Assignment #8: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 8: Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback.
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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 D to the blog (especially since it's summer term and many of us aren't working with students). We’re also trying to make the blog more user-friendly and easier to read. 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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Assignment #8: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Marika Conrad
Of all the chapters I have read in this book, this is the one where I felt, “Ugh, I could be doing so much better than I am in this area!” Every fall during conferences, I sit down with my students and set goals for the year. Last year, we used students’ 4th grade report card to highlight areas on the 5th grade report card where students needed improvement. What I now realize is that I need to be setting many smaller goals throughout the year with students—perhaps for each chapter in math, focus in writing, or unit in social studies. The idea of providing students with the overall learning objective and then having students create their own goals from that sounds plausible for my students. Our Oregon State Standards are specific, but would allow for students to target goals within them that meet their needs. I’d like to try that this year, since I often share the objectives with them anyway. Then, after students take the assessment in the area they set the goal(s) in, they can reflect on how well they did at meeting their individualized goals.
The quote on page 96 really hit home. “The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be ‘dollops of feedback’” (Hattie, 1992, p.9). Getting all of the assignments/tests turned in, getting them graded, and getting the feedback back to students can be daunting at times. The idea that feedback should be corrective in nature is valuable information, but how in the world can I explain every answer instead of just marking it right or wrong? This is especially overwhelming to think about doing with such a large class load this upcoming school year. In reading this chapter, it says that marking the correct answer is more powerful than marking right/wrong, but I haven’t done that in the past because I wanted students to fix their errors if they missed too many. What I often do is mark questions wrong but have students correct the problems, which has been shown to yield positive results.
One area I felt good about was providing feedback in a timely manner. I know that if I want my feedback to matter to students or have them correct any misconceptions, I must provide feedback quickly. What I’d like to do a better job of, especially in math, is giving students more feedback as to what concepts they understood well and what concepts they still need to work on. The grading takes so long that I get excited about just showing students their scores individually. I try to explain to each of them as I show it to them what they did well on and what they struggled with, but if I wrote more on the tests when I corrected them and everyone looked at their tests at the same time, I could provide feedback sooner.
I appreciate rubrics for providing students with feedback and use them often throughout the year, especially on speaking assessments, writing, and projects. Some ways I will improve in setting objectives and providing feedback this year are to use rubrics more often to score written responses in subjects outside of writing, move away from some of the scoring guides I have for projects and convert them to rubrics, have students grade their own work more and correct the problems they miss, and have students set unit based goals based on the objective(s) I provide. I like having students give feedback to each other, which works especially well in writing. The students enjoy working with each other and it allows students to get more “dollops” of feedback than if students just relied on feedback from me. I also want to take the time to teach students how to give feedback to one another that goes beyond, “Good job” or “I liked it.” I’ll give examples on specificity and have students practice. Not only will teaching my students to give specific feedback help them to think about their learning, but it will also help build a strong community in my classroom where students trust and work well with one another.
In my district, our reading, math and writing goals are very specific, but in social studies and science, they are more general. I like to post 3-4 broad, guiding questions on a bulletin board to focus our unit of study in science and social studies or art. After reading the chapter, I am rethinking how I set goals and objectives in reading, math and writing. In math, we have what we call “Power Tests” every month. We give the kids pre and post tests on a well-thought out set of skills about every 4-6 weeks. We look at the data and figure out where kids are and pinpoint areas of need. We know kids needs to be aware of the objectives, so I always let them know what we are learning for the day. Our principal reminds us that if she were to walk into the room, she could ask any child what they were learning today and they would be able to tell her. So, my short term objectives are clear. These smaller skills are really developed so my students can solve larger and more complex problems. So, I think I can state our goals for a math unit in a broad way, much like the guiding questions for science and social studies, and still work on our smaller, specific goals as well. I can do this for reading and writing too. In reading, there is a lot of room, once the broad goal is stated, for kids to set some personal goals.
