Know as You Go #flipblogs

My students completed individual practice the same way for a long time.

Me: here are these (probably way too many) problems. Go home and do them.

Students: Ugh. OK.

Return to school the next day. Post the answers for students to check their work.

A chorus of students: I missed all of those!

Me: What? OK...let's go on to this next lesson.

It was terrible.

Over the last several years - since flipping my classes - it has become very important to me that students know if they are doing something correctly WHILE they are working, not after they have finished.

Different types of activities allow for self-checking, but one I have begun to use on a fairly regular basis is a self-checking Google Form.

I first started using them last year (and mentioned them briefly in this post) and have continued with them this year.

Questions are put in a form, and "Response Validation" is used to let students know if they have the correct answer. Students can be prevented from moving to the next question until they get the right answer.

What I like about self-checking is that, while some students randomly guess answers until they accidentally hit the correct one, most will get help if they are missing questions.

It is a great tool for me to teach students to try to find their own mistake. I usually direct students to try the problem again before they ask for assistance from me or a fellow student.

Students get tired of the same type of activity over and over again, so I try to mix Google Forms up with other self-checking activities, but they're a great addition to my rotation. This week I used a "plug-your-answer-into-the-next-question" activity where, if students got a question wrong, a problem down the line would be affected. A few begged me to never use that type of activity again because it could be 2 or 3 questions before an issue was discovered, and they would have to go rework several problems. They requested more Google Forms.

One thing I discovered they really like on a Google Form: the progress bar. Knowing how many questions there are and how many more they have to do helps them focus better on what they're doing. Having filled out many Google Form surveys, I have to say I agree with them.