Formative Assessment - Idea Survivor

Purpose: Student Evaluation of Content

Review of Practice: Idea survivor is part of the MAX Teaching series to develop student literacy skills.  The practice involves engaging students with reading new content material.  Specifically, it has students add annotations to reading works as they progress.  Students are to star sentences they determine to be the most essential information to understand that topic and add question marks for areas that they do not understand.  Students then convene in a breakout group where they have a rotating discussion through their stars and questions until all items are placed on two lists within their notes.  Students then must determine a ranking of the most important information identifying and justifying a list of most important.  This replicates the TV show survivor and can be an engaging classroom activity depending on the energy level the teacher brings to the setup.

Impact:  This was one of the stronger tools from the MAX Teaching series in fostering student engagement with content material.  This is especially true of material they are working with for the first time as it adds a collaborative element of support between their peers.  In the social studies discpline, this has worked well with primary soruces, records, and speeches that students do not always have working familiarity with.  The activity can then be built forward into a focused freewrite in which the teacher can provide formative feedback and guage class understandinf of critical concepts.

Program Link: MAX Teaching