I really appreciated the information and research on feedback, and I reread the quotes that Marika wrote about. What I will take back to the classroom is the idea that I can greatly impact student learning and achievement in a positive way by giving feedback to my students. I need to make sure that I do it correctly. I need to give it immediately if possible, and take the time to explain why a response is incorrect. In math, I will give kids time to keep working on a task until they understand it. I’m in such a hurry, that I give up on this. Also, I will remember that cramming before a test is not a good idea. I will review a unit one day, and test the next. I will try to have kids provide some of their own feedback when possible. I have some simple rubrics for math problem-solving and writing, but they will need to be modified and I will really need to teach them how to do this. I have just been lazy because this seems like such a daunting task. I will start small and build on this.
Our district uses Activboards and I have access to ready-made interactive lessons and tests. One component of Activboards is Activotes and kids can answer questions using a hand-held device. I will use this more often because it does give kids immediate feedback.
Ashley Madison
Assignment #8
Setting Objectives
At my school, where we have all been trained in SIOP, we are expected to write content and language objectives on our board that we review at the beginning and end of each class. As much as I don’t really like doing it, it does seem to help students. Last year, a teacher showed us how she uses the pronoun “I” instead of “we” in an effort to make students feel more individually connected with the goal as well as take ownership if they don’t reach it. I think this is a pretty flexible model, because even though the objectives are driven by assigned power standards, teachers are constantly revising their individual class objectives.
Feedback should be timely…darn. Feedback is definitely an area I can improve on. I can turn small assignments and quizzes around pretty quickly, and I give a lot of individual feedback wandering my classroom during work time. When I grade formal papers, which serve as a “test” in my class, I like to take my time with them and write all over them, and this simply takes time. (160 papers X 5 minutes per paper = 800 minutes =13ish hours of grading for one set of papers. I am not complaining, I really enjoy grading papers, it is just time consuming.) Feedback being related to a specific criterion is a concept I have been working on over the last couple of years, and will continue to work on. For our writing assignments, we usually pick two or three specific areas to apply and assess in papers. It definitely helps students when they don’t have to worry about all traits of writing at one time, rather a couple aspects of a couple traits. Since I do not use percentages, it has been tricky to communicate to parents how students are graded, so this year I would like to get more specific, objective-based comments entered into eSIS, the program we use for grading.
As far as rubrics, for each formal paper we assign, we provide a detailed assignment sheet with the prompts and specific skills being assessed on that paper. For grading, we use the state of Oregon scoring guide paired with our school-wide grading definitions. It works really well. We have designed lessons that help students be familiar with the scoring guide, and always provide the specific objectives on which they will be graded before each paper. We monitor the conventions skills being assessed at the time through quizzes, and monitor other skills through mini, one-paragraph assignments.
Week Eight: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback – Paula Stepankowsky
For me, this chapter provided food for thought and some questions about the goal-setting section, as well as support for what I am currently doing on the feedback section.
I see the research supports setting goals that are clear and specific, yet flexible enough for students to personalize their goals. This makes sense. But I definitely would like more information about the research around the idea that if a learning goal is too specific (about cell structure in the book) that students would score lower on a test of information that would NOT pertain to the cell but that was still taught in the class. I see what the point is – that all the information in a class is important and students shouldn’t be too narrowly focused. But what the research did NOT say is how the students scored on a test that DID pertain to cell structure when that was the learning target. In an age of standardized tests, etc., many of us have to get to the point quicker than ever before.
I am a big believer in teaching my language arts students what is important to know about a task (learning grammar/writing a particular type of essay) or a literary text and then testing them on it. I don’t believe in sucker-punch grading (ie: it’s more important to remember the theme of To Kill A Mockingbird rather than the color of Scout’s dress at the Missionary Tea), so an analysis of the theme is what will be on the test, not interesting but ultimately extraneous detail. But the idea to personalize goals is a good one to keep in mind, and I will find ways to work that in to my lesson plans in the fall.
The section on feedback was very interesting and supports what I have noticed in my own learning. The research supports that feedback is most effective when it is immediate – but at least one day after learning – and that it explains why a certain answer is correct or incorrect. I was glad to learn that criterion-based assessment is more effective than normative assessment. I try to turn around grammar tests the next day (although this can be delayed if some students are absent and still have to take the test), and if the majority of students are still struggling with a concept, I will review it and then give a quick extra credit quiz the next day before moving on to the next concept. As a journalist for 25 years, I consider myself as not only a writing teacher, but also an editor of essays. My strategy is to teach an essay structure, help students make an outline and then give them turn-it-in points for the first draft. Then I make comments and editing marks and give them a week for the final draft, which is graded. But I tell them that they can choose to turn in interim drafts, which I then correct and review with them individually, so that their final draft reflects their best effort. In this way, they are motivated to pay attention to the corrections and suggestions. I also give separate style/content and convention grades on essays, so students can see exactly where they need to put in more effort. My 8th graders, by the end of this year, said that they felt they learned more about writing this way than just receiving a final grade.
