TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction


In order to ensure that students are learning and comprehending the instruction in any given course, routines must be in place in order to support the learning cycles, which in my experience, flow in the following order: 1.) The teacher assess what the students already know or their familiarity of the subject to be taught, 2.) the teacher introduces and teaches the content, the students grapple with and practice the content, 3.) the teacher addresses misconceptions, errors and mistakes, reteaches content, 4.) student repractice content, 5.) teacher does a formative assessment and gives feedback,  6.) student applies content in summative assessment, and the cycle continues for the following lessons. There are various modes of monitoring student learning during instruction: the use of "Do-Nows" using prior-knowledge, the use of the "Exit-slip" which monitors whether the students understood the lesson just taught, discussion model to see if students can verbalize what they have learned, and variations of "KWL" chart. The "KWL" chart, which stands for What you Know, What you Want to know and What you want to Learn. This routine can be used at all levels of education, K-12, with modifications based on the level of the students. I have used the "KWL" chart at the beginning, in the middle, and the end of the lesson. At the beginning of the lesson, this routine helps provide insight of the prior-knowledge of the student, while doing this lesson in the middle of instruction allows the teacher to assess what the students have learned so far in the lesson, and what I must reteach in order to improve understanding. Using a the chart at towards the end of the lesson, is a quick way to gage what the students have mastered before assigning them a summative assessment.

Quick routines that are implemented in every class normalize for the student the expectation that they must be ready to demonstrate understanding while also encouraging the students to verbalize what they do not understand and want to you as the teacher to reteach. It also allows the teacher to focus in on what are the specific learning outcomes everday, so that the KWL chart can be used to assess whether the students achieved the Learning Objective for that particular day.