An Unintended “Perk”: iPads + Socrative = “The Best Review” For Exams

I shared recently about how the Socrative App / student-response system has encouraged and enabled me to revamp my daily warm-up routine.  This increased accountability through 3-question weekly Socrative warm-up quizzes has been an efficient and informative way to complete a cumulative review in bite-sized chunks… but never did I consider how helpful having all of those “quizzes” would be right before semester exams!

Over the weekend, students organized their (physical, paper) warm-ups sheets from the past quarter and brought them to class today.  After a short Q & A session regarding all those problems, we re-used the (Socrative) warm-ups quizzes that students had already taken and been graded on.  Instead of the “student paced” silent and individual format I employed every Friday during the “real” graded version of these brief 3-question quizzes, I chose “teacher paced” so that we could pause and discuss every problem together.  After all students weighed in on their answer choice for each problem, I revealed the “Live Results” bar graph on the big screen for all to see.  We took our time and had rich discussions about the problems (and misconceptions and errors) along the way.  Though students had already seen these problems in a “quiz” setting, revisiting the problems in this new, non-graded laid-back format seemed to be an effective way to review, keep everyone engaged… and give me a slew of data that overloaded my inbox!

 

One student’s comment blew me away and had me scrambling for a pen and note paper so I wouldn’t forget her exact words.  In the midst of the “Socrative review” today, she said, “This is probably the best review we could do for this class.”  Another student followed by saying, “I wish this was for a grade – I am doing so good!”

A feature that worked VERY well today for reviewing purposes was the “feedback question” I built in as the very last question of every quiz.  After the 3 (multiple-choice) math questions on each quiz, question 4 was always in open-response form, asking for student questions or comments.  In the “teacher-paced” format on the big screen, I chose to display the “Live Results” to Question 4 of each quiz.  Student names are not revealed on the big screen, but ARE revealed in the data reports after the quiz is over.  Students had a safe, anonymous place to ask questions in “real time”.  This was AWESOME.

My hope was to incrementally prepare my students for tomorrow’s exams, and I hope we did just that.  What I did not intend on was the amazing review session that occurred today, using assessments I had already created and administered, but employing them in a very different review format!

 

 

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