How Far Did it Go?

Assessing for learning can take place formally and informally. Done well, it causes students to think about their own learning. Keeley’s probes allow me as a teacher to discover student pr... See More

Assessing for learning can take place formally and informally. Done well, it causes students to think about their own learning. Keeley’s probes allow me as a teacher to discover student preconceptions as well as those they develop along the way. The key point in this article is that just knowing is not enough, I need to use the information gained to enhance teaching and learning. This probe, “How Far Did it Go?”, students are given the opportunity to show they understand that measurements are taken from beginning point to ending point. Elementary students, and even some of my middle school students do not understand that you can measure the distance of an object using a ruler or tape measure and not begin at “0”. An error that my middle school students also tend to make is even if they recognize the nonzero starting point, they don’t measure front to front or back to back when using a car. They often will use the front of the car in the beginning, and the end of the car for the end point. Keeley makes an interesting point when she says, “ … We cannot take for granted that children learn measurement merely by providing opportunities to measure. You must take the time to use carefully designed probes and watch, listen to, and determine the procedures and strategies children use to measure length or distance.”