by Karen Nichols
Edutopia's 53 Ways to Check for Understanding offers several quick and easy activities for formative assessment. While these were established for a face to face environment, I think we can adapt several of them to our online/hybrid courses.
A number of the formative assessments listed require defining, identifying objectives, explaining why a reading is important, etc. For these types of assessments, Blackboard offers an array of discussion boards, wikis, journals, etc. They can be set up for students to view other postings and comment, thus providing opportunities for dialogue and collaboration.
Suggestion 20 is to create a collage using the themes from the current lesson. A word cloud can be used for this activity and it can be uploaded in a discussion board. Wordle is commonly used, but here is one I created from Tagxedo (Also item 35 in this article)--can you tell the topic I chose?
![tagxedo tagxedo](https://i0.wp.com/cat.xula.edu/food/wp-content/uploads/tagxedo.jpg?resize=200%2C200)
I've successfully used Item 45, Bio Poem, in my French classes. In my case, I used this idea for the students to practice using newly learned French vocabulary by describing themselves, but it can certainly be used to as a formative assessment check to make sure the students understand literary characters or historical figures. For those unfamiliar with the Bio Poem, here are the items to include:
Line 1: First Name
Line 2: 3-4 adjectives that describe the person
Line 3: An important relationship
Line 4: 2-3 things, people or ideas that the person loved
Line 5: 3 feelings the person experienced
Line 6: 3 fears the person experienced
Line 7: Accomplishments
Line 8: 2-3 things the person experienced or wanted to see happen
Line 9: Person's place of residence
Line 10: Last name
Let's be creative ourselves! Complete this bio poem about yourself or a literary or historical figures and share with us in a post!