Category: Checking for Understanding

Content Card, Parallel (Elementary Level)

Our younger students learn about parallel lines in different grade levels in different states.  But there is some key content that students need to know related to parallel lines.  This content card provides key content.  (If you see other things that need to be added, please leave a comment and I’ll update this.  All of my content cards are a work in progress.)  DOWNLOAD THE CONTENT CARD FOR PARALLEL.  I’ve included a piece that is not in most elementary programs – and that is how to write a math sentence that shows two lines are parallel.

Remember that in curriculum development world, we still need to work on things students must be able to do with this content at the elementary school level.  Do we want students to identify parallel lines in everyday things?  Do we want students to distinguish between a parallel line and a perpendicular line?  What about explaining what a parallel line is?  What about explaining why a line that is not parallel isn’t?  Do we want students to explain the difference between parallel lines and intersecting lines?  These kinds of things become objectives in your curriculum.

For those of you in charge of developing curriculum, there are a couple of questions you’ll want to answer:  What core content do you want at each grade level in relation to this concept?  What do you want students to do with the content at each grade level?  By the way, content cards are a good way to check vertical and horizontal alignment in a curriculum at the district level.

If your role is that of designing assessments, the content cards are a big plus as well.  When everyone works from the same core content – and the same objectives, you support tight alignment at the classroom level – which is where alignment really happens.

Learning to Count

When teaching students to count, there are a couple of basic tools every teacher needs.  Here’s the great news:  These tools cost almost nothing and are very simple to reproduce and use.  DOWNLOAD MY HUNDREDS CHART and perhaps print one for each of your students.  DOWNLOAD THE NUMBER CARDS and make a number line and/or use the cards in a variety of other ways.

Corresponding Content Card – Counting 1, 2, 3.

Counting Sort With Sentences

This is another sort that I designed when I put together the Content Card for Counting (Kindergarten Level).  In this activity, students practice using sentences that have a number.  DOWNLOAD THIS ACTIVITY and your students will soon be making sentences.

Corresponding Content Card – Counting 1, 2, 3.

Counting Sort

This is a sort in which students count to answer “how many” questions with up to ten things.  This is for Kindergarten and goes with my Content Cards for Counting.  DOWNLOAD THIS ACTIVITY for a tool that willl help students sort pictures as well as their corresponding numbers and number words.

Corresponding Content Card – Counting 1, 2, 3.

An Activity to Help Students Write Conclusions

Have you ever struggled with helping students write a good conclusion?  This is a simple and powerful activity I designed to help students understand the difference.  Download the pdf of the strategy, which includes directions, a template, and an answer sheet for this activity.  I designed this for the elementary level, but this is easily adapted to the secondary level by using more sophisticated examples.  The Hot Miss phrase is from Amy Hooper, a wonderful teacher at Axton Elementary in Virginia.

MEAP Constructed Response Reading

I designed this handout to provide some ideas related to the Reading constructed response items for the Fall 2009 MEAP test.  In this short piece, I share the item descriptors for the reading constructed response items in grades 3 through 8, examples of the kinds of questions we can ask students when they read, a link to helpful documents, and specific action steps you can take now in relation to helpings students think about the things they read.

Download the document and see if there are some ideas that will be useful to you.

MEAP Constructed Response – Examples of Scoring Guides

Examples of Prompts for Reading Constructed Response

Download this document to get a feel for what the constructed response prompts and scoring tools look like.  In the booklet you’ll find four examples of passages, examples of prompts for the passages, and examples of scoring tools that go with the prompts.  These are good to help you get the overall picture of the constructed response scoring rubrics.

Compare and Contrast – Roles of Government

Here is a lesson that supports the learning of comparing responsibilities between state and federal governments.  I’ve included a couple of things here:

A lesson in which students use manipulatives and a Venn Diagram planner to compare and contrast the responsibilities between the roles of the federal and state governments.

Additionally, a beginning list of analysis questions for the Venn diagram.  For those of you who know me, you know that I always recommend making sure that students have plenty of opportunities to talk about graphic organizers after they’ve developed them.

Student Assessment – Verbs and Verb Tense

This is a quick assessment for the following two objectives: (1) Identify the verb in a sentence, and (2) Identify the verb as past or present.

Download the pdf of the assessment, answer key, and data scoring tool.

Grade Level:  Elementary

Word Sort – Money, Money, Money

I’ve just finished a card sort to go along with the money content cards.  You may want to consider using both.  I’ve also included four idea sheets for using the content cards with students.  The idea sheets are designed to align with Virginia’s Standards of Learning (3rd grade), but if you teach the basic money concepts, they’ll work for you as well.

Download a set of the money sort cards and enjoy using them!  Don’t forget to come back and share your own good ideas here!