Ideas for Assessing At Home Learning
The following are examples of assessment formats to consider with at home learning.
Live Table of Contents
Elementary
Literacy/ELA
- Students can read to teachers:
- Over the phone
- On google chat (teachers can use google chat to call a phone number if students do not have technology)
- Through zoom
- Students can read to parents and send a video recording to the teacher:
- Most parents have phones and can upload a file to the teacher email
- Students can share responses to stories/poems/articles/videos through:
- Pictures
- Character sketches
- Models or drawings of scenes captured on video or with a picture
- Telephone/zoom/google chat conferences
- With pictures of writing in their journals sent to teachers
- Thinking routines
- ePortfolios
- Journals can be sent on a biweekly schedule - two journals per student - one with the student at home and one with the teacher at school for feedback and dialogue.
- Send students outside to:
- Find images of concepts you are reading and writing about and share their understanding of how the concepts live in their community
- Family
- Sharing
- Community
- Life cycles
- Spring
- Water cycles
- Connections
- Patterns
- Growth
- Mammals
- Bugs
- Weather
- Food chains
- Ecosystems </ ul>
- Go on a vocabulary or letter scavenger hunt
- Write or draw and express thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences
- Ideas for sharing learning with a group over technology - remember that google chat can call telephone numbers and add students to the group without computers. Group students into small groups based on their school/home schedule.
- Songs
- Recipes
- Stories
- Interviews
- Use telephone or Google Meet to engage students in Conversation around their understanding of Mathematical concepts.
- If video is not available to consider voice through a telephone call supported by the observation of a photograph. (Google meet will call phone numbers as well as video if you want to have a group conversation that involves students without access to technology).
- Leverage sites like http://nrich.maths.org or https://illuminations.nctm.org/ to find problems that engage students in the 7 Mathematical Processes. (Many more on the Staff Learning Link under “By Subject”).
- Observe student understanding of numeracy/math by sharing
- Drawings
- Pictures of things they build or create
- homemade playdough models
- Craft supplies sent home from school can become materials
- Buttons and kitchen tools
- Organizing drawers or toys
- Answers to problems over the telephone
- By writing problems for the teacher in a math journal that is sent back and forth
- Give students a recording task that takes them outside and capture observations.
- Take photos of things they see to show understanding of concepts from the nature of mathematics:
- Change
- Constancy
- Number sense
- Patterns
- Relationships
- Spatial sense
- Uncertainty
- Encourage student choice in how they demonstrate their understanding. What materials do they have at home that promote concrete understanding? What art supplies do they have for pictorial understanding? What strategies (video, photo, audio, etc) do you have to capture their symbolic understanding?
- Visible thinking routines from Project Zero and The Critical Thinking Consortium provide powerful organizers to observe student thinking about problems.
- How can you leverage student understanding of Mathematical concepts to create?
- Use your collaborative spaces to challenge students to collaborate on rich daily or weekly problems.
- Journalling (Paper, digital, video) - Suggestions and prompts at ReadWriteThink. I would put the links to the actual documents rather than the broader website
- If they can, have parents download myBlueprint/All about Me’s Class pass app to upload evidence to your students’ eportfolios.
- Students are encouraged to submit written in multiple ways
- Video recording
- Written
- Picture or cartoon with voice note
- Can assign students to small groups to provide peer feedback and build community. Students can conference over the phone or use an online chat format.
- analyzing a real life instance of an event to gain greater insight
- Real-life situations can be easily converted into learning activities in your course.
- First, outline a problem or a real-world situation
- Then, remove the ending
- Now, ask online learners to think of different solutions. Make them explain why they chose a specific solution and how they could have chosen alternate paths to establish the same
- Teachers can initiate class discussions with a set of questions.
- For asynchronous conversations like this, questions should be open ended and encourage students to share an opinion supported by facts.
- Make sure to direct students to reply to at least one other post to begin the conversation.
- Teachers should reply to posts that don’t get picked up. Best replies are questions.
- Opportunity for community building through student moderation.
- Visible thinking routines can be a supportive frame
- Remember that not all students are comfortable in an online discussion:
- practice discussions first teacher to student
- then teacher to all students and
- finally open student conversations(Conrad & Donaldson, 2011)
- Asynchronous tools can be powerful places to give feedback both from teachers and peers.
- Concept maps
- foster the development of meaningful learning, critical thinking and problem solving
- provide visual representation of connections between concepts students have learned
- Are a good tool for formative assessment to evaluate student’s knowledge
- are good to support summative conversations
- Resources:
- Concept Maps: How Instructors Can Use Them to Support Student Learning - 28 minute video to support teachers
- How to Make a Concept Map - 8:30 minute video that could be shared with students
- How to Create a Concept Map - 2 minute video that could be shared with students
- Mind Mapping - Teaching Strategies #3 - 3:26 minute video for teachers
- Student presentations can be modified to the online learning environment
- Students create presentations to present to the teacher (and classmates online). Synchronous web-conferencing tools can be used to facilitate these presentations or they can be recorded and presented asynchronously:
- Ideas for sharing learning with a group over technology - remember that google chat can call telephone numbers and add students to the group without computers. Group students into small groups based on their school/home schedule.
- Diagrams
- Charts
- Photographs/Illustrations
- Articles
- Stories
- Songs
- Recipes
- Thinking Routines
- Infographics
- Video/telephone interview
- Podcasts
- Journals
- ePortfolio
- Work well as a self check tool
- When using summatively, consider having students upload a voice file, meet over google meet or zoom, or the phone to share their thinking with some of the questions
Sharing process “Show and tell.”
Ask learners to document the steps they take with a specific project or problem-solving learning task. Ask them to share their steps with the rest of the learners.
Sharing experience “Autobiographical sketches”
Encourage learners to share an autobiographical note relating and discussing an experience in which they learned something significant related to the topic of study. Advise them to focus not only on what they learned but also why they learned from that particular experience and share it in the discussion.
Sharing response “Response to video/poem/article/quote/story etc.”
Learners interact with selected media and respond with an analysis to specific questions. Then, they share their thoughts with the rest of the learners. (Thinking routines would work well to frame conversations)
Sharing products:
Numeracy/Mathematics
Middle school and high school
Short essays, research papers, case study responses
Online Discussion: Asynchronous discussion activities (i.e. Google Classroom, discussion board, blog or wiki)
Concept Maps or Mind Mapping
Presentations
Sharing process “Show and tell.”
Ask learners to document the steps they take with a specific project or problem-solving learning task. Ask them to share their steps with the rest of the learners.
Sharing experience “Autobiographical sketches”
Encourage learners to share an autobiographical note relating and discussing an experience in which they learned something significant related to the topic of study. Advise them to focus not only on what they learned but also why they learned from that
particular experience and share it in the discussion.
Sharing response “Response to video/poem/article/quote/story etc.”
Learners interact with selected media and respond with an analysis to specific questions. Then, they share their thoughts with the rest of the learners. (Thinking routines would work well to frame conversations)
Sharing products:
Test/quiz/exam
Traditional multiple choice, short or long answer questions can be delivered via Google Classroom
Bibliography:
Conrad, R.-M., & Donaldson, J. A. (2011). Engaging the online learner, updated: activities and resources for creative instruction.
Jossey-Bass.