It was interesting to see the rubrics in the feedback section. It closely parallels my current grading system, but it is helpful to see how the skills are broken down. I haven’t done a lot of peer-editing in my classroom. My CT used it in her classroom and it tended to get chaotic if it went on too long, but I might try it this fall after reading the research on it.
Chapter 8- Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
These strategies seem obvious, yet at the same time they are troublesome. While the idea of “specific but flexible” seems the best way for a student to create his/her own learning goals, it also seems that there could be some traps. One is the kid who simply claims not to know, or maybe care, about a goal for a specific learning unit. Perhaps that kid comes up with goals but they are not the product of quality thinking. Let’s say also that these types of goals should regularly be set. A kid like that would need a lot of teacher coaching to write better goals, and there would be more than one kid like that in the class. If you’re looking at unit-by-unit goal setting, then that’s a great deal of class time devoted to writing/revising/rethinking goals.
Another is the trap addressed early in the chapter: that goals can narrow one’s focus enough that they miss other points. Let’s take the example from the text of the 4th grader’s three goals for a health unit. One of them (“I want to know if the intestines are really four miles long”) is answerable with just a few minutes of research. The other two goals are broader, yet still easy to answer. When those questions have been answered, does the student feel he has reached his goal and can therefore stop paying attention?
Despite these potential traps, I will definitely try and integrate this more into my classroom. If I can provide the students the teacher objectives for the unit or chapter, then they can add their own, more specific objectives within that topic area. What about lightening the feedback load by having students check in with each other, or do a self-check along the way? “So far, I have learned…”or something along those lines.
Assignment #8 Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Robin Rose
I am going to try to be brief. This chapter represents so much of what Beaverton School District has been doing over the past 4-5 years with Learning Proficiency (now called Standards Based Education – sometimes I can’t keep up with the name changes!). As a self-contained classroom teacher, much of what this chapter talks about, has been on my radar for just the past 2 years or so. I will just speak to those objectives for my life skills students. Yes I now have some. They are relatively clear, specific and by definition flexible because I feel that is the teacher’s call. I am still working on posting them on the board and this will be a goal this next year. I do want to comment here that the best practices associated with IEP goal writing must have come straight from the 1962 study! I have always been troubled by the specificity. I am now trying hard to write goals that embrace the learning targets (what we call them) in a meaningful way for each student. We (ALC teachers) have already developed rubrics for all of our learning targets. We have yet to really fine-tune them, as the resources (time and money) have been lacking. General education teachers meet weekly on an on-going basis, which is difficult for us (ALC) as we all teach at different schools.
I was a bit surprised by the importance given to comments on feedback, although if I had remembered back I would remember how cheated I felt when I worked really hard on a paper and just got a letter grade. I also remember feeling frustrated at not getting comments/explanations when I did something wrong or missed a test item. We do timely feedback on math, but then I have a small class and I have put a lot of effort into coming up with appropriate math for each student. I (or my IA) sits with each student to go over missed homework and test problems, re-teaching as necessary, usually the day after the work was done. Almost all students in my room make pretty amazing progress in math and I think it is due to the time we put into it. How general ed teachers with 30+ students a period could do it I do not know. Read Naturally is immediate feedback with the graphs we use to time readings. I am just now really working on how to communicate our learning targets to parents and students. I use Fall conferences to show parents what their students will be working on, which curriculum, etc. I want to go back to the goal setting I used to do with students before conferences and what I read in this chapter indicates that it would be fruitful to do so. IEPs are all about monitoring and reporting so I have systems in place. With Standards Based learning though I need to show through a variety of means, that they have met their learning target goals. As I mentioned earlier we have already developed rubrics, and I have used them to some degree. A particularly successful one I developed on my own to help with behaviors exhibited in electives. I know there is more I can do with rubrics and reading. Writing rubrics have been around for awhile but I need to utilize them more consistantly. This is the first year I plan to use rubrics extensively.
