Teaching Students to Justify Their Answers

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Assessing students can take many forms.  In order to collect data on whether or not our students know the content that we are teaching them it is important to collect both formative and summative data as a means to understand their thinking (this can be difficult with adolescents), deepen their understanding of content, and correct any miscommunications that they may have.

One way that I do this in my classroom is to have the students justify their answer.  There are many reasons for this:

  • It gives insight as to what students are thinking
  • Challenges students to prove what they know
  • Encourages higher-level thinking
  • Provides an opportunity to practice what students might be asked to do on state-level assessment

I use this worksheet to require my students to justify their answers.


How could you use this justification worksheet in your class? 


Comments

Kim Harrison said…
Thank you for this resource.
January 22, 2018 at 4:27 PM
Thea said…
You're welcome! Thank you for visiting! I forward to sharing more resources in the future.
January 23, 2018 at 3:47 AM
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