Checking For Student Comprehension

Checking for Student Comprehension

How do you get students to show you what they know? 

The number one job that a teacher has is to assess his/her students. It is knowing what the students know and what they don’t that gives teachers the information they need to set their students up for success.  Comprehension checks are invaluable assessment tools. 

The trick is always, ‘how do I get them to show me what they know?’  Once we figure this out, we can give students an opportunity to demonstrate their level of understanding and adapt our instruction according to their needs.

There are both effective and not-so effective ways to check for comprehension.  Here are five typical ways teachers check student understanding:

1. The Look:  This instructor looks at the students’ faces and thinks, “They all seemed to understand.”
2. The Feeling:  This teacher scans the classroom with his/her intuition and says, “It really felt like they were getting it.”
3. The Question:  This educator asks the class if they understand and states, “I asked them and they all nodded, yes.”
4. The Test:  This instructor uses formal test, reviews it and considers, “It looks like they’re getting this but not that.”
5. The Show & Tell:  This teacher gets the students to show they understand and considers, “What is this telling me about the students’ needs?”

Checking for comprehension is not only vital, but it can be a wonderful way to engage students when done effectively.

 More on Comprehension Checking Strategies...

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Checking for Comprehension and SIOP

How do I plan a multilevel lesson?

Best Practices in Multi-level Teaching:

Planning a multi-level lesson

Teaching a multi-level class can be a fabulous experience or a frustrating endeavor. While every class can be classified as a multi-level language class (students are, after all, individuals), there is something unique about teaching a class where a portion of the class has a higher or lower proficiency level than the rest.

The principal challenge in multi-level teaching (MLT) lies with designing and delivering a lesson that sets every student up for success, regardless of the proficiency level. 

Multi-level teaching Mixed Ability Groups

Teaching in a way that invites both the lower-level and higher-level students engage them in their own learning process.  Refer to Actively Engaging Students in the classroom for more on this subject.

Structuring a multi-level lesson appropriately makes sure you’ve consciously considered how to scaffold each group of students towards language ownership.  It also encourages you to consider how you will give the students opportunities to work with peers who share their proficiency level and with those who don’t share their level of language proficiency. 

In this segment of our Multi-Level Teaching series, we will unpack a model multi-level lesson to uncover more principles of multi-level teaching (MLT).

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Clear Instructions in the Classroom

What do Clear Instructions look like in the classroom?

Essential Teaching Skills

While there are many factors that can help or hinder learning, the act of giving clear instructions is clearly one of the most crucial.  

Scaffolding is the key to everything

The way that we give instructions can make or break an activity.  Without clear instructions, students may become confused, may lose confidence, and may not get the most out of the experience.  Without clear instructions, we may find ourselves ending an exercise with a less-than-warm feeling.

In the last post, we explored how to BE CLEAR when giving instructions.

This time, we’ll take a look at what this essential teaching skill really looks like in the classroom.

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Multi-Level Teaching - Madness or Marvel

Multi-Level Teaching - Madness or Marvel?

It can be easily argued that any class is a multilevel class.  After all, are learners are individuals.  They all come with varied...

• strengths/challenges in manipulating the content and language of the class
• goals/reasons for being there in the first place
• preferences/needs in regards to lesson delivery, participation, and interaction

Multi-Level Groups

The fact is teaching a multilevel class can be a maddening or marvelous experience.  A budding instructor might find the whole process bewildering and overwhelming.  After all, there are real challenges we face as teachers:

1. How do I come up with a multi-level objective that supports all learners?
2. How do I structure my lesson to account for the multi-levels in my classroom?
3. How do I teach in a manner that engages all learners no matter what their proficiency level?
4. How do I manage groups in a multi-level learning environment?
5. How do I determine what the needs of my students are?

Let's unpack these challenges one by one to see if we can uncover strategies for

setting all students up for success in a multilevel class!

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Actively Engaging Students In The Classroom

Actively Engaging Students in the Classroom

One of the key components to successful teaching is actively engaging the learner in the learning process. No matter what the subject of the class may be or who the student body is, Effective learning happens through engagement. Effective teachers understand how to keep students engaged in a variety of ways throughout their lessons.

This blogpost has moved to TESOL Trainers' new blog page.

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Student Engagement and SIOP

How Do I Structure a Multi-Level Lesson?

How Do I Structure a Multi-Level Lesson?

Anyone who has structured a multi-level class understands well that it's challenging.  Teachers need to consider how to decrease chaos that often comes with multi-level classes and increase learning.

There are a number of key factors to consider when planning a multi-level lesson.  We need to consider how to structure the lesson as a whole and structure its parts to meet the needs of all students.  Here are three important considerations when staging the multi-level lesson that will set yourself and your students up  for success:

1. Lesson Flow
2. Student Grouping
3. Meaningful Tasks

Getting Students to Show What They Know

Structuring a multi-level lesson to meet the needs of all students, reach them, and encourage them to stretch is a challenge.  

It's not always easy to structure a multi-level class that minimizes chaos and confusion while pushing each student to the next level.

Focusing on how the lesson flows, how students are grouped and how the students will interact with the content can help.

When you unpack these considerations when planning your multi-level class, you find...

Teach Your Way Around the World©

How do I teach in a manner that engages all learners

Multi-level Teaching

How Do I teach in a manner that engages all learners?

So, you've got a multi-level class that has varying levels of proficiency and want to teach in a way that involves all of the students and encourages all of them to take their learning to the next level. 

You've got a handle on the lesson design (covered in the last blog) and are looking for some tips on how to teach in a multi-level class.

Teach Your Way Around the World©

Getting Students to Show What They Know

There are a number of factors that an effective multi-level teacher needs to manage in order to set him/herself and the students up for success.  While it may seem mind boggling to think of how to juggle everything, here are four key aspects:

• Managing Engagement 
• Managing Groups
• Managing Input
• Managing Output

Teaching a multi-level lesson that engages all learners and challenges them at the right level can be frustrating or fruitful.  The outcome rests, in part, with managing multi-level learners from the beginning to the end of a lesson.

Let's check out the first one:  managing engagement in the multi-level class