@Ashley We have been told to say "I can..." when we write learning targets on the board. I agree that much of the flexibility is up to the teacher.
@Marika While having my students read each other's writing doesn't always work well, I remember doing so in an undergrad class of mine for a research paper. I ended up really valuing my peers input, and still remember how meaningful the experience was.
@Marti The Activboards sound wonderful! I use wipeable boards that kids wrote their answers on. We play a kind of Jeopardy that way fairly frequently.
Robin
Like Marika, I too feel I could be doing so much more in regards to these two strategies. Setting goals is such an abstract process for young children. They are very much in the “here and now”. It has always seemed a bit ineffectual to set specific goals with individual students.
The research is pretty clear though, and it is obvious that I should be trying to use this strategy more often with my students. I engage my students in more whole-class type goal setting. In a way, completing KWL charts with kids at the onset of a unit of study establishes a direction for learning. At least students are able to express what they would like to learn, setting a very specific short term goal.
Providing feedback does indeed seem to be very influential in student achievement and self-confidence. I am not surprised to learn that research supports this as a powerful instructional strategy. This chapter describes its practice in pretty general terms, though. All teachers know about the importance of providing kids with feedback, but I guess not all realize that it should be timely, corrective in nature, and relatively specific. This would “look” different at different levels and ages.
I use rubrics to score student writing and other content based learning, but mostly for my own use or to share data with other teachers. Typical rubrics, no matter how simplified, are very difficult for most first graders to understand. I sometimes use a “1-2-3- star” score, which is very simply criterion based, yet easily understood by most students.
Self-reflection or evaluation is something I have experimented with a bit in the past few years. I would like to involve my first graders in this type of feedback more in the coming school year.
I do like the idea that Amy had about using “self-checks”. That seems like something I could use frequently with my first graders, and the feedback they get from each other would be much more novel and maybe even more meaningful. (I also like the idea of lightening the feedback load!) I would definitely need to pre-teach how to give appropriate feedback and provide lots of modeling.
Theresa Muller
Assignment #8
Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Thanks Marika, Marti, Ashley, Amy, Robin, and Theresa for your comments on setting objectives and providing feedback.
Marika – I think it’s wonderful that you are considering having your students to select goals that would meet their individual needs within your curricular units of study. I know how daunting getting assignments graded with feedback can be, that’s why I believe strongly in weighing carefully what you are asking the kids to do, and ensure that there is TRUE purpose behind the work that you will then need to provide feedback on. I’m not sure about in your building, but I know there are many assignments that are required (many of which are worksheets for homework), and I’m not sure how much purpose they truly hold for each of the students.
Marti – It definitely sounds as though your building has a building plan to address the individual needs of students. After they complete their “Power Tests” do you guys switch kids around into different classrooms to help address the individual needs? Or do you just address within your own students in your own classroom? I absolutely LOVE the Activboards…we are using them in our 5th grades and are writing a grant to try and get more for other grades.
Ashley – That’s great that you have goals built in with district support through SIOP, but also have the flexibility to set individual classroom goals. I think that both middle and high school teachers are in an entirely different arena when it comes to providing feedback to their students with the larger papers and projects that get assigned.…13 hours of grading one set of papers? I guess it all balances out with the extra planning that many elementary teachers do with teaching all of the different subject areas???
Amy – You raise some interesting and valid concerns. I think our most difficult job as educators is finding the balance and instructional decisions as to where, when, and how things are going to get taught in our classrooms. We only have so much time in both our teaching day and our personal time that we are willing to donate :) I like the idea of having over-arching teacher/curriculum objectives within which students can set their own personal objectives.
Robin – White boards are another super way to be able to provide quick feedback within the classroom!
Theresa – Are you familiar with The Sisters’ CAFÉ system? In reading, students set goals for themselves within the area of comprehension, accuracy, fluency and vocabulary. Even if you just start with reading, there is definitely a huge benefit for your students to have individual goals set for them based on their reading assessments. I’ve mentioned it before in a comment, but I’m actually teaching a course for TINT based on CAFÉ. I also think that Amy’s idea of using “self-checks” would be great for both you and the students :)
Yes, I am familiar with The Sisters'. I am excited to offer the Daily Five in a bigger way this coming school year. Last year was sort of a "getting my feet wet" kind of year. Now that more teachers in my school are embracing Daily Five, I feel I have more guidance and support. As for CAFE, I am slightly familiar, at least with the acronym, but I have not read the book yet. It is next on my list!
