In a Dual Language Immersion setting, Checks for Understanding are essential practices that help teachers gauge and enhance learners’ comprehension and linguistic expression throughout the learning process.
Observable Strategies to Check for Understanding
Click on the arrow to the left for examples of ‘Look Fors’ with Checks for Understanding.
- Assessment Methods: Teachers assess understanding by asking open-ended questions and implementing production activities that encourage students to demonstrate their knowledge. This provides insights into both content mastery and language skills.
- Peer Correction: Encouraging learners to correct their own mistakes, as well as those of their peers, fosters a collaborative learning environment. This practice not only reinforces understanding but also builds a sense of responsibility among students for their own learning and that of others.
- Adaptive Teaching: Teachers continuously adapt their methods based on ongoing assessments to improve understanding and linguistic expression for all learners. This responsiveness ensures that instruction meets students’ diverse needs.
- Monitoring Progress: Regular monitoring of each learner’s progress allows teachers to adjust expectations as needed. This personalized approach helps ensure that every student is supported.
- Oral Checks: Various oral strategies, such as choral responses, turn-and-talk, think-pair-share, precision partner discussions, small group discussions, teach-teach, and cold calls, provide immediate feedback on students’ understanding and encourage active participation.
- Visual Checks: Tools like hand signals, whiteboards, clickers, response cards, and thumbs up/down facilitate quick assessments of understanding. These visual methods can easily be integrated with oral checks to enhance engagement.
- Physical Checks: Incorporating physical responses through Total Physical Response (TPR), Cornell note-taking, moving to the answer, and opinion lines allows students to express their understanding in dynamic ways, reinforcing their learning through movement.
Video Examples
Checks for Understanding in a 1st Year French DLI Phonics lesson. Click here to view the entire morning sequence.
Checks for Understanding during a “dictée de mots et de nombres” in a 2nd Grade French DLI Multi-Subject class. Click here to view the full sequence.
Checks for Understanding in a 3rd Grade French DLI Math lesson. Click here to view the full sequence.
Examples of Checks for Understanding during an end of lesson share in a 5th Grade French DLI Science class. Click here to view the entire lesson.
Using open-ended questions and student-led production activities to evaluate comprehension of a historical fiction piece in a 6th Grade French DLI Social Studies class. Click here for the full lesson.
Innovative strategies to check understanding of writing standards: counter-example analysis, collaborative rubric building, and a reflective exit ticket. Click here to view the full lesson.
By utilizing these varied checks for understanding, teachers create a responsive and supportive environment that promotes effective learning and language acquisition in a dual language immersion setting.
English 
French