Pose one to two questions in which students identify the most significant things they have learned from a given learning activity or mini-lesson. Give students one or two minutes to write a response. Collect responses and look them over quickly to determine if students are successfully identifying what you view as most important. 

This is similar to the Minute Paper but focuses on areas of confusion. Ask your students, “What was the muddiest point in… (today’s lecture, the reading, the homework)?” Give them one to two minutes to write and collect their responses. You will need to explain what you mean by muddiest - explain that you want to find out what they found difficult to get through, or what was unclear or confusing.

Select an important theory, concept, or argument that students have studied in some depth and identify a real audience to whom your students should be able to explain this material in their own words. Provide guidelines about the length and purpose of the paraphrased explanation. You may be familiar with the RAFT strategy: Role, Audience, Form and Task.

Choose one to three problems and ask students to write down all of the steps they would take in solving them with an explanation of each step. Consider using this method as an assessment of problem-solving or critical thinking skills at the beginning of a unit or topic that requires specific ways of thinking. 

Identify a set of problems that can be solved most effectively by only one of a few methods that you are teaching in the class. Ask students to identify by name which methods best fit which problems without actually solving the problems. This task works best when only one method can be used for each problem.

Explain to students that the purpose of this activity is to give them a chance to show what they know so far.

You can use your success criteria, an essential question or a topic title, then simply invite students to 'show what they know' by drawing pictures, jotting dot points, creating a diagram or doing an interpretive dance!

Find space in the term or unit to provide students with guidelines about the kinds of questions they will find on the exam, and explicitly teach students the command terms in questions. Share these guidelines and command terms with your students and ask them to write and answer one or two questions like those they expect to see on the exam. Provide them with a checklist that shows students what you are looking for and get them to self assess or peer assess their responses.

Students always have some kind of existing knowledge or skills that they can build new ideas onto. Prior-knowledge polls help identifying pre-existing opinions, knowledge or experiences that students have that connect to course-related issues or concepts. Construct a very short two - to four - item questionnaire to help uncover students’ prior knowledge. Use this information to help students build confidence to engage with new content and create learning 'hooks' that introduce learning activities.

Give students 5 minutes to develop a 20 second pitch where they 'sell' what they think the most important piece of learning was from the lesson. Their pitch should:

• Identify a concept, term or skill from the lesson.

• 'Sell' this part of the lesson as valuable because of its possible application to everyday experience, current news events, or particular organizations or systems discussed in the course.

'Cold call' 3-5 students to stand up share their pitch.