Thanks for the feedback!
Theresa Muller
I feel that my objectives are relatively clear on what I want my students to be able to do. I utilize national, state, and even objectives from the text to formulate the objectives I feel are the most important for my students to learn.
I have repeatedly seen the value of giving feedback. I have used a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and problem solving questions for my assessments. The greatest challenge I feel that I face is providing enough feedback that was discussed in this chapter versus having it back in a timely manner. It is something I feel like I am constantly trying to balance and still figuring out the best approach. I have felt overwhelmed at times at the amount of grading I have faced and have at times fallen into not giving the most constructive feedback to students because of this.
As far as communicating the objectives to students and parents, I feel I do a relatively good job in this area. Before we start any specific section in a unit or chapter, I always explain what the learning objectives are before we begin. When we are about to cover a specific objective whether it be from a lecture, lab, or activity, I always reiterate what objective we are going to hit as well as do a review of it once we have finished to allow processing of the information that they have encountered and how they can relate it to that specific objective. At the end of any unit I always give students an objective list on what they will be responsible for. All these lists are available online for students and parents to access as well. I feel for the most part that this system has worked well for me.
I monitor student learning through a variety of practices. Much of it is formative assessment from as simple as class/group discussions, exit cards, or questions they have to answer during labs/activities. If it appears that a majority of the students are still having issues in grasping the objectives, I will spend additional time on that specific objective until they appear to have a firm grasp on it.
Engaging students in the feedback process has always been important to me. Unfortunately I probably do not use it as much as I should. I do use rubrics but usually this is on labs, papers, or projects that students are assigned. I do not do this for every single objective I present to them and I am thinking about just presenting the generic rubric in this section as a general guide on where they are on each learning objective. Even having this as a general guideline would have some value in my opinion.
David Lee
Assignment #8: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Erinn Carrillo Assignment # 8
Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
This chapter made me stop and think about how I am setting objectives and providing feedback for my students. It is important for me to remember that metacognition is a way for students to become better students. It is difficult however for them to set those goals in the early years, because it can be so foreign and abstract. For elementary kids, it is crucial to model my teacher thinking, so that they can begin to think about their own thinking/learning and show them how to set learning goals for themselves.
One of the statements that struck me was to have a narrow focus for learning, yet it should not be so focused that it limits understanding of a topic. I can look back now at studying for a test and not really internalizing the overall learning of a concept that I needed. I agree that when personalized goals are set, the students are more motivated and successful. It is/was true for me as a student. When I struggled in fifth grade with math, a personalized contract helped me to reach my goals with a specific reward in the end. My motivation came with helping to choose my goal, rather than being told.
The section of feedback is what really struck me. I feel like this is an area that was neglected when I taught fourth grade, and certainly continues to be neglected in my teaching of English Language Learners. I was especially struck by the quote from the John Hattie study that says that the single most powerful modification to enhance learning is feedback. “Dollops of feedback “are what help students make gains in their learning. This is something that I will be making a change to do in a more systematic and immediate way. When I have groups of kids for only 30 minutes per day, it is the feedback on paper or individually, that has gone by the wayside. I rarely correct papers for my 100 or more students, unless it is an assessment. This will be changing this fall.
Timely feedback: Something that really stresses me out. Like many others have mentioned, grading papers for large groups of students can be daunting and time consuming. This is CRUCIAL to help our students grow. I will be changing how I give feedback to students on a much more consistent basis this upcoming year. They need to know what is wrong and how to fix it immediately. One of the ways I think I will be able to do this is by identifying weakness in a class and specifically targeting the missing skills. For instance, if 16 of my 20 third grade students are still not using past tense irregular verbs, we will revisit the assignment as a whole group. We will all look at what was incorrect and how to correct the error.
I am also thinking about ways for my numerous students to help keep track of their growth and help me to keep track as well. A chart for accuracy in sentence writing, a spelling chart, something of that sort to help me organize and provide feedback.
