) 5 Finger Rule; students will put up 0 or 1 finger if they are feeling that they don't understand the material, they will put up 2 fingers if they are starting to understand and 3 if they are just right and 4 or 5 if they think they could teach it to someone else.
2) I also like using the thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs to the side. If they are understanding, they will put their thumb to up, don't understand-thumb down, and if they slightly understand-thumb to the side.
3) The last assessment tool that I really like is using https://getkahoot.com/ Students use their phones, computers or Ipads to log-on and answer the questions to a quiz you have created. It's a fun and easy way for students to stay engaged and for you to learn where your students are and how they are doing understanding the class material and vocabulary.

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I really appreciate the emphasis that formative assessment has in the classroom.  I've always believed this was the best form of learning, especially because you can gradually gage the understanding of your students and then are able to take that feedback to enhance or change your instruction.

A couple of tools I especially liked reading about are Kahoot and Socrative.  I am always a fan for using alternative means to teach students, so Kahoot really stood out to me for that reason.  In Kahoot, I can see how I can use videos, images, and diagrams to show choral examples, help explain music theory, and make learning about vocal anatomy more enjoyable and interactive.

Socrative was a fun tool to learn about because I can see students getting hooked on the competition aspect of the learning tool.  I really like the idea of getting immediate insight to student's understanding, either with on-the-spot questions, or prepared questions, and with Space Races, friendly competition in the classroom or at home with quizzes and graphics can really spice up a lesson. I like that you can use it as an exit ticket too.  I can see using this in my classroom for asking questions about text translations or meanings, reflections on concerts, or submitting videos or recordings of their parts so that I can check their progress.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/06/29/6-resources-for-real-formative-assessment/

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In my middle school placement, we have used Kahoot! a few times in our life/physical science class. I like this app because it is interactive for the whole class, simultaneous, fun, and acts as an immediate feedback tool for formative assessment. This is a multiple choice learning game, addressed in the Devaney article. We have also read about Kahoot! in our CI 5307 Technology for Teaching and Learning course. In my middle school placement we have used Kahoot! as a review game for a learning target assessment. This has worked to cover some final points or misconceptions after the unit lessons have been taught. However, I would like to use this as a formative assessment prior to the test so that I can gain a firm understanding of what students have learned and what concepts or content-related terms they are struggling with. Because this app is multiple choice, the question and four possible answers must be concise so key content vocabulary is an ideal topic to be assessed. I intend to use Kahoot! as more of an after-reading/lecture/lab activity, or even as a pre-teaching tool so that the teacher has access to students' conceptual and lexical knowledge of the content. One method that I thought of to foster a more student-centered approach to apps similar to Kahoot! is to incorporate students' questions instead of the teacher creating the Kahoot! questions. This would be an informal assessment of students' deeper understanding of the material because they would be creating and assessing material. Following is a link to Kahoot! https://getkahoot.com/

Another formative assessment that I think is applicable in a future science classroom is the Cloze Procedure. I like this as an efficient method to assess students' reading skills and to assess the difficulty of selected texts. I have not seen this used in a classroom but the method of this assessment is to select a text excerpt of 200-300 words and then take out every fifth word, excepting the first and last sentences of the excerpt. This assessment is similar to a CRI in assessing students' ability to read and comprehend content-area texts. Both Module IV (https://ay16.moodle.umn.edu/mod/lesson/view.php?id=482629&pageid=19073) and the Alvermann text (pgs 143-145) cover this assessment strategy in more detail. I would use this assessment tool to determine how familiar a topic is to students at the outset of a unit and also to informally assess students' content-area reading level so that I could more accurately select texts for students to read. Based on student assessment of the selected texts, the teacher can make accommodations for difficult readings by offering notes, pre-teaching vocabulary, or differentiating the assigned readings.

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My favorite formative assessment strategies are those where the students can remain anonymous. By remaining anonymous students should feel relatively free to write exactly what they feel, instead of trying to make themselves "look good" when they need to turn something in with their name on it.

