I read Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment this summer. (Thanks to my awesome principal, Dr. Kelsen, who buys me books if I say please!) I'm increasingly convinced that formative assessment is where its at, if you really want to improve student learning. In fact, my current belief is that if you start paying attention to student learning, you will end up on a path of formative assessment, retesting and eventually, Standards Based Grading. But I digress.
I'm not going to write much on this topic. You can read about these methods all sorts of places. I mostly wanted to share the document I made for my department. I challenged my department to take the 350 answer challenge. That is, I challenged them to listen to their students give 10 answers, per student, per week. Band teachers have all the luck. Every time their students play, they hear hundreds of "answers". Most of us have to work much harder to listen.
I was quite impressed that some of my colleagues were willing to try the Red/Green classroom pace idea. They bought red and green solo cups. Every 2 students have a set of cups. If the lesson starts to get confusing, the students switch their green cups to red. Once there is too much red in the room, the teacher realizes its time to stop and see what the misunderstanding is about.
Finally, a shout out to the crazy folk on Twitter who keep discussing this book all summer, especially on Wednesday nights for an hour. I couldn't always join, but you all are very motivating.
Here the file. Let me know what questions you might have.