Favorite Technology Part 3: Quia

       Today's favorite is actually one that I pay for, but it's worth the $49 a year to me.  Quia has lots of ways to create online practice activities.  There are a total of 15 activities that you can create for your students.  My favorites are Battleship, Challenge Board, Cloze, Flashcards and Rags to Riches.

        Battleship is just like the board game.  Students play against the computer.  Each time they answer a question correctly they get a turn to try to sink the computer's battleship.  It can be a fun way to get my kids practicing.   Rags to Riches is similar to Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  This is another game where students play against the computer as they answer progressively harder questions to practice.  The flashcards allow students to play Memory.

       The Challenge Board is also fun.  It is basically a version of Jeopardy.  This is a fun one because it does allow students to play individually or with a partner.  It's also a great way to review since you can create different categories.

       These are all fun ways for students to practice and get feedback....but they are actually not what I love about Quia.  Quia is what I usually use for online quizzes.  As much as possible, I use Quia to give formative assessments because it is such an easy way for my students to get useful feedback that they can learn from.

       There are three main reasons why I love giving quizzes on Quia.  First, I love that the grading is quick and easy.  Quia will grade multiple choice and multiple mark items for you.  It will also grade short answer questions for you, based on whatever answers you have indicated are correct.  It is also easy to override the automatic grading if a student gives a correct answer that you didn't think to list in your answers.  Quick feedback is good for student learning, plus a the online grading is a major time-saver for me!

     The second reason I love giving quizzes on Quia is that I can give students feedback AS they take the quiz.  Yes, you read that right....AS students take the quiz.  This is really the reason why I'm willing to pay for Quia.  You can set Quia to give students one question at a time, and to show them feedback as they go.  Using these settings, students get feedback on the quiz as they take it!  So I always base my feedback for incorrect answers on what might be a common mistake or misunderstanding.  I just love the idea that students could be learning AS they are taking an assessment.

       The third reason I love using Quia for quizzes is still about feedback.  Once all of the students have taken the quiz, you can look over each question one at a time and give even more feedback.  For example, if a student made a different mistake from what my feedback for incorrect answers anticipated, you can give customized feedback just to that particular student (or to all of the students that made the same error by copying and pasting).

       I have tried using Google Forms to give quizzes, but have just found that it takes me longer to create a quiz with the same feedback.  I also find it takes me longer to give individualized feedback through Google Forms than through Quia.  I use Google Forms for surveys and other things, but generally for short quizzes, I prefer Quia.

        Giving feedback to students is hands-down one of the most effective teaching strategies that we can use in our classrooms.  I feel like Quia gives me a hand in effectively doing this in a very timely manner!

4 Ways to Give Feedback to your Class

      There is so much research that supports the effectiveness of giving feedback to improving student performance.  In order to be effective, feedback needs to be both specific and timely.  That makes perfect sense, but that can also be a real challenge.   Here are a few ways that I like to give feedback to my class.

1.  Games--Games are such a great way to get students engaged, but also a great way to give feedback, especially when answers are wrong.  There are so many fun games to play.  One simple game I played last week I called, "Get 5".  I  decided to do this in the middle of class when my planned lesson was NOT going as planned.  Anyway, it was pretty simple.  I challenged my class to get 5 questions in a a row correct. I put a problem on the board and gave everyone a chance to work with their partners to answer the question.  Then I rolled a 30-sided die to randomly call on a student to give me the answer as well as how they got it.  If the class could get 5 in a row correct, I gave them a stamp for our school-wide PBIS program.  It worked great....lots of conversations, and students knew that everyone at their table needed to understand.  Kids were giving each other feedback, and I could give feedback based on conversations I heard or answers given.

2.  Partner activities--I love to do self-checking partner activities, and it allows students to give each other feedback.  Since students are checking each other's work, it frees me up to listen to student conversations and intervene as needed (or to have small group instruction).  They are fairly easy to create....the idea is that you assign each student to either be partner A or partner B.  Each student has a different set of problems.  I usually like to have about 6-8 problems, depending on what the topic is.  The key is that although the students have different problems, the answers are the same.  For example, student A might have the problem -13 + 8 and student B might have the problem -4 + -1.  Each student gets practice, and students know if they don't get the same answer that they need to check over their work.  I like to take my partner activities to the next level by creating a "second part" for each activity.  So after the partners have completed the problems and agree on the answers, then they have to use their answers together to complete another task.  For example, I might have the students from above show each of their problems on a number line, or create a story problem to represent each problem.  This is a great way to handle students working at a different pace, or just to extend the learning opportunities for the partner activity.  I have several sets of partner activities available in my store if you're interested.

•  Proportional Relationships and Unit Rate Partner Activities
• Integer and Rational Numbers Partner Activities
• Measures of Central Tendency and Variability Partner Activities

3.  Dry erase---This is certainly nothing new, but having kids work problems on dry erase boards is certainly a quick, easy way to gather information about my class thinking.  It's easy to address common misconceptions using a simple feedback tool.  To do this, I'll think about the common errors that I know may happen, and I create a comment with a symbol for each, to guide students toward their error.  For example, if I was teaching adding integers, I might put the following information on the board.

Then with each problem, I could call out different answers, and tell them which feedback was appropriate for each answer.

4.  Use technology to give feedback--Technology truly can help us understand what everyone in our class is thinking, and give productive feedback to them.  One technology tool that I love (and so do my kids!) is Kahoot.  Kahoot keeps my students engaged, and I get all kinds of information about how many in my class understand.  Additionally, if you plan the incorrect answers carefully, you can sometimes customize your feedback to students, such as "If you picked green, you might have forgotten to line up your decimals.  If you picked red, you may have forgotten to carry."

          Another tool that I love to use to give feedback to my students is the website quia. I LOVE using this to give short, formative assessments to my students.  My absolute favorite thing about quia is that you can customize the feedback that students get for correct or incorrect answers.  In addition, you can change the settings so that students get feedback after each answer, instead of having to wait until the end.  I love this feature!  I know in Google Forms, you can give students feedback, but I don't think they get the feedback until they are done.  I much prefer to have them get the feedback as they work, so they can be learning as they go.  Quia does have a subscription cost of $49 per year, but for me it's worth every penny.