AFL: A sharing...

We shared a few best practices during our Staff Time. Geraldine shared with us how she uses the Traffic Light System to ensure that the class understood the lesson. She uses a very interesting strategy….those who understood the lesson put up their hands. As long as she sees one hand down, she will explain everything again. At the end of it, she is able to see that everyone puts up their hands if they understood.

Sharon shared with us on “The Continue Story Method.” Its easier to use this for a small class…basically, each student will need to say a sentence about a concept that has been covered in class. The next student will need to continue with another sentence, building up on the concept. At the end of it, the whole story of the concept should be mentioned by the students. This strategy is good because it trains the students to pay attention and build up information. It also allows the teacher to check whether students have understood the lesson. If the class is too big, another strategy can be used to select the students. Sharon gave examples such as “OK, those who have their hair tied up will answer…” or “those wearing spectacles..” She uses this once in a while.

Emily shared her ‘Quiz’ method, which was similar to mine. The only difference is that she prepares the worksheets for the student while I did mine in a Quizbook (a small exercise book). I also shared my marking methods by getting their peers (peer assessment) to mark the quizzes (refer to the post of April 4: The Beginning of an AFL Movement).

I feel these are all good practices but my only challenge- and this is the SAME challenge that ALL of us face, is TIME! Even through my quizbook, I realised that I do not have the time to give written feedback to all students. Even oral feedback via a one-to-one session is not really feasible. Another challenge is that how do I know if the kids are able to make meaning from my written feedback. Where and how do they 'go' from there? I think AFL is a good thing but it will be reap more success if the class size if smaller. Like in Australia, where AFL is prevalent in most classes, their class size is much smaller than ours...