In past classes I have really enjoyed it when my professors had us fill out a Know - Want - Learn (KWL) form. Traditionally this assessment is used by students before they read anything in their content area for each unit. Before they start they write what they already think they know about the topic. During reading they write down any questions they have in the want to know column. Finally after their reading they write down what they have learned in the final column. This would be a fantastic  graphic organizer for my students when assigning a reading assignment.

In my previous classes the KWL form was used after the lesson. The professor would have us fill out what we know, what we wanted to learn, and what we had learned that day to hand in. It was also encouraged that we write down anything we felt the professor should know and any other questions or comments we had.  I would like to do this as an exit ticket during my classes to keep track of where my students are at, how well they are progressing, and any questions they have that they are too shy to bring up during class.

More info about KWL can be found here: http://www.nea.org/tools/k-w-l-know-want-to-know-learned.html

Another assessment tool that I grew to love are Plickers. In my previous college classes we would either have printouts of the letters A B C D that we would hold up during mini conceptual quizzes during lecture. Plickers is the same idea, except this time each student has their own QR code which when oriented a certain way would represent a response of A B C D to the question posed to the room. The teacher then takes their smart device (phone, iPad, etc) and scan the room, picking up everyone's QR code. The benefit to this is that no other student knows what another student is voting for, so they can feel safe that they will not be teased for having an incorrect answer. Results can be displayed anonymously on the screen, and only the teacher knows what each individual student voted for. Plus it is all free! My teaching partner had our students tape their QR code to the cardboard inside their notebook so they wouldn't lose them, very smart thinking.  Find more information about Plickers here: https://www.plickers.com

Finally my last thing to mention is not an assessment of performance or understanding but more of an inventory or survey. Chapter 5 of the Alvermann text talks about Interest and Attitude Inventories. I found this very interesting and something I want to use in my class. It simply has students rate their interests and feelings in certain areas such as what they like to read, how they like to write, what they find easy/hard to read, and so on. I can use these interest surveys to plan my instruction so that I include topics that interest my students in hopes that I can keep them motivated for the content I will teach. It can also give me ideas on how to assign writing assessments. Perhaps I could have students write a letter to a friend about their lab experiment, or maybe a poem about a phenomena they learned about.  Here is a link to a sample Attitude/Interest Survey from the text: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxbkSoKhJwLhWXRDMmhKdDU1QUU

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I really liked the emphasis on formative assessment in this unit. Chapter 5 of Content Area Reading and Literacy explains that teachers need methods of figuring out where their students are at in learning the current material in order to adapt their instruction to meet their students’ specific needs.

I liked the method called Strategic Content Literacy Assessment (SCLA). In an SCLA, students are given a content-area text to read and then given questions to answer about it. In math, which is the area I will focus on in this post, students are given word problems instead of a regular passage from a textbook. For each problem, the students must list (in order) the operations that will be used to solve the problem, circle the words that told them which operations were to be used, and place the appropriate math symbol above each of those words. Then, in a table with two columns, the students solve the problem in one column and explain their reasoning in the other column.

The teacher scores the SCLA by using plus signs, check marks, and minus signs to represent various levels of mastery of the desired goals related to reading strategies and comprehension. If the students read the passage orally, teachers can also rate their pronunciation, expression, and pace. Then, the teacher looks for similarities across the students’ work to find common areas of strength and weakness. He or she makes instructional decisions accordingly and shares the plans with the students.

I can imagine using an SCLA when I introduce new types of math operations with new notation, such as the sigma notation for sums or the P(A|B) notation for conditional probabilities. If the students cannot even list the appropriate operations and symbols needed to solve the problems, I would probably need to spend more time covering the new concepts and notation. The SCLA would also give me information about my students’ conceptual understanding of the methods they are using to solve the problems because they will have to write their reasoning for each step.