I am embarrassed to say, but the communication of learning objectives is relatively new in my classroom. Over the past few years there has been a strong emphasis in our district in-services on posting and communicating these objectives in our classroom. Starting last year, I began posting the objectives for Math, Reading, English Language Development (ELD) and Writing in my classroom for my students to see. The objectives are broad enough to usually encompass multiple lessons. These learning objectives come from our District Power Standards although I am not sure they meet the criteria placed forward in our text for clarity, specificity or flexibility. The book talks about individual goals that fall under the classroom goal. The closest I have gotten to individualized learning goals is the KWL charts Theresa talked about where students share something they want to learn about in the unit of study. I take these questions seriously and help students find their answers but I do not formalize their goals.
My experience with feedback appears to also need some change. I eventually got to the point with my correcting that I could not provide feedback on all the work I assigned and I would divide the work into two distinct categories. The first was completion based and students would receive credit for turning in their work. The second category was the work I though relevant enough to comment on. Because I was selective in what was to be graded for completion and what was to be commented on, I made sure my comments were corrective in nature like the book suggests as well as specific in order for students to have a better idea what it was I was looking for. I was pleasantly surprised to see students actually reading my comments and asking me about how they could improve their work. I then realized the power of the comment. I started making time in class for students to read my comments and ask questions. I was surprised how they actually worked hard to fix their work. The second key component, timeliness is also a battle of mine. I now work very hard to make sure these assignments get corrected quickly. I have learned that a timely response was much more effective than a non-timely one. I frequently would just see students recycle their work if I waited too long to get back to them.
Another area I need to be more cognizant of is the communication of the objectives to the families of the students. This is a practice I rarely use. I’m not sure I realize how much it could help to engage the families in some of our learning to get some additional support from home. This year I am going to be more vigilant in communication with parents. The other area I am going to work on this year is engaging my students in feedback as well. I have used very little of this strategy because I am not convinced students will have the ability to evaluate someone else in a constructive way that is actually beneficial. Sometimes this feels like a going through the motions activity so students can say that someone else has checked their work. I’m not sure how to make students accountable for this activity…peer editing comes to mind.
Assignment #8 (8/13/11) Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
As a substitute teacher I have not had much experience in setting goals and providing feedback. I can truly appreciate all of your comments and experiences with each of your classrooms. It helps me receive a full understanding along with what I have read in the text. I can see what may work for some teachers may not work for others in their particular school and classroom.
I do really love the idea of goal setting but leaving it general enough that students are able to personalize the goals. I do see how this could be challenging with every student. I can see how it can work for some students but may not work for others. I can see the student that is motivated to learn and interested in the subject may not have a problem personalizing their goals. Then there is the student who needs more direction and may not have any interests in certain topics or chapters. They may need specific goals given to them so that they are motivated and sometimes that is still not enough for some. I can see how using this technique could be tricky. It would have to be something you do with them individually. I don’t ever remember setting goals with teachers at any time in my years of schooling. I love that and love to see that any type of goal setting is happening in your classrooms. I think that is a wonderful way to reach out and connect with students.
I found the section of feedback very interesting. I remember as a student in middle school and high school and really appreciating any feedback at all. I also think that because I was a more timid student and rarely asked questions any input from my teacher was highly valued and very helpful.
Sara Malvar
Assignment #8 “Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback”
I am embarrassed to say, but the communication of learning objectives is relatively new in my classroom. Over the past few years there has been a strong emphasis in our district in-services on posting and communicating these objectives in our classroom. Starting last year, I began posting the objectives for Math, Reading, English Language Development (ELD) and Writing in my classroom for my students to see. The objectives are broad enough to usually encompass multiple lessons. These learning objectives come from our District Power Standards although I am not sure they meet the criteria placed forward in our text for clarity, specificity or flexibility. The book talks about individual goals that fall under the classroom goal. The closest I have gotten to individualized learning goals is the KWL charts Theresa talked about where students share something they want to learn about in the unit of study. I take these questions seriously and help students find their answers but I do not formalize their goals.
