The Quickest Assessment: Smart Cards

As it becomes crunch time to get things ready for school, I wanted to give you a formative assessment strategy that is cheap and easy to make, and that you will actually use to gauge student understanding: SMART CARDS!

Smart Cards are just simply cards that have a red side and a green side. I just made mine out of colored notecards.  I didn't have red so I did pink. Creating these cards should not be stressful.  I made a class set in a couple of minutes!  I simply just put the two cards together and stapled. 

How it works: Once you ask a true/false or yes/no question say "Vote!" Students will then hold up the green side for true or the red side for false. Then say "Unvote!"  The purpose of the vote and unvote is to detour students that just look to their neighbor for the answer.  Students should answer quickly. 

How is the better than just doing thumbs up/thumbs down?  When you ask a question you will see a quick flash of color.  When students have the cards up, it is easy to see how many correct versus incorrect answers you have.  Based upon the amount of students correct or incorrect, you can make decisions about whether you need to go back and explain what was covered again, or if you can move on with your lesson.

Please try this out and let me know how it goes!  Good luck this year!