Every teacher knows they’re supposed to check for understanding. Part of our job is to figure out whether students have learned what we taught them and adjust our teaching based on that information.
In my experience, the most common tools teachers use to check for understanding are daily exit tickets, weekly quizzes, and periodic interim assessments. Those are all fine tools. But none help me make minute-to-minute adjustments, figuring out within a single lesson what students have learned, what they haven’t, and helping me adjust my teaching on the fly.
In a lot of classrooms, any on-the-fly, minute-to-minute adjustments that happen are based on calling on a single student. Ask a question, one student answers, and decide whether to keep moving or spend more time on a topic based on that one answer. That single data point leads to both false positives and false negatives.
Lots of students get confused in math class. Or at least they are in mine, maybe you’re a better teacher than me. If I don’t figure out that someone is confused until the end of class because I’m only calling on one student at a time, I’m missing opportunities to help students.
I think adjusting within a lesson, rather than between lessons, is one of the most powerful things I can do as a teacher. So I need tools to do that. Ideally, those tools do a few things:
They get a large sample of the class. I don’t want to ask one student and assume the rest of the class is in the same place.
They are adaptable to different content and different places in a lesson.
They don’t require much prep, and can ideally be improvised when necessary.
They don’t take too much time.
I have two favorite tools I use to check for understanding that, together, meet these needs.
Mini Whiteboards
Here’s something I do pretty much every class. I have students grab a mini whiteboard, a marker, and a small rag to erase with. I write a question on the board. Students write their answers on their mini whiteboard, then flip it upside down so their partner isn’t tempted to copy. Then, on my signal, all students hold up their whiteboards for me to see.
This is my number one teaching move. Here are a bunch of advantages of this check for understanding:
Mini whiteboards are great for any topic where we might be ready to move on, but if students are shaky I might want to do a quick review and then ask a few more questions. I can adjust the questions as necessary, and we can do as much or as little practice as students need.
They’re also great for prerequisite knowledge checks. If there’s something I want to make sure students know for the day’s lesson, I check it at the beginning using mini whiteboards. I can add some more practice if students need it, and move on if they don’t.
They’re helpful for structuring retrieval practice. I can cycle through a few different review questions. This gives me a sense of which skills students are solid on, and which skills are shaky. I give my students a lot of retrieval practice on paper as well, but I want to make sure students are solid on a skill before tossing those problems into the retrieval practice mix. Mini whiteboards are a great way to gauge this.
Mini whiteboards are a great tool to gauge student understanding right before independent practice. I can ask a question, jot down the students who get it wrong, and follow up with them individually as students start independent work.
I can also use mini whiteboards to gauge how far student understanding goes in a topic. I can start with a simple question, and ask gradually harder questions to figure out where students get tripped up.
Mini whiteboards are great for explanations. If I want students to explain something, I have them write their explanation on mini whiteboards and follow the same routine above. The difference is, I can’t read a full class of explanations as quickly as I can check the answer to an equation. For this, I choose a few indicator students. Think of three students, roughly at the 10th, 30th, and 50th percentiles of your class. Read at least those three when students hold up their boards, maybe read a few more, and use that data to decide what to do next.
Mini whiteboards pair really well with turn and talks, allowing students to try a problem or gather their thinking before sharing with a partner.
Finally, whiteboards are great for anything step by step. I can have students copy a problem down, do one step, then check it. Then the next step, and check that. This makes it easier to break a complex problem down into pieces, and figure out which pieces are hardest for students.
Mini whiteboards aren’t perfect. They can be a bit slow, allowing time for everyone to finish each problem. There’s a risk of copying, since students are working on one problem at a time and usually writing bigger than on paper. It takes some effort to create the routines. The whiteboards can be targets for destruction or graffiti. But all of those issues can be managed, and I think they’re absolutely worth the effort.
Stop and Jot
Asking a single question can be a good check for understanding, but in other cases I can get much better information by asking multiple questions. I always keep a big stack of half-sheets with five blanks on them in my classroom. Here’s the template if you’d like to use it.
