Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
Standard 5.2
Descriptive feedback is the most powerful tool
for improving student learning.
Black, Harrison, Lee & William (2003)
Feedback is information students and teachers share
during learning so that students can close the gap
between their current level of performance and the
learning goals.
Source unknown
for improving student learning.
Black, Harrison, Lee & William (2003)
Feedback is information students and teachers share
during learning so that students can close the gap
between their current level of performance and the
learning goals.
Source unknown
How will I provide effective feedback?
I will:
How will I plan for feedback?
When planning, I will design the learning experience to address the learning goals. I will use a variety of instructional strategies to initiate learning, and assessment strategies and tools to elicit information about what students know and still need to learn. I wil plan instruction, assessment, and feedback concurrently so that students receive information about their learning while they can still improve - "just in time" feedback (Brookhart, 2008).
I will determine how I am going to gather assessment information at critical points during the learning, so that students can give and receive feedback and take corrective action.
I will:
How will I connect feedback to learning goals and success criteria?
Step 1: What are the students expected to learn?
I begin by identifying an overall expectation, and the related specific expectations in the curriculum. Through discussion, we decide on the learning goal.
Step 2: How will I know they have learned?
I plan how I will gather evidence of student learning, as well as what criteria I will use to determine how well my students have learned. I also plan how I will ensure that students know the success criteria, and how they will use the criteria in peer and self-assessment.
Step 3: Develop students' understanding of the success criteria
I will use a variety of approaches to help students understand the success criteria, including asking them questions about their understanding, encouraging them to ask questions, showing them examples of strong and weak work, and collaboratively developing the criteria with students. Stiggins et al (2006) suggest these and other strategies help students answer the question, "Where am I going?"
Step 4: Co-creating criteria
The students and I work together to develop the criteria for success on the learning log task. Students are asked to examine samples of journal entries to determine what makes them more or less effective. Students brainstorm criteria and I transfer these to a class chart, and then, guided by the success criteria I have developed in my planning, I lead a discussion to develop clear success criteria in language the children will understand.
Step 5: Feedback based on success criteria
After identifying the success criteria with students, I use a 'think-aloud' strategy to model providing feedback on a variety of samples of student work. I point out to students how I am structuring my comments to identify something that was done well, an area for improvement, and a suggestion for how to improve. I emphasise that all of the feedback I am presenting is connected to the success criteria. I then ask students to give feedback on the quality of my feedback instruction.
Step 6: Design the learning so all will learn
I intentionally design assessment to occur at 'checkpoints', critical points during the learning where I can engage with students in assessment, determine who is learning and who needs additional or alternative instruction prior to moving forward with the learning. At these points students receive feedback from myself, from peers, and from themselves, and use the feedback to take further action to learn and improve.
How do I use feedback to develop students' self-assessment skills?
I aim to help students become increasingly less dependent on external sources of feedback (from teacher and peers), and gradually become more autonomous (self-assessment). By teaching students how to develop descriptive feedback based on learning goals and sucess criteria, I am promoting students' ability to monitor their own progress, determine next steps, and set appropriate goals.
To help students become skilled at self-assessment, I can:
I will reflect using teacher checklists
Have I developed learning goals and success criteria? Yes / No
Have I identified critical points in the teaching-learning cycle when students and teacher require feedback? Yes / No
Have I decided how I and/or students will gather information about learning (what task, strategy, recording tool will be used)? Yes / No
Have I determined how feedback will be given (oral/wirtten; individually/small group/whole class)? Yes / No
Have I developed a way to record the feedback? Yes / No
Have I provided instructional time to follow up on feedback and allow for revisions? Yes / No
Have I incorporated a way to monitor student responses to feedback, (e.g., feedback log, conferencing)? Yes / No
Inside the Classroom
Feedback Boxes
I use feedback boxes to encourage students to monitor and reflect on their performance; to guide students' performance on independent learning tasks and to identify areas where improvement is needed. This tool helps students take ownership of their learning and encourages accountability. Students become more confident in their self-assessment, decision making and time management abilities.