Resources

From Moodle site: https://ay16.moodle.umn.edu/pluginfile.php/800023/course/section/124207/Gillis_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Adolescent__Adult_Literacy%20%281%29.pdf

Overview of SCLA (Online Word Document):

https://disciplinary-literacy.wikispaces.com/file/view/Strategic+Content+Literacy+Assessment-REV.doc

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I am a HUGE fan of Plickers. I've been using it fairly regularly in my student teaching placement. It's an application that only the teacher needs on his/her device. The students are each assigned a QR code card, which you can see at the bottom of this post if I'm doing it correctly. It may be hard to see (there is a reason) but each side of the code card has a respective letter (A-D). Students hold up the card with the letter of their choice up-right (hold A towards the ceiling to choose A). It's hard to see so that students can answer anonymously without their peers seeing their answers which avoids the embarrassment of an incorrect response. I had my students tape their Plickers code cards into the back cover of their notebooks so they wouldn't lose them and so they're are always accessible. The teacher uses their device (it seems to work better on tablets thus far) to scan the code cards. An example is provided at the bottom of this post of the scanning process. Plickers also keeps track of individual student responses (i.e. Jenny chose "C" for question 2), but also class wide responses (i.e. 8 "D" answers and 2 "A" responses). The teacher can download this data in a spreadsheet as well. You can display not only who has given an answer (their names get checked off), but you can display a bar graph of the total class' responses to the students. The picture below doesn't show an incorrect answer, but correct answers are displayed in green while incorrect will show the student's name in red.

I would use this as a tool to not only ask questions about a reading to gauge comprehension (I could come up with questions regarding main ideas, vocabulary terms, and obviously much more), but I would also ask questions about how interesting the article was and its difficulty for each student. A-D could be a scale of how engaging the material was and/or it could be a scale of how difficult the students found the material. I could then go back and see individual student responses, class wide responses, and scaffold accordingly for future readings.

Here is the Plickers website: https://plickers.com/

Here is a Plickers tutorial which I found useful (it's kinda long but useful):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2woreEVq4

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When reading the Disciplinary Literacy Assessment a Neglected Responsibility article, one statement stood out to me. “Summative assessments of learning have overshadowed formative assessments for learning.” Many of the assessments I use in the classroom are formative assessments, and I think utilizing technology is a great way to balance the use of formative and summative assessments in the classroom. Here are some of the assessments I use or would like to use in my classroom:

1. Kahoot is a collection of questions that are designed by the teacher to quiz students on various topics. Kahoot provides students with instant feedback and engages students in a competitive game to review major concepts covered in the lesson/unit. This works great as a formative assessment to analyze if students are prepared for a summative assessment.

https://getkahoot.com/

2. Plickers is an app that allows the teacher to monitor each student independently and check for his or her comprehension on the questions/content that is asked during the formative assessment. Students each receive a card with a specific code on it, which can be turned in different directions to answer multiple-choice questions A-D. The teacher simply uses the Plickers app to scan the students answers to questions they post on Plickers and show on the board. Each student’s Plickers card is specific to them and provides the teacher a way to collect real-time formative assessment data without all of the students needing a technology device.

https://plickers.com/

3. The final assessment tool I plan to use in my classroom is Pear Deck. Pear Deck is awesome tool that promotes active engagement in the classroom, but it is very expensive. Therefore, I would only use this if the school pays for it! Pear Deck easily combines instruction and formative assessments. Pear Deck is a communication platform that allows teachers to develop interactive assessments that are projects both on the board and on students’ individual devices so they can follow along. This assessment tool allows teachers to actively monitor student understanding during the lesson, as well as, review students answers more in depth after the lesson.

https://www.peardeck.com/

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I have never looked at Socrative prior to reading about it in the article “6 tools for real formative assessment” and I really like it!  I especially like the idea of using an online tool for exit tickets at the end of the class period.  This could provide a teacher with a better view and understanding of what the students are comprehending.  Also, it can be an excellent way to assess what the students’ interest level is in the topic.  Perhaps these could be used to pre-assess what students understand about a topic before beginning the unit and see what specifics about the topic interest the students the most.  In addition, I would like to be able to use the quiz feature of Socrative.  This would be a great way to easily obtain data on the students’ level of comprehension of the reading.  It could be used as a form of CRI.

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Review student understanding at the class, individual student, or question-level.