Feedback that Fits
I found that, after reading this article, the feedback that I give my students is sometimes right on and sometimes lacking in direction. When I give feedback, I try to accent something positive about the work first, then give the correction or suggestion. The second examples of feedback on Anna’s paragraph that were given were excellent, but I feel they would be best given in a verbal assessment rather than written. Giving 25 students each a verbal assessment on an assignment within a 40 minute class period would take the majority of the class time. I can understand why a lot of the teachers tend to go with the ineffective way of giving feedback – a way to address the errors in the shortest amount of time.
But I also realized that if my students were submitting their assignment s as emails in Word or in GoogleDocs, I would very easily to able to type the correct positive feedback. This is a format that I am interesting in using, and I plan to start to introduce it to my students within this first quarter. By using GoogleDocs, I think that not only will my students prepare better and more complete assignments, assessing them will be easier and quicker. It will be an interesting experiment!
Advance Organizers
It was interesting to read about the advance organizers in our text book. I have used course outlines with my classes, but I have never used anything that would be a work-in-progress for the students. By giving them an organizer that required them to complete it, it would give purpose to their reading and listening to class discussion, as well as the video or any other resource that is used. I found an awesome website at http://www.teachervision.fen.com/graphic-organizers/printable/6293.html?s2 where there are blank graphic organizers that you can fill in and print or email. I can’t wait to see my students’ faces when I hand them an organizer for our next chapter – direct their learning even more. Very exciting!
Denise,
ReplyDeleteI feel exactly the same way about feedback! I have always accentuated the positive first and then given my constructive suggestions, but often in writing, or with just a grade on their papers. All week I've been really trying hard to improve that, and not just saying "good job" as I'm walking around, but trying to be specific about what they are doing right, or wrong. As far as the time crunch goes, I have been feeling that all year. We started a new Reading Program where I'm supposed to conference one-on-one with my students (4 per day) and discuss with them what their reading and writing strengths and goals are. 4 per day may not sound like a lot, but I only have a 2 hour period in the afternoon to do it, and I also have to fit writing and reading whole group instruction in there, and Guided Reading, and give them time to read independently and write independently. Those conferences take a long time! I can't imagine doing that for every student in every subject every day!
In this day of increasing class size, we all struggle with being able to provide meaningful feedback to our students. Perhaps you could develop a rotation system where you try to provide verbal feedback to a limited number of students on each assignment. Use of comments through Google Docs or MS Word can be very empowering as well. Don't forget about the power of peer feedback - especially after you have modeled good feedback to your students. By the way, the Teacher Vision site you mentioned is a favorite of mine as well.
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