Traffic Light Cups
Using paper cups, coloured as Traffic Lights to assess pupil’s learning and understanding as seen on the BBC’s The Classroom Experiment.
One happy customer said "The children are really enjoying the cups. They realise they can get help without drawing attention to themselves". - Rebecca Garcia
Professor Dylan Wiliam ran a 10 week experiment with a Year 8 class to test simple ideas that he believes could improve the quality of education.
With the 3 coloured paper cups on the pupil’s desk, they can be used in a variety of ways.
- to rate existing knowledge
- to show understanding
- to indicate responses to questions
- to ask a question
- to seek clarification
- to raise a point
- to rate achievement
- to create a formative dialogue.
Traffic lights allow learners to respond without calling out. In response situations all pupils show the cup or label their work in the way that most accurately reflects their response.
· Red – did not understand and found this difficult.
· Amber – understood some of it but still not confident.
· Green – understood this and am confident.
Using traffic lights is more challenging and participatory than the conventional hands up approach and provides a diagnostic tool for the adult. Best practice would be for cups to be left on the desk so the child is more confident about displaying their progress to the teacher. This encourages learners to express difficulties while the lesson is in progress. Learners could be asked to:
- focus on one of the success criteria.
- point to the colour which best represents their achievement or feeling about how they are doing at that moment or their understanding of the learning intention / success criteria.
This discrete method of self-assessment indicates where support is needed. Teachers can work with ‘reds’. ‘Greens’ can be paired with ‘ambers’ to provide peer support. ‘Greens’ can be given extension work where appropriate.
Pupils could use this as part of the process of self-evaluating their own learning.
Traffic light paper cups now available at The Paper Cup Company. Please give Jenny Woodward a ring on 01200 449908 or email her on jenny@tpcc.co to see how Traffic Lights Cups can help your students.
Traffic Light Cups are growing in popularity, view the articles below for further information on traffic light cups.
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/1050401-The-Classroom-Experiment/AllOnOnePage