Google Form has been an invaluable tool in helping me to create short online informal assessments to gauge student understanding in a convenient and timely manner. The results of these assessments have allowed me to tailor and differentiate my instruction. Google Form is amazing already for tabulating the answers into a spreadsheet for easy viewing. However, Flubaroo, a Google spreadsheet script, has potential to bring the analysis of assessment results to a whole new level. Useful features of Flubaroo:
While browsing EduSlam, I stumbled upon EduClipper, a website that combines the curation features of Pinterest with the protected environment and sharing options of Edmodo. It has a Bookmarklet that allows you to grab content from any website to add to different clipboards you have. You can share selected content with students- even different content with different students to differentiate instruction. Students can also curate their own content, share content with their group for collaborative projects, and share their progress with the teacher. In math, certain learners need extra support whereas other learners need extra challenge. To facilitate this in a quiz situation, I created leveled quizzes to address the needs of a broader range of learners. For students who I knew would need extra scaffolding, I created an adapted version of the quiz, where there were less questions, and where the questions had a more structured response section to guide students step-by-step in solving the problem. For the whole class, I also introduced the idea of hint cards. I told students that if they were completely stuck on a question, they could ask for a hint- I would then give them a hint card, and it would be stapled to their quiz. To students who asked about how the hint card would affect their mark, I replied, "Don't worry so much about your mark. I will take everything into account, but I want you to be able to show your learning as best as you can. Definitely try the question before you ask for a hint card. But I would rather that you solve the question with the hint card, than leave the question blank without it." For the students whom I knew would need and enjoy the extra challenge, I also created bonus question cards, which were available to anyone who wanted to attempt it. For the quiz, I had setup the marking structure so that students were rewarded points not just for the right answer but also for showing their work. I discovered that one student got all the answers correct but did not show most of the work. He would have barely passed. But I decided to give him an opportunity to demonstrate his learning orally. I spoke to him about his reasoning behind the answers, and it was clear that he understood the concepts very well. Due to this new evidence about his understanding, I decided to give him most of the credits for explaining his work. These are the files mentioned above. Any feedback is welcome!
Overall, it just seems like a flexible, comprehensive, and easy-to-use tool that would be a great resource to bookmark and use for leveling text in any content area, as well as for assessing students' reading fluency level in a language arts program.
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