Before moving ahead in our inquiry into shapes, angles, and lines, my grade three students took time to share their current understandings.
Armed with cameras, small groups walked about the school to take pictures representing any 2D shape, 3D shape, angle, or line they were familiar with. They then added their photos to a Voicethread to record their thinking.
They also used different materials to share and tweet their prior knowledge on the properties of 2D shapes.
By having the students do this I was able to gain a lot of information to inform and differentiate my planning.
This included:
-strengths and needs of individual students
-student readiness levels
-vocabulary needs
-possible flexible groups
The voicethreads will be revisited throughout the unit to adjust, modify, or to add information as the students continue to construct meaning, transfer meaning, and apply their further understanding.
Have you used Voicethread for pre-assessing?
I like this idea and would like to share it with my staff. Does each student have a Twitter account or are you using a school based account? Please explain about the “Tweets” and how you are using them in the activity.
Thank you!
Hi Barbara,
Thank you for the blog read and comment.
I have one class account for Twitter. We started it when we went away for camp for two nights, so parents could feel comfortable knowing how we were doing.
I have since tried to have the students take control and share their learning with others. We have a few other classes following us and we are trying to talk with other students about what they are learning. When students feel they want to tweet something they know how to do it now. We hope to hear back from other classes inquiring into similar things.
We have had a class blog all year, G3ss.weebly.com
but now the tweets have been added and the students love sharing their ideas, learning, and questions with others immediately. I hope next year to have the account started from the beginning of the year.
Thanks again