My experience with feedback appears to also need some change. I eventually got to the point with my correcting that I could not provide feedback on all the work I assigned and I would divide the work into two distinct categories. The first was completion based and students would receive credit for turning in their work. The second category was the work I though relevant enough to comment on. Because I was selective in what was to be graded for completion and what was to be commented on, I made sure my comments were corrective in nature like the book suggests as well as specific in order for students to have a better idea what it was I was looking for. I was pleasantly surprised to see students actually reading my comments and asking me about how they could improve their work. I then realized the power of the comment. I started making time in class for students to read my comments and ask questions. I was surprised how they actually worked hard to fix their work. The second key component, timeliness is also a battle of mine. I now work very hard to make sure these assignments get corrected quickly. I have learned that a timely response was much more effective than a non-timely one. I frequently would just see students recycle their work if I waited too long to get back to them.
Another area I need to be more cognizant of is the communication of the objectives to the families of the students. This is a practice I rarely use. I’m not sure I realize how much it could help to engage the families in some of our learning to get some additional support from home. This year I am going to be more vigilant in communication with parents. The other area I am going to work on this year is engaging my students in feedback as well. I have used very little of this strategy because I am not convinced students will have the ability to evaluate someone else in a constructive way that is actually beneficial. Sometimes this feels like a going through the motions activity so students can say that someone else has checked their work. I’m not sure how to make students accountable for this activity…peer editing comes to mind.
Assignment #8 (8/13/11) Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Hi David, Erinn and Sara!
This is Mary responding for Jackie, so forgive me if I repeat something from earlier in the course.
Good reminder David to offer a variety of assessments and not rely only on one method. I'm sure your students and their parents appreciate having access online to your materials. I agree having the generic rubric as a guideline for your students will be helpful. Have you tried having them create their own rubric as a class? Students usually do an excellent job and often are harder on themselves than we would be. I wouldn't suggest doing this for all assignments, but once in a while it is interesting to involve the students and give them a voice in the requirements.
Erinn,
Glad the readings gave you somethings to reflect upon. Absolutely! Model, model, model! Using think alouds is a very powerful strategy for students.
The ideas you shared of ways to provide more timely feedback for your students should work for you next year. Perhaps a conversation with other teachers or at a staff meeting would generate even more techniques to try.
Sara, the goal setting process is a wonderful way to connect with your students, which is so important in creating a supportive atmosphere. Another benefit of incorporating goal setting into your program.
#8
One of my goals last year was to have my students write down the lesson objective everyday. It was part of their warm-up and required to write it down. I thought this would give them a clear idea of the focus of each lesson. Our objectives come from the state standards, which are hard for me to understand sometimes. Also these objectives can be vague and open to interpretation. When I would write my objectives I would try to make sure they were in kid friendly language so they are easy to understand. Looking back over my objectives I would have to say they are probably too specific, and because of this my students were too focused on the task at hand and would sometimes miss the bigger picture. The other idea I have is I would like my students to be more aware of their own learning and assess their learning based on these objectives. Did they achieve this objective, do they still have questions, do they need help? These are all questions I want them to ask themselves, and this can be difficult for high school students. My thought on how I might accomplish this is at the end of each class period, when they are writing their summaries of the lesson, they look back at what the accomplished in class based on the objective and rate themselves. My hope is that this process will help them realize if they need help and they get it.
Providing feedback is another area I need to work on. I am guilty of being like Mrs. McQueen in this chapter who takes forever to had back assignments. I understand that the feedback is more useful the sooner you get it back, I just have to do it because learning should be the main objective. In math we have to worry less about rubrics, but they can be useful when grading test. There is a right and a wrong answer, however there are partially correct answers and it is important to be consistent when grading. Having a clear idea of what constitutes 5 points or 3 points etc. can be clearly stated in a rubric. I also need to work on formative assessments, giving students feedback before they take the test. This is something my school has been focused on for the past two years and I think providing this type of feed back is also important for student learning.
It did not surprise me that simply telling a student if they got the right or wrong answer could have a negative effect on their achievement. I don’t tend to give any feedback if a student got the correct answer, but I do look closely at any incorrect answers. My goal is to figure out why they missed the question. Was it something simple like a calculation error, did they forget an idea they learned previously, or did were they missing a concept of the current chapter. Again, to make this feedback meaningful it has to be returned in a reasonable amount of time. Most students won’t care about a concept they didn’t quite get three weeks after the test when we have moved on. Timely, specific feedback is what I need to work on this next year.
