Science
Concept circle. This is a strategy used for vocabulary and comprehension because it gets students to figure out the relationship between terms. This would be great to use as a summative assessment at the end of a unit or a formative assessment before a lab. Under the explanation is a copy of a concept circle on a physics unit I did with my Strategies in Comprehension class. You will need the following items:
Procedure:
- Vocabulary terms with definitions or a text that uses the words correctly.
- A concept circle.
Procedure:
- There is just one step: After students have learned about the terms or read about them, give them the concept circle and have them fill it out.
- If you wanted, you could do this as an Ink-Pair-Share so students share their conclusions with a partner and then with the whole class.
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Focused cloze. This strategy is intended to be used as a a formative assessment at the beginning of a unit to get an idea of what students' background knowledge is in the topic. I used this at the beginning of a physics unit in my Strategies in Comprehension class and have attached an example below. You will need the following items:
A focused cloze text
Procedure:
A focused cloze text
Procedure:
- To create a focused cloze text, take a text (no more than 250 words) rich in vocabulary terms for the unit and make a word bank of the terms you think your students might already know at the top. Remove the words from the text and leave a line in their place (aka fill-in-the-blank).
- Give the students the focused cloze and have them fill in the blanks with the words.
- Check their understanding of the terms. If they seem to struggle or transpose a few words, then you know you need to spend more time on those terms.
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