Checking For Understanding
Random Names
The teacher writes each student's name on a separate slip of paper or popsicle stick and keeps it in a container. After asking a question, the teacher selects a name, at random, from the jar and calls on that student to answer.
Hand Signals
The teacher has students respond nonverbally to a question that has a limited number of possible responses. For example, students use a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-sideways to indicate their levels of understanding regarding content the teacher is addressing.
Response Cards
The teacher asks students to write their answers on small white-boards or sticky notes and reveal them to the teacher simultaneously.
Response Chaining
After a student responds to a question, the teacher asks a second student to explain why the initial student's answer was correct, partially correct, or incorrect. The teacher can repeat the process for the second student's response.
Paired Response
Students confer in pairs to answer a question. The teacher then calls on a pair. One student verbalizes the answer for the pair, or both can contribute.
Choral Response
The teacher presents critical information in a clear and concise statement and asks the class to repeat the information as a group. The goal is to form an "imprint" of important information.
Wait time
The teacher pauses for at least three seconds after posing a question. The teacher also pauses for three seconds between student answers.
Elaborative Interrogation
After a student answers a question, the teacher probes the answer by asking, "How do you know that to be true?" or "Why is that so?"
Multiple Types of Questions
The teacher uses a combination of types of questions such as retrieval questions ( these require students to recognize, recall, and execute knowledge that was directly taught), analytical questions (these require students to take information apart and determine how the parts relate to the whole), predictive questions (these require students to form conjectures and hypotheses about what will happen next in a narrative sequence of information or actions), interpretive questions (these require students to make and defend inferences about the intentions of an author), and evaluative questions (these require students to use criteria to make judgements and assessments of something).