Evidence-Based Practices
Checking for Understanding TAPPLE
Research shows that frequent Checking for Understanding improves student achievement by helping teachers identify misconceptions, adjust instruction in real time, and ensure every student is learning before moving on.
Formative Assessment in Action
Research consistently shows that student learning increases when teachers frequently check for understanding throughout a lesson. Rather than waiting until the end of a lesson or unit to determine what students have learned, effective teachers use formative assessment to gather evidence of learning during instruction. This allows teachers to identify misconceptions, provide immediate feedback, and adjust instruction before student practice errors.
In Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI®), formative assessment happens continuously through the TAPPLE process. TAPPLE is a structured method for Checking for Understanding that ensures every student actively participates and demonstrates learning throughout the lesson.
Unlike traditional questioning, where only a few volunteers participate, TAPPLE transforms questioning into an ongoing formative assessment process. Every student is expected to think, discuss, and respond, giving the teacher accurate information about what the entire class understands, not just a handful of students.
Through TAPPLE, Checking for Understanding becomes a powerful instructional practice that improves engagement, increases accountability, and leads to high levels of thinking.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Gr5j26HW8&t=27s
Teach First
provides explicit instruction before asking students to apply new learning.
Ask a Question
Ask specific questions about what you are teaching. Don’t ask students if they understand the content. Often, students’ opinions of their learning do not match reality.
Pair-share
Processes information by sharing with a partner. Provides students with an opportunity to vocalize their response in their own words
Pick a Non-Volunteer
Relying on volunteers can create a false sense of understanding because the strongest students are often the ones responding, while other students’ misconceptions may go unnoticed. It is recommended to pick three non-volunteers.
Listen
Check to determine if students are learning and thinking so that the correct, effective feedback can be provided.
Effective Feedback
You can do one of three things: echo, elaborate, or explain. If the student is correct, you echo the correct response back. Restating the correct answer provides an affirmation to the student who just answered. When the response is tentative or partially correct, you should elaborate. Elaborating and/or paraphrasing will reinforce the correct answer to the student who was called on and will also benefit the rest of the class. Finally, if two students in a row cannot answer, then you will need to explain or reteach.
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Research Behind Checking for Understanding
According to the article Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies that All Teachers Should Know by emeritus professor of education Barak Rosenshine (American Educator, Spring 2012), effective instruction asks questions and checks responses of all students in order to help students practice new information and connect new material to their prior knowledge.
The article suggests that to practice new information, teachers must ask students questions while they are teaching. In a classroom-based experiment, a group of teachers was asked to increase the number of factual questions and process questions during guided practice. The results of this experiment showed that students who had these teachers achieved higher scores than students whose teachers did not ask multiple questions. Also, teachers who asked a large number of questions had higher student participation. Furthermore, teachers were able to assess if the students understood the content, which allowed the teachers to make modifications to the lesson or reteach when necessary.
Principles of Instruction
Dr. Barak Rosenshine
Rosenshine observed that successful teachers found ways to involve all students in answering questions.
- Tell the answer to a neighbor
- Summarize the main idea in one or two sentences
- Write a summary on a piece of paper
- Share the answer with a neighbor
- Write an answer on a card and then hold it up
- Give a thumbs-up if a student agrees with the answer that someone else has given
Why is Checking for Understanding so beneficial?
- It allows the teacher to make instructional decisions during the lesson. It informs the teacher when to speed up, slow down, or re-teach. CFU helps pace the lesson.
- When teachers look at independent work, homework, quizzes, or state test results to see if students learned…it’s too late to modify instruction.
- CFU is the backbone of effective instruction and Explicit Direct Instruction… because you measure and monitor student learning in real time.
- CFU guarantees high student success (80-100%)… because you revise teaching in direct response to student learning.
- CFU ensures that your students will not be practicing and reinforcing their mistakes. Practice makes permanent, not perfect!