One of my favorite formative assessments is something that I call a "Google Form Walk Around". With this set up, all of the questions are printed out on stations around the classroom and the form itself is just numbered text boxes for students to enter their answers. I have found that this method works really well for a number of reasons. For one, it gets students out of their seats. Building in a walk around activity breaks up class time with an opportunity to stand and move around. Another benefit that I’ve noticed from the google form walk arounds is that for each question, they are standing next to a classmate that is also working on the same problem. In this arrangement, if a student’s submission turns red (indicating an incorrect answer) they are MUCH more likely to ask a peer for help. If they both can’t get it, they work together or call me over. In a walk around with google forms, students focus on each problem until they are successful and there is always support to help them get there.
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This page is a collection of some of my favorite walk arounds that I've made over the years. Feel free to use or modify for your own context! :)
For a step by step how-to on making your own google forms with data validation, see the following blog post:
Instant Feedback with Google Form Data Validation
Instant Feedback with Google Form Data Validation
Metric Conversions Walk Around
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Atomic Structure Walk Around
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Locating Elements Walk Around
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Ionic Bonding Walk Around
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Naming Compounds Walk Around
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Google Forms
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Chemical Reactions Walk Around
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Graphing Motion Walk Around
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Since some courses use displacement-time graphs while others use position-time graphs, here are some poster options :)
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Motion Graph Scavenger HuntThis task is slightly different than other Google Form Walk Arounds. For more information about how the scavenger hunt works, check out the Google Form Scavenger Hunt blog post.
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Net Force Walk Around
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Google Forms
Student Choice (student self select basic or advanced) Differentiated (1st question directs to basic or advanced) All (all 26 questions) Basics (only the "basic" questions) Advanced (only the "advanced" questions) |
As you can see in the long list of google forms, I tried out a new technique. For this walk around, there are 26(!) different slides but students have one of two different combinations of 16-17 that they will see from the larger collection. Some are overlaps but it generally is designed so that one set is more challenging.
There are different ways to facilitate the differentiation, in "student choice" students self select and in the "differentiated" the selection is done based on their answer to a warm up question. :) |
Wave Properties Walk Around
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Teacher Contributions
Other teachers have found this tool to be useful and versatile for a lot of different contexts. Here are some of the teacher contributions on this idea through Twitter:
I had them leave their laptops on their desks to get more walking in. I also randomized the question order so they would end up working with different people on each question.
— Adam Cross (@thephysicsboss) October 25, 2018
Using good questions is important. Challenging enough to promote some discussion but not so tough that Ss get stuck and never move.
— Curtis Geldert (@curtisgeldert) October 26, 2018
I used the kinematics walk around - students loved it...they had great conversations and left the activity feeling confident about the content
— Anne Marie (@anniephysics08) October 26, 2018
All of my students have chromebooks, so they took those into the hallway with their calculators and got to work. The novelty of the situation provided some of their energy, but there was also a lot of great discussion about the questions and figuring out solutions. 2/2
— Joe Muise (@jm_muise) October 25, 2018
I like to use 10-15 questions but it really depends on how challenging/time consuming the questions are. If you use fewer I would post multiple copies so kids don’t bunch up as much.
— Curtis Geldert (@curtisgeldert) October 25, 2018