5 Ways to Check for Understanding
I don’t know much about building a house but I know that it needs a strong foundation. Apparently, Jesus knew this too because he told a parable about a wise and a foolish building in Matthew 7: 24-27.
As Bible teachers, we need to understand that the foundation of learning is first Knowledge and then Understanding.
Students need facts and they need to demonstrate that they understand those facts. To keep it practical, let’s look at 5 ways that you can know that your students actually understood the lesson.
5 Ways to Check for Understanding
Body Language
This is the most subtle of all checks that you can do as a teacher. Watch your students. If their eyes are glazing over, they aren’t really hearing you any more. If they are giving one-word answers, they might not really be “getting it.” If confusion is starting to display itself with furrowed brows or tilted heads, you need to pause.
If you’re getting nods, they are probably connecting things in their brain. If you’re seeing their “Ah-ha!” face (you know, the one in cartoons that shows up with a lightbulb above the character’s head) they are probably getting it. They are showing you that they understand.
Body language might be the first check but it’s also the most unreliable because the nod can happen while they’re busy thinking about something else.
Follow-up Questions
Because Body Language isn’t fool-proof, you need to follow it up with questions. Questions that encourage the students to explain, describe, summarize, or interpret are ones that will give you a better understanding of their understanding.
Understanding questions often ask “Why.” The questions force the students to give meaning to the concepts being taught. This means that students have to process the information and translate it into their own words.
Paraphrasing
If you don’t want to ask another question, encourage students to paraphrase a concept from the lesson. Saying, “Explain what you mean (or what this means) using your own words so I understand better” is as much for you as it is for them.
They might feel like their explanation is helping you comprehend what they’re saying better but it’s doing so much more. It’s helping you gauge their understanding. If things sound similar to the concept you were teaching, then they’re getting it. If whole ideas are being left out, you need to evaluate if those ideas are important or not. If the ideas are important, reteach those parts of the lesson.
From the student’s perspective, this paraphrasing helps their brain to synthesize the information in a new way. It makes better connections and it will help them to recall the information more easily.
Teach-it-Back
This is a more time-restrictive way to check for understanding but it’s worth it.
Put students into pairs or small groups and ask them to “reteach” a portion of the teaching. This can last week's teaching or today's teaching. You can spend all class reviewing old material or you can split today’s class into two parts - teaching and reteaching.
Give the groups 5-10 minutes to prepare a 2-5 minute review of the concept. I recommend that you assign the topic to each group so you don’t have x-number of the same reteaching. Keep it simple and don’t ask the students to do too much.
Encourage them to include a visual like a poster or drawing but that’s not the most important part so skip it if you need to.
Write it Out
If you’re looking for something quick and simple, try asking them to write out what was discussed during teaching time. Give the students 5 minutes to write the lesson concepts in their own words.
If their wording mirrors yours almost exactly, they're recalling rather than understanding. But if the wording is different while the meaning holds, they've genuinely got it.
Don’t Overthink It
It can be easy to think that we have to do some big thing to keep students engaged and learning well but that doesn’t have to be the case.
Simple is often best - for you and for your students. When we keep things simple, it encourages their brain do the work rather than the activity.
Give yourself permission to plan simply but do plan because Understanding is vital for the learning journey.
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