Assignment #8: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 8: Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategy of Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment.
• What is your purpose when you set objectives and/or feedback in your classroom?
• How do you set objectives in your current classroom instruction?
• When and how do you communicate classroom objectives to your students?
• What kind of feedback do you provide for your students?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 8 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback.
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to try out with your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Eight: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback. Click on the “comment” link below.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/prompts to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Eight: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• The generalizations related to setting objectives explain that goals should be clear and specific, but also flexible enough for students to personalize the goals. Consider the objectives you are expected to use, that is, those provided by your school, district, or state. To what extent do you feel they meet the criteria of clarity, specificity, and flexibility?
• How does the information in Figure 8.3 about "Corrective Feedback" shed light on your own experiences with giving and receiving feedback? For example, does it surprise you that research indicates that simply telling students whether an answer is right or wrong can have a negative effect on their achievement?
• How might you change how you communicate objectives to students and parents?
• How will you monitor how well students are meeting their learning objectives?
• How will you engage students in the feedback process (consider use of rubrics)?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
C. Practice-
The rubrics on pages 100 and 101 fit really well with the structure of my units. As I said in an earlier post, for each unit there is a content focus AND a skill focus. For example, during the genocide unit the skill focus is on formulating ‘one sentence summaries’. By using rubrics like the one in figure 8.5, I can tailor feedback to the specific area that each student needs to improve. I think that this format will also allow for more differentiation as I will be able to guide future instruction based on their progress in both content and skill areas.
I have had a lot of success with the four point grading scale and can easily incorporate the ‘processes and skills’ element into existing rubrics. The other benefit of rubrics like this is that students (and families) are more able to assess their own work and that of their classmates. When they know exactly what is expected they are more likely to ‘meet the mark’.
D. Final Strategy Reflection
Phew! I was so pleased to read that students can monitor their own progress and that it does not all fall on the teacher to provide feedback (page 101). Projections indicate that I will have more than 150 students first semester next year, so when I read the research on the importance of feedback (“dollops of it” pg 96) I started to get a little stressed out. How can I provide thoughtful, corrective, specific, and timely feedback to 150+ students?! While I know that feedback from me is important, it is a relief to know that having the students provide feedback on the work of their classmates is also effective. Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE to read/see the products that my students create! They frequently dazzle me with their creativity and the demonstrations of how deeply they understand the material- and there is nothing better than that. However, I would never leave my classroom if I gave “dollops” of feedback on everything that students turned in. :)
C) Practice
I like the idea of contracting with students to set measureable goals, particularly in writing. I do something similar in reading, where each student has a section in his/her notebook devoted to conferences where goals are set, depending on what the student needs to work on. However, what I feel is important is giving students more say as to what those goals should be so that they feel they have ownership of them and feel motivated to accomplish them. What I would also like to put into practice is the idea of setting broader goals for a unit of study, and then allowing students to write their own personal learning goals. I could see myself using the sentence frames from the example on page 95, which would give my 3rd graders a place to start as they think about what specific ideas they would want to learn more about given the larger goal.
D) Final Strategy Reflections
As I read the chapter, a few questions came to mind concerning instructional goals. According to the text, goals should not be too specific because students tend to dismiss information that does not relate to the ultimate goal. In my own classroom, I establish “focus questions” for each lesson on a daily basis that are meant to serve as guides to my students. These questions are written into the schedule each day and as they day progresses, the students will refer to them. Given what the text has stated, I question whether my focus questions should be so specific.
The material presented in this chapter has helped me realize how I can make my feedback more constructive. Given the workload, at times what I struggle with is being able to return work to students in a timely manner so that they know how they can improve the second time. I think it would be best to think about a routine that would work best for both myself and the students. I am curious as to whether all of you have established routines set in place that have helped you provide more timely feedback particularly on homework and writing assignments. What I would also like to begin doing is providing more opportunities, particularly in writing, for students to give feedback to their peers as part of the writing process. Currently, students will assist in the editing of a writing piece, but students would benefit from reading written comments/feedback about their piece from other students.
Sarah,
I like your practice of having the "focus question" for the day. As you said, it gives the students a reference to check back in on- but also keeps the instructor on track! I have found this to be true when I post the 'purpose' of the lesson for the day. I write the purpose as a tool for the students, but when I take the time to do it I find myself focusing as well. It is also a good way to check myself at the end of the lesson by asking the students to participate in a discuission about whether or not we met our purpose for the day.
