60-Second Strategy: Whiteboard Relay
The team competition is fierce in this informal assessment activity, in which students have to work together to win.
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Go to My Saved Content.To say that students are engaged in Nicole Goepper鈥檚 French class at Fauquier High School in Warrenton, Virginia, is an understatement. Her lessons are peppered with games, songs, and even dancing, which keeps students on their toes. Her whiteboard relay strategy is especially captivating鈥攁nd it can be used to assess any concept that can be assigned as a task that students complete by working together.
In Goepper鈥檚 class, she most frequently uses it for verb conjugation. She calls out a verb, counts down from three, 鈥渁nd it鈥檚 off to the races!鈥� Each student on the team completes one subject-verb portion of the task and passes to their adjacent teammate, until all subjects are conjugated.
Says Goepper, 鈥淚f somebody gets stuck, they鈥檝e got their team to help them, but they鈥檙e still the one that鈥檚 actually writing it. Once the task goes all the way around and is completed, they stick the whiteboard on their head and say, 鈥淔ini!鈥� And by sticking it on their head, the other teams can鈥檛 see what they wrote. Also, when it鈥檚 on their head, they can鈥檛 change answers. No cheating in this fast-paced game!
Goepper awards points for each round: 鈥淔irst place, they get three points. Second place gets two points. And then if any team just has it correct, they get a point. If they did get it wrong initially, sorry, no points, but if they fix it and show me, OK, you get a point. They are encouraged to go back and fix mistakes.鈥�
At the end of all the rounds, the team with the most points gets paper euros, which they save up throughout the year and use for prizes.
The benefits of this strategy are hard to number. In addition to being a fun informal assessment, Goepper adds, 鈥渋t鈥檚 an easy prep for the teacher. It can be done impromptu. If you start seeing that something needs to be reviewed, it鈥檚 easy to go into. Because they鈥檙e in teams, there鈥檚 that interaction because they want to win. And by having the pressure from your teammates wanting to win, you get a high level of achievement. It might be messy handwriting, but that鈥檚 OK.鈥