I have this template for the questions.
I put the questions on the screen at the front of the room, and students write their answers on their half-sheet handouts. Here are a bunch of advantages of this check for understanding:
I often use a stop and jot right before independent practice. An exit ticket is nice, but more useful is a middle-of-class ticket. I have students answer five questions, and then look at their work as they start practice. I can use this to identify students that need support, or realize that a large part of the class is confused about something, pause, and bring everyone together for a quick clarification.
Asking multiple questions helps me identify where understanding breaks down. In the sequence of problems above, I can tell quickly whether a student needs help with the basics of percentages, or only the idea of percent increase/decrease.
Sometimes with a stop and jot I’ll walk around the room to look at student work and focus on a specific question. I can’t take in five answers at once, but I can focus on question 4, and glance at 1, 2, and 3 if the student got 4 wrong. Other times I’ll collect the stop and jots and sort through them, then follow up with students individually while they work on an independent assignment.
One problem here is that it takes time for me to collect and sort through the papers, which means students might be starting independent practice feeling confused. A nice strategy is to give students some quick fact fluency practice after the stop and jot, then move on to independent practice with the skill we’re working on. That gives me time to look at their work and plan for how to follow up before students dive in.
Something I love about stop and jots is that they give me concrete questions to reference when I follow up with students. If a student is totally confused, I can work with them starting on question #1. If a student made one small mistake, I can show them and have them rework that problem.
A stop and jot isn’t too different from lots of other things I do in math class where I give students some math problems to solve on paper. The differences are that it’s easy to create on the fly, easy to collect and analyze, and marks a specific place where I’m checking student understanding and adjusting my teaching based on their answers. I could do something similar with most of the random handouts I give to students each class. But I find it helpful to have a specific place in my lesson where I check for understanding. I’m not trying to guide students to understand a new idea, I’m not trying to start a discussion, I’m not trying to launch independent practice; my only goal is to check for understanding and figure out what to do next.
A Few Thoughts
These tools have a lot of overlap. In some situations I could use one or the other. In general, I find mini whiteboards more helpful if I might want to provide some extra practice right away based on student answers, or if I want to check a few different topics at once. I find stop and jots more helpful if I want to do more careful analysis of student work, if the questions are longer, or if it’s helpful to ask several connected questions in a row and analyze them together.
When I first started using these tools they felt clumsy and stilted. It took practice to get good at them and figure out when and how to check for understanding. When I first started using stop and jot, I would plan the questions, the exact spot in the lesson to use them, and how I wanted to follow up. But as I got better at using these tools I saw more and more places to use them. Now, as I’ve gotten more comfortable, I often use them on the fly, coming up with a few questions when I see a need to check student understanding. I also mix these in if we’ve gotten through the lesson faster than I expected — if we have a bit more time than I thought, why not throw in an extra check for understanding? At the very least it provides a few extra questions of practice.
A lot of teachers have moved to technology to check for understanding. Having students open up their Chromebooks and using some digital tool that shows me their answers right away is certainly tempting. I’ve done plenty of that in my teaching. But I’ve moved away from it. Technology is just so fickle. This student’s Chromebook is dead and they forgot their charger. That student is checking their email. The other student has made their background some weird animated thing and is showing it to the students behind them. I’m not categorically against Chromebooks in class, we use them a bit. But I don’t think they’re the right tool to check for understanding. I want a check for understanding to be fast, easy to improvise, and give me data on every student. Trying to do all that with technology often falls short.
There are other strategies I can use to check for understanding. I can ask individual students questions. I can have students turn and talk about a question and listen in. I can use choral response. Those are all useful data points. What makes mini whiteboards and stop and jots stand out for me is how I can get data on literally every student in the classroom. That’s invaluable. It’s so easy to fool myself as a teacher, to think that students understand more than they do. Looking at every single student’s answer — or, in some cases, lack of an answer —forces me to be honest about where we are, and helps me make better decisions about where to go next.
I’m now obsessed with this idea of a “middle of class” ticket and will absolutely be trying this. It makes total sense to me.