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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C. Practice: For writer’s workshop, I made a checklist of what each piece of writing need to have before they could meet with me to conference. The items on the checklist include: I wrote my name and date on my paper, I used capital letters to begin my sentences, I put spaces between my words, I used lowercase letters, I used a period (punctuation), My writing makes sense, and My picture matches my words. There is a box in front of each of these statements for them to check off if they completed it. I might add one, I had a classmate read my paper and give me a suggestion. I felt that this checklist helped the kids really think about and perform all these items. It was their way of checking for completion before coming to me. It was their responsibility. I felt like this checklist helped every child have most of these items met before they conferenced with me.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: It makes sense that, goals that are too narrow decreases learning. I have had instructors who had very specific outlines and I would only focus on these outlines for my learning instead of seeing the learning in a larger context. The part in the chapter when it talks about specific but flexible goals, it reminds me of when our whole class does a KWL chart before we begin studying a new topic. It made me think, that I could have students do individual KWL’s before we begin a new unit. I feel like my district is very flexible on their learning objectives for teachers. For a beginning teacher, I they tend to be too flexible with not enough information. When reading the section on feedback, I think about my own experience with teachers and feedback. I really appreciated teachers who were to the point of what is right and what is wrong. I felt I learned best from this. I had a teacher who would let us grade our own tests right after we took them. Although it was easy for anyone to change their answer during this self-grading, I actually learned from mistakes I had made. I believe having feedback right away helped/increased my learning. I also, appreciated specific feedback, general feedback seemed “fake” to me and did not help me learn anything except that the teacher just wanted me to feel good about what I am doing. In my schooling, I rarely had any experience with student-led feedback. In the instances that I did, I felt like the feedback was only as good/as smart as the student giving it. I also felt like we weren’t trained or equipped to give feedback. There were never examples to follow or any training and I think this took away from what the experience could have been. I would love to use more rubrics with young children. I would love to see examples of rubrics used with young children, so I could try using them more.
Heidi makes a good point stating that we were not adequately trained or equipped to give feedback to students. This is a skill I continue to work on.
C. Practice: When students enter the classroom, the daily objective is written on the board or overhead. Objective are clear, and specific. Students are required to write objectives in their planner. We then discuss the objectives and move on to the lesson. Recently, the class read a story on Hurricanes and another story on Tornadoes. Students analyzed a Hurricane and Tornado Compare & Contrast essay. We discussed when to use this type of essay, discussed words used to compare ideas and words used to contrast concepts. Using a graphic organizer, students independently wrote an introductory paragraph, three details stating the differences and three similarities. As students work independently, I use a Writers’ Workshop to individually discuss a student’s essay. During Writer’s Workshop, the student is involved in his/her feedback. Generally, the discussion involves what he/she can improve upon and the successes.
Students refer to the six-trait writing rubric as they are writing their essay (they have used the rubric throughout the year for different types of essays). We review each trait individually. One day we may review sentence fluency, the next conventions, and so on. Many students do not refer to the rubric seriously, until we review his/her essay individually.
D. Reflection: Writing is difficult for my male students. I have found girls enjoy writing more than boys. I try to find subjects that interest boys, but they prefer to quickly write something down and take whatever grade they earn. However, reviewing the six-trait rubric helps them to focus and remember the importance of the six traits when writing essays. Students correct errors and move on to the following trait.
We are required to write State objectives for each lesson taught. Students write objective in their planner. Providing feedback as to why answers are incorrect or correct are powerful learning tools for students’ success. I need to take additional time using student feedback as student self-evaluation.
