Formative Assessment Activities: Quick Write Challenge (Serial)

Another great activity presented by Robin Fogarty and Brian M. Pete who present on  (In)formative Assessment. 

This is one of many in a series of blog posts dealing with formatively assessing your students' progress as they participate in these fun activities. If you like them, try them.

Quick Write Challenge

You want to know if your students are understanding what you are teaching. You can use the quick write challenge as a way to formatively assess their knowledge and allow students to set goals and self-evaluate their progress.

Activity:

Students write for 60 seconds about a topic, or write using as many ____ (adverbs, adjectives, sensory imagery etc.). Circle all of the ____ and set a goal for themselves before they write again. Give them another 60 seconds to see if they can meet or beat their goal.  Have students appraise their goal (meta-cognition). Did they meet the goal? Fall short? How?

Example:

Imagine you've just taught your students about onomatopoeia. You want students to write as many examples of onomatopoeia as they can in one minute. After the first round, ask the students to count the number of examples of onomatopoeia they wrote. Ask the students to set a goal for the next round. They will add to the list for another minute after setting a goal. After the second round, have students evaluate their work.

Students can collaborate in small groups to come up with the top 5 examples to share with the class. Record the examples in a word wall, or in a printable for your students to paste in their writing journals. You can collect their individual lists using their quick write as formative assessment of their knowledge and understanding.

A possible student list.

First Round: Bang, zip, zot, buzz, ticktock, beep, moo

Goal: two more than the first round

Second Round: bark, hiss, cluck, eek, hum, ping, gurgle, squish, oink, meow

Self-evaluation: I achieved my goal! One thing I did to help myself think of more was to think of animal sounds.

There are so many applications for this activity. Try it this week.