Asking Questions [MTBOS Blogging Initiative Week 3]

 

Like I said in my last post, I was supposed to be blogging along with these prompts a few months ago.  I don't really remember what was going on question-wise back then.  I've decided to complete one of the prompts with questions that I plan to use next week.

My favorite formative assessment is Exit Tickets.  I feel they're one of the best formative assessments for math because I can give my students a problem or two and see which steps give them trouble.  After a recent observation my principal suggested that I give Exit Tickets aimed at seeing what has already been committed to memory, without the use of my students' notebooks.

Next week we are working on coordinate proofs.  On the first day we are going to complete proofs using the distance formula.
These are the questions from the Exit Ticket my students will receive:

1. What do you look for to prove a quadrilateral is a parallelogram? [opposite sides are congruent]
2. What do you look for to prove a quadrilateral is a rectangle? [diagonals are congruent]
3. What do you look for to prove a quadrilateral is a rhombus? [all sides are congruent]

I wanted to keep the questions simple.  The alternative is to give students a proof to complete in the last few minutes of class, which just won't work out well.

As previously stated, the purpose of my questions is to assess student recall/understanding at the end of the lesson.  For some students it will be simply recall.  For my advanced students, they will understand the material.  I will benefit from asking these questions by knowing whether or not my students grasped the material being taught that day.  My students will also benefit from these questions.  If my students struggle with the questions, I will know that I need to re-teach the material.