In terms of the workload required to provide relevant feedback to students, I feel overwhelmed by this aspect as well. One thing to remember is that we can do less formal visual/auditory assessments by giving a promt for students to discuss in small groups (or pairs) and then circulating to listen in and prompt them. We may not be able to get to every kid every time, but we will certainly get an idea of what they are "getting" and what we need to spend more time on.
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution again this week! I enjoy reading your submissions...
Hey Lindsay,
Yeah- I went to Linfield...graduated in 2000. Ryan and I still live in the area, although he works in Hillsboro so he has to commute. I'll let him know that I ran into you in this class. :) Hope that you are well!
Kelly C
C. Something from this chapter that I'd like to try out would be doing goal setting around a unit. If I give them a general outline of the unit and basic objectives, I would love to see them do something similar to what was on p. 95 ("I want to know more" or "I want to know.") Throughout the unit, they can go back to their goals and see how they are going. At the end of the unit, I could see myself asking them to try to answer their questions, and if they can't (we didn't learn it) write how they could find out the answer. I think the kids would enjoy this. And it can guide my teaching as well, knowing if there's something they really want to learn.
I have certain units that I use KWLs or KWs for, but I often forget to go back at the end of the unit and see if we covered it or not. (And I think it's okay if we didn't get to everything - kids want to know everything about a topic!)
D. I feel I do a good job of using rubrics (specific to the assignment/project) and providing feedback, but you can never do enough! Something that did strike me was when handing an assignment back to a student, they sometimes don't know why they got it wrong. If there's a way to tell them, I try (underline the part they forgot, codes like NCS = not complete sentence, etc...) but I realize at times I'm expecting a lot of them to "figure it out." I need to remember to provide more information for them on some assignments.
Another thing I feel we do well, but not enough of, if goal setting. We do goal setting conferences at the beginning of the year. The students set goals, as do their parents and the teachers. I type up their goals and put them on their desks, as well as their strengths. After the first trimester, we revisit the goals again and add or delete things from the original list. However, after that, we don't look at them again. My only excuse for that is that so many pieces of information regarding the child go home at the end of the year, that I feel that is revisiting the goals. However, I think I could do a better job of revisiting them more often and having it be a constantly changing document - so they see and feel their successes. Also, the original goals are set so close to the beginning of the year, it's hard to really have a picture of the child by then.
I think our State Standards allow for quite a bit of flexibility. There is a goal, but not a requirement for how to teach it or what to use to teach it. For example, a standard might be "movement in the sky" which then leads to a high interest unit on the Solar System. Our standards are changing to "Power Standards" which are more specific, but I think with enough creativity, a teacher can figure out creative ways to teach to the goals.
I'm not surprised about Figure 8.3. I absolutely believe that and have seen that. Over the last 10 years that is something I have worked on and feel it gets better every year. I also see a huge benefit in having the students repeat until correct (of course, that might be with adult help). I know the kids can often get frustrated when they get an assignment back to fix, but in the end, I know they learn from it, as this figure states. I was actually very pleased to see that shown!
I have been doing more and more partner feedback activities throughout the years, but this chapter encourages me to do more. I tend to do it more with writing assignments or reading discussions, but I can see it being beneficial across any subject area.
Kelly,
Small world for sure! Linfield is so small, yet I seem to run into Wildcats everywhere! :) That's great that you stayed in Mac - you must get Linfield student teachers??
C: I really like the idea of making contracts with students for attaining specific goals. I can easily see application in my advisory class as the students need to decide what they are going to do for their senior projects. Making contracts with each student and helping them set their own goals within a given time frame will help keep all of us on track. I like what Sarah said about having a “focus question” each day with her class. I would like to do the same thing with my classes and agree with Kelly that stating the purpose of a lesson for the class will help me feel more prepared as well.
Giving feedback is pretty new for me as this year will be my first full year teaching. I appreciate the information from the book about providing feedback, and from everyone else in the class! It helps to hear how others have dealt with this, especially the idea of giving it often and returning work to students in a timely manner.
