Checking+for+Understanding

__//Checking For Understanding: Formative assessments techniques for your classroom//__ is a book by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (2007)

//__CFU__// offers many valuable ideas regarding checking for student understanding by examining their academic discourse through verbal, oral and visual methods, in addition to projects, performance, formative and summative assessment. Fisher and Frey suggest that consistently using methods to check for understanding from knowledge to evaluation (ala Bloom's Taxonomy) results in better teaching, fostering metacognition, encouraging a search for multiple representations of knowledge and deepening assessment.

I liked that the book offered many simple usable techniques, rubrics to help me to orchestrate use in the classroom and many of the techniques offered alternatives for when the understanding check indicated a low level of understanding. At the end of the book, there is even a check list for the reader to check their understanding of the text.

This book is a worthwhile read for anyone looking to improve literacy in their classroom, regardless of the content area.

Contributor: Mary Ellen DiBona