C. Practice: In French class, students are required to choose a poem from a list of six the class has learned. I would design a simple rubric displaying the expectations of reciting the poem. As a class, we have learned the proper pronunciation of each poem as well as translating the meaning. It would take a lot of time for each student to recite his/her poem in front of the class, and it may become rather tedious for the class to listen to poem after poem. However, if I modeled how to score the rubric to the class, students could listen to their peers and give scores accordingly. Since everyone would be familiar with each poem, this seems an easy introduction to student-led feedback. Each student would need to share his/her poem with 2-3 other students.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Setting objectives and providing feedback are critical tools for successful learning. My son shared how in his freshman honor’s music class students were asked to provide feedback and grade another student’s paper. My son used the rubric provided and gave his peer 8 out of 10 points. He later overhead the student complaining about the score to the professor. The student did not know who graded the paper. He found out that all the other students had given 10 out of 10 points. So again, here is another strategy that seems great in theory but has some problems in practice. It has to be taught. Using different forms of feedback can only increase learning. Everyone likes to receive good scores, but it is also important that we teach how to learn from our mistakes. Again, it is creating an open environment where students can contribute their own ideas to the learning process. I will be mindful of allowing students to contribute to goal setting because that personalizes and gives meaning to academic objectives. And I will also give feedback in a timely manner in order that my students can reap the most benefits from what they have learned.
Thanks Heidi, Linda, and Dana for your comments on objectives and feedback.
Heidi – Using rubrics at every grade level is a great way for them (and you) to be clear on what your objectives and expectations are. It also is very helpful for parents to see this stated clearly. What you explained using in section C IS a rubric! You are right; feedback needs to be very specific and tied to student learning so that it does feel “real” to the students.
Linda – It’s great that your objectives are posted right on the board everyday; kids come in and immediately know what their expectation are…what a way to start the day. Conferring and working in small groups are an extremely effective way to give feedback to your students (especially when able to use a rubric like one for 6-traits). Allowing your boys to write about their own choice in topics within the genre you’re working on, may help increase writing interest…not sure if this is possible within your curricula guidelines…???
Dana – Having students score each other using a rubric is a great way to bring in cooperative learning as well :) When using rubrics to score, especially when students are scoring each other (ie your son’s situation), rubrics need to be very clear and detailed so that there isn’t room for inconsistencies in scoring. The more detailed your rubric is, the better tool it will be to score without being so subjective.
C. Student –led feedback is very common in 5th grade because they are more independent. I think it’s a great chance for students to get comfortable hearing their strengths and weaknesses from someone other their parent and/or teacher. At the beginning of the year I assign writing partners so the students have a consistent person that they meet with to discuss ideas, the flow of their story and eventually do peer editing with. When you have an audience that will be reading and responding to your story students put more effort into the voice and conventions of their story.
I find that the majority of writing feed back that I give is in the area of conventions or organization. I am not sure if this is because we don’t teach grammar as much as we use to, but I don’t remember students getting this wrapped up in spelling and punctuation when I was in school.
D. Feedback is honestly one of the main areas I would like to improve on. I think it is always important to set a personal goal and reading about timely feedback is a great reminder for me to be prompt in giving students a response. I will also use the rubrics seen in figures 8.5 and 8.6 in the future. I think they represent a simple scare that would be easy for students to gain feedback from.
Assignment #8:
C. Practice:
In my writer’s workshop, my students conference with me on every 5th day of a 5 day rotation. In their binders they’ve got a list of 1st grade expectations for writing in the various 6 traits. I will highlight an area that a child needs to work on, and when they go write on their own the other 4 days that they aren’t with me, they are reminded by that sheet what their one specific goal is to work on. I think that’s a manageable goal. When I conference with them next we will discuss the progress they’re making towards meeting that goal. Often times a student may work on that one goal for a few weeks before we focus on a new goal for them. Having feedback from me in that conference is invaluable I think. In this they are also actively evaluating themselves, which I agree is also important.
D. Final Strategy Reflection:
Also, through SIOP training I’ve been encouraged to be posting student friendly content and language objectives for multiple lessons per day. I’m still working hard to get these posted. However, I think it’s really helpful in letting students know what is expected of them, and where we are headed. They take ownership in their learning and when they verbally speak the information back it’s another opportunity for them to be aware of what they’re learning.
The chapter reading in this made me stop to reflect as to whether my language and content goals are too specific, and if they are damaging to student learning. I like that they goals should be flexible and allowed to be specialized per student individual needs
• Corrective feedback is so much more valuable when explanation is provided. I just today went over a writing sample with a student to explain to them why they did not pass and what is was that they needed to do, in order to receive a passing grade. Just simple yes/no or correct/incorrect does not leave much room for growing, reflecting, or impact on a student. I’ve found that to be true for myself and so I make sure not to do that with students. Giving them opportunity to try again until they’ve got it figured out is more valuable for sure.
