SEENA MEKARI: On a scale of one to five,how comfortable do you feel with these fiveprinciples of literature?Let me see if.Everyone get their hand up, please.On a scale of one to five, how comfortabledo you feel that you knew these things?OK, you're right around there.If you're three or above, you're pretty good.All right.OK, so one of the self-assessment toolsthat I use in my class which holds them accountable to being

SEENA MEKARI [continued]: better today than they were yesterdayor better at the end of an assignmentthan they were at the beginning of an assignmentis either a five, four, three, two,one-- five being best-- or a thumbs up, sideways, or down.And so what I'll do is we'll introduce a lesson,we'll go through a lesson, we'll discuss the lessonat the end of it.And then I'll ask them, OK, so how

SEENA MEKARI [continued]: do you feel about what you've just accomplished?How do you feel about the thesis statement that you just wroteor the paragraph you wrote?And they'll give me a five, four, three, two,one on their hands.I can quickly scan the audience, scan my classroom,and I can gauge whether they're feeling stillunsure about a topic or whether they'refeeling pretty confident.Usually, they'll end up somewhere in the middle,

SEENA MEKARI [continued]: around a three.But then when I pose the question, OK,how do you feel in comparison to how you felt when you startedthe activity, usually that three will go up to a four or a five.And that's how they can self-assess the idea that theyhave grown from the beginning of this lessonto the end of this lesson.And then we move on from there.Now, if I ever have kids who are, ugh, I didn't get this,

SEENA MEKARI [continued]: this was no good for me, or if I see a recurring patternit helps me to identify that they're struggling without themhaving to say, I don't get it.Because I think saying that sometimesis a really hard statement for kids,and kind of doing a thumbs up, thumbs down takes the pressureoff of them.And they can also see that they're not alone,

SEENA MEKARI [continued]: they're not speaking it alone.They see that, oh, I'm not the only one with my thumb sidewaysor I'm not the only one at a three.

TIFFANY ARMAS: So you stays the same.How do we spell you?How do we spell you?

MALE STUDENT: Y-O-U.

TIFFANY ARMAS: Y- O- U. What we're going to do is we are,OK?So on your boards write those two words-- we are.We are.The whiteboards on the carpet are a great strategy

TIFFANY ARMAS [continued]: to quickly assess which children are getting the informationand which are not.Sometimes I have them to show me their whiteboards,sometimes I have them whisper to each other.OK, whisper it to your friend again.

TIFFANY ARMAS [continued]: If you whispered to your neighborand you got the same answer give me a thumbs up.OK.Thank you for your eyes this way.We're ready to write.I can look very quickly and see who needs help.I tend to put children that are struggling rightin the front next to me so I can just point immediately down

TIFFANY ARMAS [continued]: and guide them through each word and thenI model on the whiteboard in front of them.So children that immediately are getting it,they're doing it independently, I'm looking and seeingwho's getting it right away, and thenI do a guided by going over it right in front of meto help those that are struggling a little bit more.

CASEY GRAHAM: How about to Texas?How many are there?About a third, right?So keep that in mind as we split up our data.What I'm going to ask you to do with a pen, on this table,is to split your data into five classes.There's the grade you earn in class and the pointsthat you earn and then there's the sense

CASEY GRAHAM [continued]: that you give to the teacher, I think, of how you're doingand what you've learned.That doesn't always show up in your grade,and so in a lesson like we did, it's real easy for meto go around and see that person A is doing all the workand person B is not doing anythingand maybe I can sort of intervene and stop and makethem maybe switch roles or even switchgroups or something like that.

CASEY GRAHAM [continued]: Sometimes with our Google Docs and Google Plustypes of things that with do I can literally be on my machineand I can get into their papers as they're writing them.I mean I can see the key strokes moving forwardand the sentence is writing, and Ican stop them or suggest things to themover the computer instead of using the classtime to do that.

DEBBIE DOGANCAY: --Celsius and our Bunsen burnerwill get up to 1500 degrees Celsius-- hot, waterthan water needs to boil it.And we can drive off all of the water as steamand then when we're done driving off all the water,we're left with just CuSO4.So if we know how much of this we started withand we know how much CuSO4 we end up with,

DEBBIE DOGANCAY [continued]: then we can figure out what the ratio of CuSO4is for anhydride to hydrate.If we know that ratio, we can ultimatelyfigure out what the formula is.

FEMALE STUDENT: Yeah, which is 1.65 so it wold be 1.65 gramstimes [INAUDIBLE] and then underneath it would be what H2Ois, which would be--

MALE STUDENT 2: Calculate water loss and then find 10.Yeah, that would be [INAUDIBLE].

DEBBIE DOGANCAY: When we're doing an activity like the labthat we did, I walk around during the lab and just checkthat everyone's station is set up correctly,that they're using the proper safety procedures,that their Bunsen burner is adjusted correctly,and then any of those issues thatcome up as I'm walking around we'll address it.

DEBBIE DOGANCAY [continued]: And whenever possible, I try to address it with a question--do you think that this is the way that this should be going,or did you notice that this isn't heating evenly,how can we fix this issue?Sometimes, and particularly if it's a safety issue,I may just go straight to correcting them,but whenever possible, I try to see if they can self correct.

DEBBIE DOGANCAY [continued]: But I am providing that feedback to them.Then after the activity they willturn in a lab report, which I willscore both for accuracy, organization,clarity of thought, analysis.All of those different levels of thinkingshould be assessed in that lab report,and then ultimately the skills in this process

DEBBIE DOGANCAY [continued]: of what they did in the lab will bepart of their unit assessment.