Last summer at this time I was HANDWRITING out math lesson plans, worksheets, and assessments.

 

I know the importance of checking for understanding, and I also know the importance of giving timely (hopefully quick) feedback to students. I like to build in lots of checking for understanding spots in all my curriculum- both formal and informal. When I build in paper-checks like this one pictured above- it means I have to grade it, or the students do, then I have to flip through the pages and look at results. If I want to give individual feedback to thirty students that is going to take time. At the beginning of the year, I might plow through it because I am on beginning of the year super teacher strength, by the middle of the second trimester that stack of papers starts to gather dust somewhere in the dark corners of my classroom- waste of time!

I learned about Formative over the summer at a CUE Rock Star Camp and thought it sounded neat- I then stumbled upon a Twitter video of it in action and was sold. I can upload a document and then add links like YouTube videos and places for them to show their understanding? I can see this in real time AND give feedback instantly? SOLD.

I have taken that hand-written assessment from last year and turned it into a digital assessment with YouTube video reminders and place for them to show their work. I will not have a stack of papers- checking for understanding will be quick, and feedback will be in real-time.

Here is the lesson and here is the Formative quiz.

 

Formative is going to be a game-changer for me this year. I am focussing on rolling it out for all my math formative assessments- woohoo! I plan on embedding my own YouTube videos, as opposed to the ones I grabbed off of a search, in the future because I believe it will be more powerful coming from me as their classroom teacher, but that will be a future project.