• How might you change how you communicate objectives to students and parents?
Posting them in kid friendly language and referring back to them. Checking in as a class to see how we’re doing in reaching that objective. The responsibility for learning that objective doesn’t just fall onto the shoulders of one child, but all of us as a class/community.
• How will you monitor how well students are meeting their learning objectives?
Discussing them with students, exit and entrance slips with a brief question or example of the learning they are expected to produce. Touching base with them and always coming back to see if we’ve done our job. If we haven’t, then I need to provide more opportunities for practice and learning.
• How will you engage students in the feedback process (consider use of rubrics)?
Rubrics, and the posting of objectives and class conversations.
Thanks Meagan, for your comments on feedback and reinforcement! It sounds as though you have established many great opportunities in your classroom for your students to receive feedback from a variety of different sources. I agree, unfortunately, kids do tend to get a bit too caught up in the conventions of writing as a priority before putting effort in on writing well first. Usually this is a causality of prior teaching from other grades :( Finding ways to quickly be able to give feedback is key…teachers are already working overtime in major ways these days. Once you establish a rubric that is generic and works well with your students, it will definitely be a great tool to give quick and effective feedback!
Thanks Jennie for your comments on Assignment Eight. That’s amazing that you have the opportunity to confer with your students once out of every 5 days! I completely agree that conferring in a one:one instructional setting is the best way to give feedback on student work! How funny you mention SIOP training….our school is going to be a pilot school next year for the district. We’ll be getting our first training on the last teacher PD day prior to summer. It sounds great…just hoping my district does it with fidelity!
C/D: As far as objectives go, I am currently struggling a bit with these. When I started teaching, making one clear objective for each lesson was pretty straightforward and I felt that it benefited both the students and myself to have it written on the board. With SIOP, I am required to put two objectives on the board. Even though I understand why they ask us to write both a language and a content objective, I feel that my objectives are not as clear, specific or flexible as they were before. In fact, I feel that (for me personally) standing in front of the board trying to figure out how to write a SIOP approved set of objectives keeps me from knowing and understanding the overall objective of my lesson on a daily basis. For the students to know and understand the purpose of our work together is key to their success, the reading encouraged me to continue to work on my objectives. I do feel that if I were able to return to a 'one objective' format, I could do a better job of this.
I have always felt that providing the students with feedback was important. The reading affirmed this belief for me. As a learner myself I always felt like many of those students in the reading, if the "teacher/professor does not tell me what I did wrong or how to fix it, how can I learn? How can I do better?" It is because of this belief that I do work hard to give students specific feedback whenever I can.
Here is an example of what works well for me: To score our sciencelogs every few weeks, we use a rubric. Students check one another's logs using this rubric. Before the rubric can be submitted to the inbox, both parties must sign that they agree with the assessment of the log. When the student looks at the rubric, they attain immediate feedback on what he/she should work on. Logcheck scores improve as the year progresses, their overall understanding improves, their organization… and finally they also do better on their exams. I love this strategy so much, I would really like to find a way to implement similar rubrics on other assignments. This type of rubric is fantastic because the students see the rubric before it is submitted for a grade. Checking a classmate's log allows a student to see how other students work and helps them to understand which methods are the most successful.
Some of my larger LABs/Projects take longer to grade and I always feel terrible when I cannot get them back to the students sooner. I would like to find a way to still do a good job giving them thoughtful and helpful feedback on these assignments without taking so long. I wonder if I could create a similar rubric for the students to complete before submitting the assignment?
Thanks Miss Chevalier for your comments on setting objectives and providing feedback. I’m not sure I quite understand how writing SIOP objectives seems to be a roadblock to you being able to understand what the objectives are…but that is due to my lack of knowledge in SIOP. Unfortunately by the time I start receiving training at the end of June…it’ll be too late to support you :) Could you possibly team with a colleague to support you in this? Rubrics are one of the best ways to provide purposeful and direct feedback to your students. It would be great to add more to your instructional assignments…it’s not a bad idea to co-create some of them with your students.
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