Admit and Exit Slips

Admit and exit slips are a technique where students receive a question or prompt at the beginning or end of class to respond to. This should require higher order thinking that require students to write out their thought process. They can be questions about the course material being taught or other important goals such as making connections between content areas or to the real world. Students should be using complete sentences on admit and exits slips to promote writing in the classroom. These should be turned in for assessment purposes to see what student understanding is. Using this technique keeps students engaged from the minute they walk into the classroom until the bell rings. By being involved in class, students are able to not have wasted classroom time and gain as much as they can from a lesson. By being required to write complete sentences, students also work on writing strategies. Admit and exit slips also serve as a tool for teachers to assess their own teaching and see what students are or do not understand so they can review when necessary. This technique works by having students use every minute of classroom time and not wasting time at the beginning or end. Also, by using higher order thinking questions students are working high on Blooms Taxonomy to get the most out of the classroom as possible. By giving teachers feedback about where students understanding level is as well, they provide a great form of informal assessment. Admit and exit slips can be introduced the first day of class by explaining how they will be used at the beginning of class every day. By setting the standard that when students get to class they need to start on their admit slips this creates a routine that students will expect. Exit slips can be introduced at the end of class by prompting students with a question that the teacher wants them to answer. By using these in the classroom consistently, students come to expect them and provide a great source of feedback. Assessment of this technique will be informal. Student completion is important since it provides feedback but most assessment should be based on what information the slips provide the teacher. Using questions concerning current course topics give teachers vital feedback on student achievement and comprehension of material.

Alphaboxes
Alphaboxes are a graphic organizer to allow students to organize new or important vocabulary onto one page. By giving each letter its own box, students can add vocabulary as it comes up in lessons. The teacher can also keep a large Alphabox up on the wall and record important words as they are presented. By doing this, the teacher not only points out significant words as they appear but gives the class environmental print to aid the students in vocabulary.

Using an alphabox helps students to learn and understand vocabulary better. By recording down vocabulary, students get an idea of what is important. By using an alphabox as environmental print, students can reference the alphabox to help remember important words or phrases and understand the vocabulary better. In a math classroom, vocabulary it specifically important and any way to help enhance student vocab is important. Alphaboxes work by giving students the ability to write down vocabulary words as they appear. By having a separate sheet for this, when students write it down on the alphabox they make the connection that the word is important. This works the same way if the teacher takes time out of the class to write it down on the alphabox on the wall. The alphabox is also a reference students can use to review and gain understanding on vocabulary. Initially, it would be good to just have the alphabox on the wall for all students to use. If the alphabox is used at the start of the year as a whole class method, the teacher can model how to use the alphabox. After the first unit, students and the teacher can do the next unit together until the students are gradually released to be able to do it by themselves. A new alphabox would be important to have at the beginning of a new unit as each section provides new vocabulary important for students. Assessment of this technique could simply be a visual check of students alphaboxes. Also, as students get into more independent use of the alphabox, a teacher could use an exit slip asking, what is the most important word you added to your alphabox today and what is its meaning to you? This gives teachers the ability to asses if students are using the alphabox and if they are retaining information on the vocabulary words.

Discrepant Events
A discrepant event is something that is out of ordinary for the class such as another person coming in to talk to the class or a special activity where students build or experiment with the material. A discrepant event changes the pace of the classroom and surprises students with an activity that normally does not occur in the classroom. A discrepant event breaks up the regular class and helps students remember the particular event. By having something out the ordinary occur, the event sticks in students minds and helps them draw important connections to the material covered in the event. Discrepant events work by accessing emotional connections which aid in memory and retention of material. By having a sudden or different occurrence in a classroom, students experience different emotions than in a regular classroom period and this helps them remember the event.

Since a discrepant event is supposed to be a surprise for the students to make an emotional connection, the event would not have a specific introduction, rather just the occurrence of the event. I would use this in a classroom to help students visualize material better that applies across the curriculum or through multiple levels of mathematics. By creating the emotional connection students will be able to access this memory when the topic comes up in other classes and use the information they have learned. This technique could be assessed by having students write about what they have gained from the event. By giving them a prompt as an exit slip of what were some things they took away from the activity, students will be able to explain they key points that they learned through the discrepant event. By having students write key points, teachers can ensure that students take away the important points they was trying to enforce. This helps as a teacher also assess the activity and see if it should be used in the classroom again. Teachers would also be able to see if they need to reteach some of the points to have students gain further understanding of the topic. Example: Discrepant Event: Learning Objective: Students will start to begin to learn about ratios and how increasing ratios affect proportions. Give each group/pair a clear water bottle filled with water and a bottle of food coloring. Question: What would you predict happens to the color if a drop of food coloring is added? Have groups add one drop of food coloring and shake up. Questions: What criteria would you use to assess the change of the color? What would you predict happens to the color if another drop of food coloring is added? Have groups add another drop of food coloring into the water bottle and shake well. Questions: How does the new color compare to the color before? What ideas can you add to your prediction that the color will change with a new drop of food color? What do you predict will happen if two drops of food coloring are added? Have students add two drops of food coloring. Questions: What do you think about your predictions now? How do the colors compare after adding two drops verse when you just added one drop? What do

you think about the different ratios of water to food coloring and how it changed the color? The activity above is one that gives students an opportunity to have a change in class routine. By having students participate in the activity it will change up the classroom routine and they will get the chance to have a hands on activity. Also, by working in small groups more students will get the chance to talk and participate in the activity verse watching the teacher perform the activity. By using this discrepant event, students will attach an emotional connection since they will be excited to see if their predictions are correct.