D: I am still learning the large school wide and state wide objectives in my district and look forward to starting the school year with everyone else, since I came in April last year. So it is hard to say how they meet the clarity, specificity and flexibility. I do know that having four small high schools in one building does create complications in this regard. I already ran into that with students last year, so I do plan to make it clear in my classroom specifically what the goals and expectations are. I also look forward to hearing from my students what their past experience has been in other classes so we can work together to set goals for my classes.
I appreciated the information given in Figure 8.3 because I was one of the students that had a very negative reaction to that big red X on my papers or tests. So I do want to work hard at helping students learn the correct answers, not just filling them in. This will play directly into communication objectives for my class. Using the prompts mention on page 95 will make it easier for me to see if students are meeting their learning objectives when they are able to state them in their own words.
My curriculum lends well toward working with student-lead feedback and working together to repeating work until it is correct. I do plan to work with the rubrics presented on pages 100-101 to create my own for the students and to have them create them as well.
Bonnie,
You are so fortunate to read this book so early in your career! I wish so much that I had a resource like this my first couple of years!
An advisory class is a great place to put the goal setting to use...particularly for a large/long term assignment like a senior project. I bet you will really appreciate having it as a tool!
Lindsay,
I'm not sure if you use a textbook or not, but a colleague of mine started having students thumb through the chapter in the textbook before doing the KWL as a class. She said that it really helped enrich the product and they were able to get much better questions generated.
:) Kelly
Sarah,
I think using the sentence stems is a great idea to help your students start to set goals. Especially at the third grade level. It reminds me of a personal KWL chart.
I think the idea and use of focus questions is an excellent one! The benefit of using your focus question is that it gives direction to you and your students. You might want to build in some flexibility into your question when it makes sense. Remember you are providing a focus question, not necessarily a learning goal. Although it might be appropriate for some objectives/learning goals/focus questions to be very specific, teachers should decide if student learning will be enhanced with broader objectives/learning goals/focus questions.
The first thing I would suggest when considering how to give more timely feedback to students it to look at the assignments. Do away with as many "busy work" assignments that you may have and truly consider if what you are asking the students to do is going to help them learn and become better readers/writers/thinkers.
For writing, consider using Writer's Workshop with conferring. Conferencing with your students is a very powerful way to assess your students and provide feedback. As Regie Routman says, just as students need a lot of time to practice reading, they need a lot of time to practice writing AND not all student writing needs to be graded. We don't grade all of the students reading practice. I believe Regie states in Writing Essentials that only about 20% of students' writing needs to be given formal grades. Now this is not to say that you don't have to provide feedback, but conferring with the students goes a lot farther than lots of red marks on a page that is returned to the student a week later.
In my experience, having third graders provide relevant feedback will take a lot of practice and modeling! Maybe if you have a "feed back" sheet this could help the students.
Kelly, again, great idea to post the "purpose" of the lesson. As you said, when teachers take the time to consider this it helps them with their instruction.
Lindsay, I don't think you are alone. I think most teachers have a hard time fitting reflection and evaluation into the jam-packed day. Though both of these are so important. Having the students evaluate their learning and if they met their goals is a good practice to get in, and I love that you have them write how they can find the answer to their goals if they aren't able to tell you.
Kelly, great suggestion to have students thumb through the chapter before doing the KWL!
I agree with Kelly on students monitoring their own progress and how that can take some of the responsibility off of the teacher and make the students more accountable for their own progress. I teach first graders and when going through the writing process we use self-editing and even though the concept is hard for them to understand and complete I think that practice can help them in the future.
C. I think I would like to try contracts with my first graders. When we begin a unit or a writing piece we can begin with an overall classroom goal/focus and then allow students to change or add to it and we can together write a contract that can be kept in their writing folders until that assignment is complete. Something I do now is have students state what they know or what they want to know (KWL) orally. I think it is great to do this in written form and we can begin as a whole class and then eventually students can write what they specifically want to learn.
As for feedback I want to be better about using rubrics for grading and that way it is clear what the expectations are and students can see if they are meeting and this can be shared with families too! I definately appreciate the generic rubrics for feedback. It is a great place to start and I feel I could easily change the language to use it with my first graders.
