Observations with Checklists

Cole, K.A. (1999). Walking around: getting more from informal assessment. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School (4)4, 224-227.

This article describes how informal assessments such as observations with checklists can be used to gain, organize, and document information about students' performances and academic growth in order to produce coherent stories of student progress. Teachers walk around the room to gain types of informal assessments on student learning and progress. By doing this, it helps teachers to receive immediate feedback of how students are thinking and working on problems. For example, a teacher described in the article walked around the room in order to view students' thoughts about a math problem they had been working on. When she walked around to each group and talked with them about their thoughts/ideas, she round that come children had confused meters and feet in their problem they had been working on. By observing students informally, teachers can gain a lot of information about how students are working and certain misunderstandings students might have. Teachers can also introduce new ideas and pose more in-depth/higher-order thinking questions to students. The teacher in this article continued to walk around the room during different days throughout the weeks and found that her questions she had posed to certain groups had been effective toward their learning. Students were able to use their journals to further explain their mathematical reasonings. Using checklists can help us to organize our observations as we walk around the room. Checklists can focus on mathematical tasks, students' communication, using math language, and their ability to work well with others in the classroom. Checklists help to observe students and find out how well students are using the mathematical concepts and standards in the classroom.