As teachers we are always on the lookout for ways to help build a picture of how successful our pupils are at understanding key aspects of the curriculum, as well as learning and developing new skills. There are many strategies that we can adopt to help us with formative assessment, one that is relatively new to me is called PLICKERS and this weeks 'Teaching Technique Tuesday' is going to investigate what it is and how we can use it.
So what is it...
The Plickers website says that Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. You can use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills. The nature of the software and response cards will give all students the chance to participate and engage in learning without feeling self-conscious.
If that isn't enough, I had a chat with one of our resident Plicker users, Miss Nicole Chalmers from our physics department. Below Nicole give us the lowdown on how she has used Plickers.
I have used the app Plickers in Science and Physics classes since October 2017. I first introduced it as a plenary task, asking questions that pupils should be able to answer that were closely linked with the learning intentions and success criteria of that lesson. I then continued to use it with my National 5 class as a different way of assessing their understanding of units as we continued through the course. I have found since using the app with my National 5 class that engagement has increased and pupils are less likely to forget to include units in a numerical question and will always state the correct unit for a certain quantity.
Much like the app, Kahoot, pupils don’t see this as a way of learning they view it as a game. I find gamification is a great way to enhance motivation and attainment in the classroom and I find plickers to be a highly effective assessment tool. You can access the pupil’s score sheet looking at an individual pupil, whole class and specific questions. I find it to be very user friendly and it is generally easy to see at a glance what the pupils do and do not understand.
Miss Nicole Chalmers, Physics Department, Harris Academy.
The hope is that we will have a little in house CLPL session on plickers soon, but if it is something that you fancy trying out in your classroom then have a look at these tutorial videos. there are 3 videos that help explain how to get started.
I simply went to the website and created a login using my glow email account. It is really straightforward to set up. It is also very easy to import a class list from SEEMIS, so if you want some more info on generating class lists without having to type in pupil names, then come and have a chat in the social subjects base or room 4101. Thanks, Mr Beattie.
Credits:
Created with images by eslfuntaiwan - "quiz test exam questionnaire multiple choice testing"