Checking for Understanding

Checking for understanding is when you shift your focus from what you, the teacher, taught to what the students learned. It is a way to formatively assess students to see what they know and inform your next move as a teacher. Ideally, checking for understanding should take place frequently (multiple times per lesson) and with variety (visual, verbal, tactile, and written opportunities).

(As a side-note, Checking for Understanding is also a CAFE reading strategy students use with the Daily 5 activities Read to Self and Read to Someone. For this blog, we'll just focus on how teachers can use check for understanding to guide their lesson.)

The idea of checking for understanding relates to many things we have been working on as a school over the past few years. It connects to Feedback, Opportunities to Respond, and Teach Like a Champion - just to name a few.

The following video gives a great overview of Checking for Understanding with a variety of examples from World Language teachers:

Checking for understanding can start with something as simple as a hand signal, as it does in the clip below from Teach Like a Champion. That hand signal reveals to the teacher that many students solved the problem incorrectly, which leads to the teacher breaking down the problem in detail so students can see where they went wrong.



Notice how the teacher asks a variety of targeted questions in the follow-up to see the specific aspects of the math problem that students did or did not understand. She also gives them chances to show agreement or disagreement with others. By the time she finally reveals the correct answer, many students have changed their answers to the correct one.

Edutopia has published a great resource called 53 Ways to Check for Understanding. One of my favorites on this list is called 5 Words. It asks students to select 5 words that describe a subject, concept, or skill they learned during the lesson. What they describe could be anything from a scientific concept to a mathematical operation to a physical education game. You can take this a step beyond the 5 words and have kids compare their lists and justify their choices.

Teach Like a Champion emphasizes one more important point about checking for understanding: master teachers work understanding checks into their lesson plans by identifying several times per lesson when they will check for understanding and selecting the specific method ahead of time. A master teacher may even create multiple paths within a lesson plan with one path to take if kids understand right away and a different path to take if a check for understanding reveals gaps in learning.

So, I challenge you to look over your lesson plans for next week. If you have not already identified specific times and methods to check for understanding, then plan them in.

Do you have a favorite or unique way to check for understanding? Describe it in the comments.