How does it work?
When students are working on an independent task they make decisions about:
Students are given the Feedback Boxes. The boxes contain a number of effective learning statements about each of the tasks which have been written up prior to the session by the students themselves, in their learning logs and with teacher support. Once a student has finished a task they look through the effective learning statements and decide what they did well and what they feel they could do more effectively. Students fill out their Feedback Sheet and later the Feedback Boxes work as a framework to guide the one-on-one conferences which can be tied to their assessment in a range of learning areas.
Students decide on their learning statements for next independent learning session and write these up in their learning logs. At the One-On-One Conference students have to be ready to discuss all aspects of the tasks they have been doing. They need to explain what they did well, what they could do more effectively and what they should do to improve.
Example:
I will:
- provide timely feedback
- use descriptive feedback rather than evaluative feedback
- give clear, concise feedback related to the learning goals and success criteria
- identify what was done well, and what needs improvement
- include how students can improve
- use a variety of prompts (e.g., reminder prompts, scaffolded prompts and example prompts)
- provide the necessary time for students to act on the feedback
- follow up on the feedback.
How will I plan for feedback?
When planning, I will design the learning experience to address the learning goals. I will use a variety of instructional strategies to initiate learning, and assessment strategies and tools to elicit information about what students know and still need to learn. I wil plan instruction, assessment, and feedback concurrently so that students receive information about their learning while they can still improve - "just in time" feedback (Brookhart, 2008).
I will determine how I am going to gather assessment information at critical points during the learning, so that students can give and receive feedback and take corrective action.
I will:
- provide feedback at critical points during the learning
- model providing feedback for students to help them become better able to peer- and self-assess
- provide feedback to groups of students with similar strengths and needs
- design a way to record the feedback for reference by students and for my own records
- maximise the use of classroom observation and feedback logs.
How will I connect feedback to learning goals and success criteria?
Step 1: What are the students expected to learn?
I begin by identifying an overall expectation, and the related specific expectations in the curriculum. Through discussion, we decide on the learning goal.
Step 2: How will I know they have learned?
I plan how I will gather evidence of student learning, as well as what criteria I will use to determine how well my students have learned. I also plan how I will ensure that students know the success criteria, and how they will use the criteria in peer and self-assessment.
Step 3: Develop students' understanding of the success criteria
I will use a variety of approaches to help students understand the success criteria, including asking them questions about their understanding, encouraging them to ask questions, showing them examples of strong and weak work, and collaboratively developing the criteria with students. Stiggins et al (2006) suggest these and other strategies help students answer the question, "Where am I going?"
Step 4: Co-creating criteria
The students and I work together to develop the criteria for success on the learning log task. Students are asked to examine samples of journal entries to determine what makes them more or less effective. Students brainstorm criteria and I transfer these to a class chart, and then, guided by the success criteria I have developed in my planning, I lead a discussion to develop clear success criteria in language the children will understand.
Step 5: Feedback based on success criteria
After identifying the success criteria with students, I use a 'think-aloud' strategy to model providing feedback on a variety of samples of student work. I point out to students how I am structuring my comments to identify something that was done well, an area for improvement, and a suggestion for how to improve. I emphasise that all of the feedback I am presenting is connected to the success criteria. I then ask students to give feedback on the quality of my feedback instruction.
Step 6: Design the learning so all will learn
I intentionally design assessment to occur at 'checkpoints', critical points during the learning where I can engage with students in assessment, determine who is learning and who needs additional or alternative instruction prior to moving forward with the learning. At these points students receive feedback from myself, from peers, and from themselves, and use the feedback to take further action to learn and improve.
How do I use feedback to develop students' self-assessment skills?
I aim to help students become increasingly less dependent on external sources of feedback (from teacher and peers), and gradually become more autonomous (self-assessment). By teaching students how to develop descriptive feedback based on learning goals and sucess criteria, I am promoting students' ability to monitor their own progress, determine next steps, and set appropriate goals.
