Constructivism Stategy-Student Responses Driving my Instruction

This week I decided to be very intentional about my student responses driving my instruction. I've always tried to use some sort of formative assessment at the end of my lessons (albeit and exit ticket, post-it note, or more recently, a padlet post) to guide the following day's instruction. However, this week I wanted to touch base sooner in the lesson. While working on ballpark estimating this week I quickly realized the expansive difference in levels of understanding within my students. So, on the second day of whole group instruction I began with an open-ended question: When might knowing how to round and estimate help you? This allowed my students to take it where they wanted and show their understanding (or lack thereof). Using their responses I was able to pose some situations in which estimating can help us in real-life (the concept of application..double whammy!). After about a 10 minute mini-lesson on how-to estimate and round double-digit numbers to find a "ballpark" total I then presented them with 5-question quick using Infuse Learning. This helped me to see that I still had about 8 who still needed some help. For the rest of my students I provided a choice of 3 different activities they could choose from to show me their understanding. I then kept the 8 up front with me to work with base-10 blocks and hundreds charts as way to see what rounding was.

I feel that giving more power to the students (via using their responses to teach and then allowing them to choose their independent work) increased the level of engagement and connection to their "real world" lives. I also noticed that the level of understanding increased amongst the majority of my students!