At the beginning and end of a curriculum unit, I find it valuable to learn what students already know and what questions they have, to help guide my planning and instruction. While pre- and post-assessments can provide useful information, they also tend to limit the range of students’ thinking, especially when students show minimal written work. Because of this, I began using a few key routines. One of these routines, which I call “Tell me everything you know and want to know about [topic],” invites students to share their ideas more openly.

For example, after a 3rd grade unit on multiplication and division, Katie (an amazing 3rd grade teacher) and I wanted to gain insight into what students learned, in their own words. We wanted to give them some individual think time first, so we gave them this simple sheet to record their ideas. We decided to leave the page unlined so students could freely draw any representations that made sense to them. Their ideas definitely did not disappoint! (Click on each thumbnail to see the full page)

We only got one question, but it was such an interesting one!

I think since it was the first time doing this routine at the end of a unit, we didn’t get as many questions as we had hoped. I do wonder how changes in wording such as “What new questions do you have about multiplication?” or “What wonderings do you have about multiplication?” would impact the amount of questions we would get next time.

After students had their independent think time, we shared their responses as a whole class and recorded their ideas on chart paper to stay up as an anchor chart we could refer back to throughout the year!

If you would like to try this routine before the holidays to see what students have learned, I blogged the directions here. In my next blog post, I will explore another routine I love to formatively assess student thinking! Until then, I would love to hear some of your favorites in the comments!