At the first grade conference one of the presenters told us about a great way to monitor for understanding without embarrassing any students who don't know the answer and in a way that lets everyone who does know the answer share. I thought this was great for me since I am always checking to see if my students can remember a concept or vocabulary word that was taught to them. I like to call on the students who frequently don't pay attention, but I also don't like to single them out in front of the others. Likewise, I have a lot of students who want recognition for remembering something, but I can't ackowledge all of them.
To do this, you assign a secret number to each child. I gave mine a label with a number on it that they keep in their binders in case they forget. I just numbered the seats in order around the room, so I would know each number myself. When a question is posed, each student gets a post it and puts their number in the corner before writing their answer. Then they come and stick it on the board. I can easily determine who has it and who doesn't. In the future I will make a grid board with the spaces already labeled by numbers so that students can learn to put their post it in a designated spot, rather than remember their number.
I used this activity with our math program and we discussed each one of the incorrect answers on the post its. It was a very good lesson even for those that already understood, because they could explain why other answers were incorrect.
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