Feedback is the Hinge
Feedback Is the Hinge
Instructionally, we established a goal to respond to student needs by improving student engagement and student achievement. In shifting our focus from assessing students to assessment for student learning, we have been exploring 3 ways of encouraging student assessment:
- Self-assessment: students evaluate and/or use metacognitive strategies, seek information and ways to correct learning, and creating self-teaching and self-regulating situations.
- Peer learning: we recognize that learning should be a social process, we seek ways for students to clarify information and processing with peers.
- Teacher interactions: teachers will provide opportunities for student interactions with content, learning intentions and other students; they will design re-teaching opportunities and provide opportunities for students to correct assignments and assessments.
In Feedback: The Hinge that Joins Teaching and Learning, Jane Pollock asserts that feedback, especially when students set their own goals, track their progress and regulate their own learning, engages and motivates learners.
Here are eight takeaways from Pollock’s work:
- The hinge factor to improving student learning in schools is feedback….When we address feedback as a strategy that teachers can teach students to use, student engagement increased and so does student achievement. (p xi)
- Research shows that the factor to advance student engagement and achievement is not just teaching, nor just learning, but interlocking the two….feedback connects students to teachers in a way the acts as a hinge, and the result is accelerated productivity and increased achievement. (p. 12)
- More engaged learners achieve more, and when we engage, we want feedback. Traditionally, high achieving students have learned to seek and provide self-feedback. As a result, they stay more engaged with the work. When we teach our disengaged students techniques for seeking feedback, this will help them be more engaged and successful.
- Feedback must be “tied to a criterion or goal [feedback] also clarifies relevant prospects for learning more information.” This “intends to improve outcomes and as a result, provides the opportunity for a newly advanced goal.”
- If the teacher provides “curriculum goals and objectives daily, with a strategy and time for students to interact with them,” they teach learners how to engage and achieve.” (p. 4) “Teachers could easily increase feedback to unengaged learners and all learners by providing curriculum goals for the learners at the beginning of every lesson and returning to those goals at the end of the lesson.” (p 32)
- Within a few weeks of using self-assessment, Pollock’s research states that teachers see a marked difference in effort and achievement. According to Marzano, “having students track their [own] progress using a rubric is a ‘hidden gem.’ This strategy involves multiple types of assessments, increases interactions between teachers and students, and provides students with clear guidance on how to enhance their learning.” (p. 22 and 87)
- Frequent use of high-yield strategies like turn-and-talk where students interact with the content and each other provide students with the chance to interact with peers multiple times within a class and for the teacher to assess student progress/learning. The latter can be achieved by checking in on breakout rooms or having students complete a learning task/reflection.
- Feedback is the hinge factor for improvement. The teachers changed their habits to give better feedback to students during classes, sometimes called formative assessment or assessment during learning. The teacher became motivated in turn by the student feedback, recognizing the need to make changes for their instruction and assessment. As a result, the unmotivated students became more engaged and all learners learned ways to seek and use feedback to make improvement.
Here are some student self-assessment/assessment for learning templates and strategies.
Challenges in creating assessment for learning and student self-reflection
- According to Ken O’Connor, elementary teachers tend not to keep gradebooks and are reluctant to evaluate students.
- Teachers use objectives as compliance rather than providing them to students to provide students with information and feedback through the learning process.
- When written in kid-friendly language, learning objectives result in activities as opposed to goals and objectives.
- Unpacking the standards and aligning assessments to standards for purposes of learning and improvement is a complicated process.
- Students Social emotional engagement is an essential element in developing equityhave had minimal opportunities to self-assess their learning in the past.
Questions to Ponder
- How can we create an environment where students learn to give themselves and peers feedback?
- Is asking students to interact with the learning goal new to you? If not, how have you done this?
- What strategies/templates can you use with your students?
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Social emotional engagement is an essential element in developing equity. according to Becker and Luther (2000) the four most important elements are 1) academic in school attachment, 2) teacher support, 3) peer values, and 4) mental health. All learning is social. Relationships are complex. It is critical for us to intentionally create systems that support social emotional engagement for all while also examining the impact that your behaviors have on others.
In what specific behaviors have you or will you engage to ensure we are culturally responsive?
Tasks
- Please complete your Kronos timecard
- Open Enrollment Closes on November 12
- Panorama Survey November 10-12 (November 11 for secondary). Please see below.
Upcoming Dates and Information
November 10: ½ Day for DPLC (Secondary Bell Schedule)
November 10: Take 2 for the Panorama Survey. Middle and secondary school teachers, we will take the survey Wednesday during 1st block (sorry, that you’re losing an already shortened period unfortunately the window is 11/9-11/12 and I wanted to have time to get those who don’t take it on Wednesday). Directions. Only students who didn’t take it last time will have to take it. Here’s a list of students who completed the major portion of the survey. The Panorama Survey is for grades 3-12.
Elementary Meeting: Tuesday
Secondary Meeting: Thursday
Digital Citizenship Night November 16
CRT and the Brain Book Study: November 17 This is a foundational book for all ACPS employees. If you haven’t participated in a book study yet, please plan to attend.
Middle School Advisory Lessons
Possible lessons for the week are here.
Elementary Announcements
Monday http://youtu.be/MpgDAgus3uQ?hd=1
Tuesday http://youtu.be/IBHBHX1M12g?hd=1
Wednesday http://youtu.be/orXuHG58wNs?hd=1
Thursday http://youtu.be/m9mxbDC7d54?hd=1
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