To help students become skilled at self-assessment, I can:
- explicity identify, share, and clarify learning goals and success criteria
- model the application of criteria using samples
- provide guided opportunities to peer- and self-assess
- provide students feedback on the quality of their peer-and-self-assessments
- teach students how to use feedback to determine next steps and set goals
- use self-assessment tools (e.g., templates and checklists)
- have students use strategies to self-assess their work (e.g., traffic lighting, targeting or thumbs up)
- encourage students to act on feedback for homework with home support
- have students maintain a learning log to monitor progress
- ask students to complete an exit card at the end of a lesson.
I will reflect using teacher checklists
Have I developed learning goals and success criteria? Yes / No
Have I identified critical points in the teaching-learning cycle when students and teacher require feedback? Yes / No
Have I decided how I and/or students will gather information about learning (what task, strategy, recording tool will be used)? Yes / No
Have I determined how feedback will be given (oral/wirtten; individually/small group/whole class)? Yes / No
Have I developed a way to record the feedback? Yes / No
Have I provided instructional time to follow up on feedback and allow for revisions? Yes / No
Have I incorporated a way to monitor student responses to feedback, (e.g., feedback log, conferencing)? Yes / No
Inside the Classroom
Feedback Boxes
I use feedback boxes to encourage students to monitor and reflect on their performance; to guide students' performance on independent learning tasks and to identify areas where improvement is needed. This tool helps students take ownership of their learning and encourages accountability. Students become more confident in their self-assessment, decision making and time management abilities.
How does it work?
When students are working on an independent task they make decisions about:
- what information i will include?
- have i completed what's important in the task?
- have i communicate my ideas effectively?
- when am i ready to move on to the next task?
Students are given the Feedback Boxes. The boxes contain a number of effective learning statements about each of the tasks which have been written up prior to the session by the students themselves, in their learning logs and with teacher support. Once a student has finished a task they look through the effective learning statements and decide what they did well and what they feel they could do more effectively. Students fill out their Feedback Sheet and later the Feedback Boxes work as a framework to guide the one-on-one conferences which can be tied to their assessment in a range of learning areas.
Students decide on their learning statements for next independent learning session and write these up in their learning logs. At the One-On-One Conference students have to be ready to discuss all aspects of the tasks they have been doing. They need to explain what they did well, what they could do more effectively and what they should do to improve.
Example:
|
Task to focus reflection on:
Discussion of text and vocab: Written text: Written text: Information grid: Vocab grid: Student Reflection Sheet: |
What have you done well?
Able to use other students' ideas. Located and highlighted key words. Sub-headings reflect info in the paragraphs. Able to include info in each box of the info Grid Had the confidence to 'have a go' at each word in the vocab Grid. Able to pose learning goals. |
What could you do more effectively?
Include more detail in written responses. Locate specific information. Re-read text to locate specific information. Try and make connections between words in vocab. Grid and words you already know Use ideas from others to support your own work and learning. Include questions, which reflect what you want or need to learn. |
Two Stars and a Wish
Includes two things the students has done well and one thing they need to work on for our next conference.
Feedback Strips
For oral presentations - or other observable actions - Feedback Strips can be short and simple. For example an A4 sheet can have these stems on it (repeated about 5 or 6 times) then be cut into narrow strips, so that each Feedback Strip is only 5-6cm wide. The name is the person being observed (not the assessor). Students each get feedback from about 4-5 students (anonymously). These can be collected in a Feedback Post Box (ice-cream container with slit in lid) so they are mixed up.
Name: ...............................................................................................................
Today, you did well on ......................................................................................
One thing you could work on improving is .......................................................
Next time you could try .....................................................................................
Exit Cards
I can tell a friend what descriptive feedback looks like and sounds like Yes Not Sure Not Yet
I can think of a time when I have received descriptive feedback Yes Not Sure Not Yet
I believe descriptive feedback helps me to become a better learner Yes Not Sure Not Yet
If you have answered YES to at least two of the statements above, give an example of one time you received feedback
and explain how it helped to improve your learning:
• When …
• How …
