comprehension checks
From storyasking
COMPREHENSION CHECKS
Many experienced teachers in TPRS report that the best way assess comprehension is simply to ask the class to put up hands with ten fingers indicating 100% comprehension, five fingers indicating 50% comprehension, etc. It is recommended to do this skill once every ten minutes or so during CI. It only takes a few seconds.
With these comprehension checks, there is always the desire of the student to hide an authentic response, to put up more fingers so the class doesn’t see that they may not be getting it. With sufficient teaching to the eyes, however, this isn’t a problem.
One of the strengths of TPRS is that it requires honesty from the teacher and honesty from the student. If the teacher suspects a less than honest hand signal from the student, a private conversation after class can clear things up.
It is most important at this time to avoid any semblance of criticism. In fact, if the child is trying to understand you, but does not, the problem in fact lies with your failure to identify the child as a barometer student, and to make the appropriate adjustments in the speed with which you are presenting the material. Doing this is one of the most crucial moves a TPRS teacher can make: not just identifying the barometer, but acting together with the barometer to make the necessary changes.
A lot of these TPRS terms are highly connected. Teaching to the eyes, the barometer student, SLOW, and comprehension checks are all part of the same mental framework on the part of the teacher.
In an ideal world, if a student reports a six on a comprehension check and later an eight or nine, this would be due to your efforts to go back and circle the material again slower instead of moving on at the moment you saw the six fingers in the air. In that case, the student’s honesty was rewarded with success instead of failure. You slowed down and/or recycled, which was your responsibility in that case.
In that scenario you also sent a big message to the student, not only by slowing down but also through the eye contact you made. Your message to the student was, “I will never let you down. I will always ask how you are doing and I will always go back and start again if you need me to and I will always be aware of you in my class.”
The difficulty with this skill and with so many others is that, amidst all of your efforts to learn TPRS, it doesn’t become automatic right away. With practice, however, comprehension checks will become a routine part of your teaching.