When I started posting our 3-5 daily music goals on the board, I found students came to depend on them. Personally, I think it sometimes takes the fun out of the discovery/flow of the lesson, but it does seem to comfort my high-anxiety students, and frankly, it keeps me on track, too. My assessments are constant and informal, because they’re behavior objectives, not paper and pencil. Our state, national, and district music goals are on my school’s website for parents to see. During our concerts, I put the curriculum essential elements in the program so they can see what skill is being demonstrated. I would like to send something home every year, but we’ve cut back on paper. I might try emailing parents the curriculum. I can’t speak to setting individual goals for the music room because so often our goals are the group’s goals. I can say as a learner that I needed a lot of coaching from my professors about choosing an appropriate research goal that wasn’t too broad or narrow. I really would have enjoyed having Paula’s approach to giving optional feedback to interim drafts of papers in college. This fall, I will consider letting students write rubrics of how to properly sing (posture, breath, etc.), play a barred instrument (holding the mallets, how to sit correctly, where to hit the bars, etc), play a guitar or recorder, etc. I bet the students can come up with great ideas and really ‘own’ learning correct technique. My feedback tends to be verbal and immediate, of course. The few times a year my intermediate students have a paper/pencil in-class assignment, I get feedback with comments to them the next week, so usually two classes later.
Whoops! My above post is Assignment #8, Objectives and Feedback.
Assignment#8: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
As I was reading this chapter, I was initially surprised by the idea that learning goals should be flexible enough for the students to personalize and that they shouldn’t be too specific. I feel that the objectives I am expected to use are quite specific and not very flexible. However, the more I thought about this concept the more I realized there are still ways to work around this. Yes I need to teach the prescribed objectives, but it’s okay for the students to choose their own goals within the context of the objective. I do a fair amount of goal setting with my class and am always surprised about how aware they are of their academic and behavioral strengths and weaknesses even in the first grade. They usually want to do what they can to improve in the subjects they struggle in, so working with them to set individual goals in these areas sounds like a good way to target a specific deficit, keep the communication going between us, and give both the student and I an opportunity to assess growth in the particular area. Even if the goal isn’t one of true academic importance to me, at least the student would feel that what they think and care about matters.
I communicate learning objectives to the students all of the time, but it’s usually directed at the class rather than individuals. If I work with students on individual goals (I have done this some with reading and writing), I would create a conferring schedule to make sure I’m meeting with them consistently and to refine or change the goals as necessary.
I include information about current curriculum and learning objectives to the parents regularly in weekly homework packets, though I don’t communicate with them about individual learning goals very often. I can easily include this information in the homework as well so they can be “in the loop” and encourage them to work with their child to meet their personal goal.
There are several ways I will engage my students in the feedback process. First, I will give them specific feedback that reinforces what they are doing correctly, informs them of what they are doing wrong, and gives them suggestions of how to remedy this. I will show them ways to track their own progress and discuss how they feel they are doing. I will also make an effort to give the students feedback in a timely manner to ensure it’s as effective as possible.
Assignment#8
Jennifer Flagel
Thanks John. (You must have posted the same time I did. ☺ ) We’re glad to hear that you have started communicating learning objectives and your room and after the reading, found areas that you feel you can focus on and improve. The power of timely comments makes it worth the time and effort teachers need to spend in order to provide students the feedback they need. Constructive feedback takes a lot of modeling and practice. You might want to start small, and guide the students with a very structured example.
Hello Lynn, Amber and Jennifer,
Restating objectives in kid-friendly language helps students with goal setting. Plus helps their parents understand the purpose of the assignments.
Formative assessment allows the teacher the opportunity to adjust instruction in order to meet students’ needs. Schools traditionally have been focused on summative assessment; it’s nice to see the trend towards formative assessments across the country.
As Jackie said earlier, we need to reflect on the assignments that we ask our students to do and consider how the assignment is helping the student grow and learn. If it’s important enough to have students complete it, then providing timely feedback should be high on our list. If we stop the busy work, hopefully there will be more time for the meaningful assignments.
Amber, posting the assignments benefits both the students and teacher. ☺
Jennifer you are exactly right. Setting individual goals within the context of the objectives has many benefits, such as, targeting deficits, promoting communication, providing opportunities for assessment and giving students a voice.
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