Checking for Understanding

I listened in last week’s faculty meeting to strategies for checking understanding—thumbs up, thumbs down, and thumbs out to the side; green cup, red cup, yellow cup; etc. I listened…actively and intently.

Meanwhile, the vision playing out in my head was of my second-grade classroom where my classmates and I were all excited at the prospect of a rousing game of Thumbs Up, 7-Up. There we sat, heads down and thumbs up…desperately trying to keep our eyes closed to avoid any assumption of cheating...or perhaps we were desperately trying to cheat while avoiding any suspicions…nonetheless…there we sat, and there we played. Thanks to the mention of Solo cups, this memory was serenaded by the melodic sounds of Toby Keith in the backdrop.

Such is life in my head….

During the Solo/Thumbs conversation, it was also mentioned that teachers should be checking for understanding every 8-10 minutes and covering each student—not just accepting the loudest student’s feedback as a representation of the entire group—hence the Solo/Thumbs suggestion. 

Imagining my own classroom, I’m fairly certain I was guilty of letting my top students speak for the entire group when I asked if everyone was ok with the subject matter. Moreover, I didn’t check for understanding every ten minutes, and I certainly didn’t play Thumb Cups. I wish I would have.  

A few hours after first hearing this information, I sat in front of a computer in a graduate statistics course; it might as well have been a foreign language class. Since none of these students (myself included) are mathematicians, instruction was slow and methodical, and the professor checked for understanding after each step. Unfortunately, like the classroom teacher version of me, she’d never been introduced to Solo/Thumbs. “Is everyone ok,” she would say every time. And every time, the same girl in the fourth row answered, “We’re good.” Had I had a Solo cup, I might have thrown it at her head.

Since no cup of any color was readily available and no one asked to see my thumb, I sat there in dumbed silence, quietly struggling. Truth be told, I probably wasn’t alone in my suffering, but since it didn’t seem like anyone was particularly interested if *I* was ok or if *we* were each ok, we all sat alone, isolated, thinking we were the ONLY one who wasn’t in Camp Good with fourth-row girl.

Bottom line: I’m now a hard-core believer in Green Thumbs or Side Cups or whatever strategy relays the message that I’m not ok…not sort’ve, not remotely, not near. Students of all ages—4, 14, 24, 34—need to know that their teachers care if they’re ok…not just if fourth-row girl is ok. I imagine the learning in that classroom would have been exponentially enhanced had my professor had an accurate reflection of each student's understanding.

Checking for understanding allows students to feel comfortable with not understanding. It creates an environment that says, "Hey! It's ok if you're not really getting it. Let's work on it more together. You'll get there." It's nonthreatening and not intimidating, and it's an essential practice for today's students in today's classrooms.

So let's practice....

HEADS DOWN, EVERYONE!

References

Nguyen, L. (2013, March 8). Thumbs up, seven up. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lnguyen/8540310031/