TEI Tuesday Tip for 11/12

Hot Spots: All 'Er Nothing!

All 'Er Nothing is a catchy song from the1955 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma. In this song, cowboy Will Parker makes it clear to his charming beau, Ado Annie, that with him, it's all 'er nothing! This reminds me of Hot Spot TEI items. With these questions, it's all or nothing! At first that sounds quite harsh, particularly to younger students, but why not give this Hot Spot Challenge a second thought. How can you cultivate a desire to make hot spot items a challenge that students buy into?

While I love the flipcharts with ActivInspire, I am often asked how you can track and record progress with TEI items on them. My focus for this TEI tip is on making the Hot Spot Challenge a part of these wonderful flipcharts. Like any good instruction, the key to getting students involved is designing a lesson that builds on their understanding. Just giving students hot spot after hot spot, might get, a bit "heated". At what point in your lesson is it the right time to practice hot spots?

Notice the progression of learning in the attached rounding flipchart. I have built in several ways to help students understand the process of rounding numbers. After they have had practice, they will use the Google form to take "The Hot Spot Challenge".  The Google form (seen below) will give you the kind of feedback that you can use to track how well students are doing with answering hot spot TEI questions.

You can create Google forms that use a script to grade the quiz or assignment. Here is a link to the directions, which makes this an even more appealing way to track progress.
Directions for creating self-grading quizzes in Google Docs.
 

Here's to another day of "Thoughtfully Engaged Instruction"!