ABSTRACT
Ask teachers in advance of coming to the professional development session to take three pictures with their smartphones that help describe the way they feel when a student "gets" the lesson they are teaching. Ask them to bring their phones—or printouts of the pictures—to the professional development activity. Students might be inclined to spend a long time on their drawings. It can be helpful the first few times someone use this formative assessment to give them a time limit for the drawing and then tell them when to move on to their highlights or takeaways. Information can be gleaned both from what the students choose to depict and what they say about it. For instance, if a student is asked to draw George Washington's greatest achievement and they choose to draw our first president cutting down a cherry tree, that shows a serious misconception that needs to be corrected.