K-W-L
K-W-L is a type of organizer that helps students organize their thoughts into three categories. K-W-L stands for what do I Know, what do I Want to know, and what have I Learned? Students use the three column organizer to determine the answer to these questions about a new topic of study. After students fill out the organizer, a classroom discussion is held to determine which points are held by multiple students. The teacher should record these to use as reference to the students background knowledge. K-W-L helps students by aiding them in organizing their thoughts on a new topic. By completing the organizer, students access their prior knowledge and start thinking about the topic. The classroom discussion also allows students to get their voice in the room and discuss the topic more. By doing this, students may hear a different point than they had thought of and could help them access information they had not previously. The techniques works by giving students questions and prompting them access old information and think about a new topic. It is especially important to see what students background knowledge is to determine how much review is required or where difference is students base knowledge is. By using this technique to determine proper instruction and get students involved in the class and have an activity to discuss, K-W-L gives the opportunity to be just as beneficial to the students as well as the teacher. The introduction to K-W-L would be at the beginning of a new unit. By presenting it to students as a non-graded way to see what they know about the subject and discuss the topic before beginning to go in depth with it, students have the opportunity to be relaxed and enjoy the activity. By using it at the introduction to a unit, we are able to see what students background knowledge is. K-W-L should be assessed upon completion and student engagement of the activity. Since K-W-L is used to make students think and gives teachers information, the writing they have down should not be assessed for accuracy. K-W-L should be assessed by if the students thought about a new topic and if it gave the teacher useful information to begin the unit.

RAFT
RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. RAFT is a writing prompt made up by the teacher that has students write from various perspectives depending on what labels the teacher assigns them. Depending on the class setting, teachers can be creative with what perspective they want the students to write from, the audience they would like them to address, the format in which the students write, and the topic of the writing. Teachers can expand on RAFT by giving different portions of the class different prompts to write from that may be controversial. By using this technique, students can work on writing skills of various formats depending on what is assigned. They can also work on viewing different perspectives and through discussion share their responses and see what other students said. This technique works by giving students the opportunity to write in a creative, course oriented way. By having students write, they are engaged in their learning. They also receive the opportunity to focus on the course while doing an activity that is different from the normal classroom routine. introducing RAFT into the classroom, it is important to first model the technique for the students. First, I would show them a RAFT and then show the response I created for that RAFT. I would make sure to talk through my thought process of how I came up with my response and how I determined the tone I would take. I would then present a new RAFT to my students. I would try to guide them through their initial process of how to start their writing and after completion let them discuss with peers and the class to see where they were confused and could make changes. In my classroom, I would use this at the end of a lesson of unit to try to informally assess where my students understanding is at. I would take time to come up with RAFTS that provoked intelligent answers and make students think about what they have learned throughout the unit. Since I would be using RAFT to see where student understanding is at the end of lessons or units, their assessment would be mainly on how they demonstrate their comprehension of the material through their writing. If students can show an understanding of the material in a different context than they normally have to show, this will show a thorough understanding.

SQRQCQ
SQRQCQ is a technique for solving mathematical work problems using a step by step approach. Students first Survey by skimming to get the main idea and then Question by determining the questions stated in the problem. Next, students Reread to identify important information and then Question to determine which operations need to be performed. Students then Compute to solve the problem and finally Question to see if the answer makes sense.

Word problems are often intimidating for students and SQRQCQ helps students break down solving word problems into steps they can follow to find the answer. Students need to learn to question, not just compute in mathematics which SQRQCQ also helps students begin to do. SQRQCQ works by giving students a systematic approach to solving word problems. By giving students steps, they know how to go about solving the problem instead of struggling through trying to determine how to find the answer to the problem. SQRQCQ should be introduced by letting the students know this is a method that can help with confusing word problems that are hard to determine the process to solving. It is a technique that is important to model before using. Once it is modeled for students, the teacher must have guided practice in using this form on problem solving. This process can then be used and modeled every time a word problem arises. Students can write out their thinking on homework or exit slips for various word problems which will also promote independent use of SQRQCQ SQRQCQ can be assessed through the work and writing students use in completion of a problem. Having students write out their thought process and the steps they use to solve the problem can help teachers to see if students are understanding the process behind SQRQCQ and are using it to solve problems or if they do not understand it. Therefore, by using it with homework or as exit slips teacher can easily collect student writing and assess it.