Walking Around: Getting More from Informal Assessment

Cole, K.A. (1999). Walking around: getting more from informal assessment. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 4(4), 224-227.

In this article, Walking Around: Getting More From Informal Assessment, the author, Karen A. Cole, addresses walking around the classroom and using frequent informal observation as a component of her teaching approach. Her research was funded by the National Science Foundations in corporation with the Middle School Math through Applications Project. This program was targeted toward middle school mathematics classes and was a comprehensive curriculum that was project-based and student centered. The teacher described the two most important aspects of the process; observation and conference. Observation is fairly straightforward; the teacher must listen to the student’s conversation and stay attuned to potential misconceptions, clarifications and opportunities to ask more in depth and higher order thinking questions.

A possible weakness or problem with this strategy is that it can be very difficult to observe all students equally. Thus, the teacher must be very deliberate when it comes to this type of assessment. The teacher must allow every student the opportunity to talk, provide the students with regular excellent examples of proper discussion and explanation. Furthermore, the teacher can use one-on-one conferences as a time to catch up with students and offer them individualized instruction and attention. I feel that this article might have benefited from some specific suggestions that the author of Informal Assessment: A Story from the Classroom, used. I feel that this technique is more effective if the teacher selects specific students to observe and specific traits to observe.