60-Second Strategy: Silent Partners

“Silent Partners is an assessment activity that I will often do on Formative Fridays,” says Kathy-Ann St. Hill-St. Lawrence, a second-grade teacher at Harford Heights Elementary in Baltimore, Maryland. “That’s when I figure out what I need to plan, going into the next week. So I try to figure out what my kids have grasped, in a quick snapshot.”

In this beloved game, students are given cards with numbers on them, in different formats. For example, one card might say “64,” another card says “60+4,” and another card says “sixty-four.” Kids then try to find classmates who have numbers that correspond to theirs, but there’s a hitch: They must do it without talking.

Every time someone talks, students have to return to their seats and the game starts over. Once all partners have found each other, Ms. Saint (as she’s called by her students) asks them to identify if their numbers are in standard form, expanded form, or word form.

The beauty of this practice is that it can be used with tons of other lessons and content areas (students could find other students who have even or odd numbers, numbers with the same divisor, the same parts of speech in an English language arts lesson—the list goes on).

Another benefit of this practice? “ I think a lot of kids struggle with being quiet,” says Saint. “A lot of them don’t have designated quiet time, and so then they have problems focusing. That’s a skill in this digital age that some kids have lost. Using it in the game helps them to realize that it’s not a punishment. I’m not telling you to be quiet because you’re doing something wrong. I need your brain to focus a little better.”

For more ideas for quick formative assessment activities, read Laura Thomas’s article for Edutopia titled, “7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment.”