Just A Reminder...all course work is due December 5th!!!!
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)?
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2 comments:
Assignment #8
Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
By Ryan King
C) Recently, students in my Algebra 2 class have been working on the complicated process of creating a quadratic function that would pass through three given points. This process is labor intensive, each problem has at least ten steps to complete, and small errors will make a solution very unreasonable. I have noticed that it is very frustrating for students to work all night on their homework, only to find out the next day that their solutions are incorrect. In an attempt to remedy that, this year I gave students the solutions to all the problems when I assigned the work. This way students would know immediately if they had solved the problem correctly. If not, students would go back through their work in an attempt to identify any errors that they may have made. Once they had checked through their work individually, they were encouraged to check with a neighbor, and finally they would bring their work to me so that I could help them locate it. Students understood that simply writing down answers would not suffice, so they were diligent in showing their work as they went through the process. While many students were not able to successfully solve the problems the first time through, the majority were able to increase their ability to both solve the problems and spot errors in their work.
D) I verbally state our objective every day when I begin my lecture on new content, but I rarely write that objective on the board so students can read it. As I was reading through the chapter, I was struck that perhaps my weakness for writing out objective may actually allow the student to broaden their thought process as they listen to a lecture. If I were to state on the board, “solve equations by multiplication” would the students just look at solving the problem, instead of understanding why we choose the methods that we do. Or, would outlining the objective provide students with a framework that they could attach all the supplemental ideas that I cover. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I know those answers right now. I think that it will take trial and error to determine what the best practice is for my teaching style.
Our district math committee has created math power standards, which are broad categories that will be used to ensure that we meet state curriculum requirements. How we go about meeting these standards is very open to individual teaching styles, and can be adapted to create varying learning opportunities. I feel that our state standards are sometimes unclear, and that the power standards simplify things so students can understand the objectives. My communication with parents on objectives is in the form of a topic outline that is provided with the syllabus. In the future, I may rework that outline and include more details about the content that I am covering. I monitor the students’ ability to meet objectives through mini-quizzes and chapter tests, as well as checking their homework on a daily basis. I also use the question and answer time at the beginning of class to gauge the amount of learning that took place. During this time, the students will provide me with questions, and let me know where it was that they struggle when working through their previous assignment. I work through problems on the board, and it is their responsibility to let me know which problems gave them the most difficulty.
What a great idea to give the students the solutions to their problems…awesome way of providing immediate feedback!!! An interesting thought about not writing out the objective for the day…” may actually allow the student to broaden their thought process as they listen to a lecture”. Are you thinking that in actually focusing their thinking, it may hinder their thought process?
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