Quality Core Toolkit Strategy #1 - Muddiest Point

Quality Core, an organization associated with ACT and responsible for writing End of Course tests, publishes a booklet called The Educator's Toolkit with strategies that any teacher in any course can use to facilitate higher level thinking. From time to time I will post strategies from this book and label them QC toolkit strategies.Here is strategy number one.

We have often heard it said that formative assessment and teacher feedback are key for student growth. Muddiest Point (Angelo& Cross, 1993) is a quick formative assessment that allows students to self-monitor comprehension and allows teachers to discover what students misunderstood about a concept or process. The assessment is simple: each student describes a concept from the day's instruction he or she finds "muddiest," or least clear. The points that students identify can then be used to construct a portrait of a class's understanding and identify areas of reteaching allowing the teacher to give feedback or reteach in a timely manner. This works very well as a closing activity or as an Exit Pass that students give to the teacher as they leave the classroom.