How the PlanWise® Tool Works

The strategies that the PlanWise® tool offers focus on six critical formative assessment practices:

  • An icon representing the practice named Learning Goals Using Learning Goals with Your Students
  • An icon representing the practice named Eliciting Evidence of Student Understanding Eliciting Student Understanding
  • An icon representing the practice named Peer Feedback Engaging Students in Peer Feedback
  • An icon representing the practice named Student Self-Assessment Engaging Students in Student Self-Assessment
  • An icon representing the practice named Providing Formative Feedback Providing Formative Feedback to Students
  • An icon representing the practice named Pre-Assessment Pre-Assessing Student Understanding

It doesn't matter whether teachers are working with students in person, virtually or in a hybrid model. All of the strategies offered by the PlanWise tool can be used with students in any instructional setting.

Let's Take A Closer Look

View this short video to learn more about the tool and how it works.

View Transcript

The Process

The teacher opens a blank Google Doc™ or an already-developed lesson plan in their Chrome™ browser.

Once the teacher begins, the PlanWise tool engages with the teacher's plan by underlining words that correspond to a formative assessment practice. The underlined words link to recommended practices and strategies specifically targeted to that teacher.

The teacher can select the underlined words to access additional information about the practice and specific strategies to help them implement it in their lessons.

When a teacher finds a strategy they'd like to try, they can copy and paste it right into their lesson plan in full text or summary format.

Teachers can also further customize their own experience within the PlanWise tool by deciding:

  • which strategies they'd like to save in their personal library
  • when they'd like to learn about and try new practices
  • which strategies they'd like to hide
  • which keywords they might want to ignore

Two sample Google docs, one that is blank and one that is an already-developed lesson plan

Two sample Google docs, one that is blank and one that is an already-developed lesson plan

Targeted Mathematics Misconception Questions

Mathematics teachers will also have access to targeted questions that help reveal common misconceptions. The PlanWise tool also underlines related math terms or associated standards found in the teacher's lesson plan. Selecting them takes the teacher to general information about common misconceptions, as well as to targeted questions that help uncover the students' understanding of the concept.

At first, the questions may look like those that teachers commonly find in manuals and online. But these targeted questions also provide explanations of misconceptions that may have led a student to select a specific answer option.

Teachers can copy and paste these questions right into their lesson plan or even into other documents that will be shared with students, like presentation slides and exit tickets.

A sample mathematics misconception question that includes a multiple-choice question with answer options; also included are explanations associated to each answer option that reveal student misconceptions that may lead students to select specific answer options

Subject-specific Video Collection

During lesson planning, the PlanWise tool delivers suggestions for videos for use by both teachers and students. These educational videos are curated to match subject-specific topics that a teacher includes in their lesson plans. This feature is activated in the PlanWise tool when teachers select the subject area(s) they teach within their PlanWise profile.

Teachers might use a video to help them link or present content in a way they had not previously considered. Students might benefit from the multimedia presentation to think about content differently or learn new content. Teachers can show videos to their students during class or group learning settings, or provide students with links for viewing later.

The video collection, powered by BoClips¹, currently includes the following subjects: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Get Started

Professional learning focused on formative assessment practices delivered right into teachers' regular workflow at their pace, when they're ready and without having to search — that's the PlanWise tool.

Contact us to get started. We'll work with you on a subscription that's right for your school or district.

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1 Boclips powers the videos within the PlanWise tool to help teachers find safe, curated content for their lessons. Boclips resources come from a library of 380+ brands, including documentaries and tutorials from TED Talks™, Smithsonian™ and Encyclopedia Britannica™, news stories from Bloomberg™, PBS® and The Wall Street Journal® and animations from teacher-selected YouTube® channels like Crash Course and SciShow. These resources are safe for classroom use, copyright-cleared and free from advertising — the perfect way to bring learning to life!