D. I have definately learned that I need to be better about providing specific feedback and providing it in a timely manner or it isn't as effective as it could be. I know as a student myself feedback that is clear and timely helps me know that I am understanding the assignment/task given and how I can improve on future assignments. I think that is relevent for students of all ages.
The purpose of setting objectives in my classroom is to help students understand the end goal. By continuously referring to the objectives we can make sure that we are all on track. I make sure that the objectives I set in my classroom now are in the correct student language and that they are "what I want the students to learn".
I provide more oral feedback to my students. I am constantly walking around the classroom and I am checking in with students and see how they are doing and provide feedback to them at that point. I do need to improve my focus on what they are doing to reach the goal rather that just telling them if they are doing it right or wrong.
Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback
Practice: I love the idea of setting specific but flexible goals that the students are able to personalize. I think this way it gives them a sense of ownership of their own learning. I also really like the idea of giving them the sentence stems to work with so they know how to start their goals. This is something that you could use at first to facilitate the learning process, and then the students could start to come up with their own sentence stems toward the middle of the year. Every year I start off by coming up with a set of classroom rules that the students decide on together, and then we sign a large contract that I hang for the rest of the year. I always try to incorporate providing a safe learning environment where students are free to ask questions into the poster. This is a good reminder to students, and I can always refer to it if anyone is not following the rules they came up with. I have never thought about using this in other aspects of the classroom however. I really like the idea of giving the students a contract to sign as a means to control their own learning. Again it will give them a sense of ownership.
As to Providing Feedback, I have really lacked in that department. However, after reading the chapter on Homework Practices, I think that I will be able to get a grasp on how much I send home, and therefore I will be able to comment and provide more feedback sooner. I was glad to hear what Jackie and Mary had to say about Regie’s writing process and that only 20% needs to be given formal grades. This last year my writing curriculum really suffered, and I think a lot of that was due to the fact that I didn’t want to read through 30 papers every 2 weeks. I think that having a writing workshop where I conference with the students would really help in that aspect, as well as having the students provide feedback for each other would be a huge piece. I use a 4 point scale, but in the past I have just underlined what they did on the attached rubric. Now I realize that what they needed to hear was what they didn’t do, and how they could make it better. I really liked the Rubric Adaptations that was more in depth and would really help the learner understand what they needed to do in order to get full credit.
Reflection: Now that I understand the importance of setting goals and objectives that the students can personalize, I think that it will be something that I am more aware of. Now that our district is moving toward Power Standards, I feel that they will be very specific, yet it will force the teachers and students to delve into specific topics more thoroughly.
The part of Figure 8.3 that surprised me was that giving the Right/Wrong answer had a negative effect. I understand that just telling the student that their answer is wrong wouldn’t help them at all, and then I guess that the same would go for just giving them the right answer (possibly they think they know it all then?) But what I didn’t understand was that the next row down says correct answer provides a percentile gain of 9 points. I also would have thought that just giving an explanation wouldn’t lead to as much of a percentile gain as if the student had to continue doing it until they got the correct answer.
When communicating to students and parents, I would really like to provide more information prior to the assignment being turned in. That way they know what is to be expected of them ahead of time rather than just getting a grade after they have turned it in. I think this will help parents respect me as the teacher, and keep their children accountable.
I think in order to make sure my students are meeting their learning objectives, it will be important for me to constantly be conferencing and checking in with them on a weekly basis. I think it would also be beneficial for the students to meet with their Base Groups and touch base with each other to hold one another accountable.
Lindsay - (I tend to agree with you a lot!) :) You must be from the Hillsboro School District because a lot of what you have said sounds familiar... About goal setting, we also have goal setting conferences at the beginning of the year where students, parents, and teachers come up with goals for the students. However, just like you, I find it very difficult to revisit after the first trimester is over. Not only have I forgotten about them, but the students have as well. After reading this chapter however, and seeing how important feedback is, I think that is something I will try to do better with this year. The students are a big part of setting their goals, so I would think that they would like to revisit them, and see what they have already accomplished as well as what they still need to work on.
Sarah C. - I think that it is great that you establish focus questions for each lesson. This is something that I really need to improve on in my own classroom. I find it very hard to come up with good lesson objectives in student friendly language, and therefore I haven’t ever provided my students with this information. Can you give me any specific questions that you used? I think I will definitely be doing something like this in the near future.
Post a Comment