Comprehension Verification Strategies In The Classroom
One of the fundamental goals of classroom education is to teach. To know as teachers if the teaching task is working well and if the students are understanding, there is what is known as strategies for verifying comprehension in the classroom.
With these strategies, teachers will stop keeping their fingers crossed waiting for the results of their students’ exams. They will be able to know in advance if they have been doing the job well or not and if they have managed to get everything understood.
The problem, usually, is that teachers rely on these tests to measure comprehension after the lessons are finished, but then, regardless of the result, they move on.
Few teachers often take the time to focus on weaknesses and misunderstandings in students’ knowledge after tests have been scored. By then it is too late and they often lose interest. It is clear, therefore, that it is necessary to rethink how to approach the evaluation during the class.
In this sense, we must seize the moment. To reach the students it is not enough to explain things well, you have to closely monitor the understanding and, at the moment in which doubts appear (or even a slight frown from a student) take action on the matter during each session.
We can do this with these simple comprehension verification strategies in the classroom:
It is important to avoid questions with “yes” and “no” answers.
It is essential to avoid asking questions to the class whose answer may only be “yes” or “no”, as well as using open phrases such as “is it clear?” . Typically, students always answer “yes” to these questions.
So when several students later admit that they are lost, the teacher is shocked. To avoid these surprises and to help students follow the ideas in class, ask very specific questions that require them to use their new and previous knowledge.
Ask students to reflect
It is about asking the students, in the last five minutes of the session, to reflect on the topic developed and to write in a few lines what they have learned. We will collect these written reflections and review them. In addition, we can make them consider and tell how they would apply the topic, concept or skill learned in a practical environment.
Hand signals for checking comprehension in the classroom
Another possibility for checking comprehension is to use some preset hand signals to grade or indicate students’ understanding of the content. This strategy requires the commitment of all students and allows the teacher to check understanding within a large group.
For example, we can set signals by raising our hands in a group showing all, some or just one finger. They can teach five fingers when they think they have achieved the maximum understanding of the topic and then remove fingers until they leave only one to indicate that they think they have achieved the minimum understanding.
Answer posters
Students will create answer posters in a classroom session to use throughout the course. To do this, we will use the material that we have at hand: individual blackboards, cardboard, folios or we can even make permanent posters to use throughout the course with several possible answers.
Using these devices, the teacher can easily check individual student responses while the whole group displays their posters. They can be, for example, a green sign to indicate that everything is understood, orange to say that it is only half understood and red to make it clear that there is a long way to go.
The Socratic Seminar to check understanding in the classroom
The Socratic Seminar is a technique that consists of exploring ideas with open dialogue between students. It is done from the reading and analysis of a specific text. We can also use an image, a song or a video for this technique of verifying comprehension in the classroom, if we want.
Students ask each other about an important topic related to the chosen text, image, or song. These questions open a conversation that will create additional questions and answers.
Thus, they learn to ask questions that address specific topics to facilitate their own discussion and arrive at a new understanding. Teachers will be able to check the level of understanding of the subject by following these questions and answers.
Bottom line: the most effective way to test a student’s understanding is to do it while we are developing a lesson. Asking students to fill out a questionnaire when the topic has been understood and then trying to correct mistakes and gaps in knowledge is not going to work because students will have already turned the page.
