By Philip Yiga | May 25, 2018

Formative assessment-tools are very important in every classroom because they help teachers see how students answer questions and review material. In fact, today there are many great educational technology tools that can help teachers to measure student learning easily. Additionally, as a teacher it’s your responsibility to learn how to guide learning-process and performance of students and this can actually done through mindful assessment practices or tools in-order to helps students grow as they learn. So, below are some of the 5 best practices/tools that can be used by teachers to measure student learning under a classroom environment.

 

5 Best Classroom Tools to Measure Student Learning:

 

1. Quizizz: This educational assessment-tool allows teachers to gather evidence of student learning in a fun and gamified environment. In fact, when teachers create activities through this program, they will be able to search for and use games or questions created by other users. Additionally, this assessment-tool allows teachers to share an activity with students on Google-Classroom so that it can be completed in class or as homework. On the other hand, questions and answers are displayed on students’ personal-devices and as they answer question, they are greeted with fantastic memes based on the accuracy of their response. Lastly, this educational-tool will allow teachers to view individual student progress and whole-class data thus making it a great technology for assessing student learning today.

 

2. Kahoot: Educational-tool provides a variety of options and activities that help engage students in the assessment process thus making it very fun to use. Kahoot provides both classic and team modes which allow students to play a game as an individual or as group and this makes it a great formative assessment tool for teachers. With educational-tool, students will points by answering questions quickly and accurately while watching the leader-board throughout the game. Lastly, students will love competing against each other in Kahoot games and teachers can also use this tool as a bell ringer for test reviews and a lot more.

 

3. Padlet: This is a free tool for teachers and students to share information, resources, images and a lot more. For example, a teacher can use Padlet in a flipped classroom as a backchannel to encourage all students reflect on their learning and a teacher can also create a Padlet wall for each of his/her classes in-order encourage each of their students to contribute a reflection from the instructional videos they watch. Additionally, Padlet allows students to post concepts that they feel need to be revisited and then their classmates can reply to their posts. Lastly, teachers can even use each class’s wall to create a review screencast based on what the students feel needs to be reviewed.

 

4. Quizlet Live: Quizlet as a flash card creation tool but Quizlet-Live allows teachers to create collaborative learning games that emphasize concept mastery. In fact, this educational-tool also allows teachers to create a game from any Quizlet flash-card deck and after at least 6-players join the game, they are sorted into random teams. So, students must work together to correctly answer any questions and all team-members will see the same question on their screens but with different lists of answer options. Additionally, if teams answer correctly, they will across the board and a team that correctly answers 11-questions in a row wins and this competition-aspect actually allows kids to learn new things and teamwork.

 

5. Flipgrid: With Flipgrid, teachers can create grids similar to class sections in a Classroom or learning management system and then post topics for students to reflect upon. Afterwards, students can use a quick, four-step process to respond to prompts through a video and then teachers can view student responses and provide timely feedback which can encourage students to reply to their classmates’ submissions. Lastly, teachers can also share grids and topics via Google-Classroom, QR-code or even keep the grid private.

 

Other Great Classroom Tools to Measure Student Learning:

• Open-Ended Questions: These are content-based questions that get students think about what they have learned. In fact, students can chat about or write their responses and after teachers can review their answers. However, teachers should try to give students a chance to really think about the learning that took place in-order for this technique to work perfectly.

 

• Quick Summaries: with this technique, teachers can ask students to summarize important lessons or concepts. Additionally, teachers can even add a summary challenge using social media then have students Tweet their summaries. For example, if the challenge requires writing about a topic with a limit of 140 characters, students should try to be concise and brief with their entries.

 

• Student Interviews: These usually happen at the end of the class whereby groups of 2 or 3 students take a few minutes at the end of class to discuss what they’ve learned. Additionally, each student takes a turn interviewing the other using guide-questions provided by the teacher.

 

• Quick-Draw Showdown: This is a great competitive exercise whereby teachers square two students off against each other and then have them quickly write down a sentence or draw a quick-sketch of a learning concept. When the teachers says “Go!”, the fun begins and the first student to finish wins the competition.

 

• Daily Learning Journals: These are daily brief reflection exercises that let students privatize their experiences in their own words on a personal level. Additionally, students can do Daily Learning Journals using screencasting or simple audio recording and younger-students may create vision boards or collages with relating imagery to what they’ve learned. Likewise, students may also share their excerpts on a class blog or web-page thus making this educational-tool a great classroom community-building exercise.