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Gauging Student Understanding

Paul’s workshop today was an excellent example of a dimensional lesson. He demonstrated a model using several strategies to not only engage students in the content, but also to allow the teacher to develop an understanding of students’ comprehension. Paul was able to engage us with the modeling process and then there was the opportunity to demonstrate our connections to concepts.

The rich part of this activity for me was the literacy connections. Since I teach academic chemistry, I usually have students work in groups to draw or build a physical representation of their understanding based on a cartoon storyboard or a conceptual drawing of their process, etc. The amount of words is limited and the student products don’t always match those expected for required “science literacy”.

Creating fun, imaginative stories that frame their understanding and are easily assessed using numbered bookmarks that students place defining the required concepts in their documents is a brilliant process. I will definitely incorporate this strategy in my classroom with thanks to Paul for his good work!