Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Clicker Experiment

Last Friday my students (24 of 26) took their first "real" clicker assessment on geometry. The kids were amazingly patient with me and often reminded me to choose start. Question one started off with a bang as I realized they had only taken multiple choice questions on their practice. The question was for them to count the sides on an octagon rug and choose their answer. Who knew an octagon rug could have 8,888,888,888 sides! After they learned about the send button, the quiz went more smoothly.

I also included performance assessments in the quiz. I knew the timing of the performance assessments would be tricky, but I lucked out and kids were able to work on their performance questions first because the first set of clickers I got wasn't able to receive the signal.

This assessment did give me the encouragement to work on more clicker quizzes for next year. Kids love it and their patience with me while I fix the quirks is unbelievable. If I do more performance assessments, I need to make sure the gluing portion is LAST!!!

1 comment:

Andrew Palmer said...

I've found some of the same challenges with starting out with young students (1st grade/Kinder). There are some options you can change within CPS that help make the learning process easier. You can choose to not force each clicker to press SEND each time they want to answer. Instead, they simply press the answer (ABCD) and it sends immediately. You also can have the question begin on its own and countdown the time they have to answer. This really keeps the kids focus, since they know they dont have time to talk, goof off, etc.