Making Feedback Meaningful

In our recent blogs, Brooke and I have been providing you with lots of information on closure and formative assessments. The next logical question any teacher would ask themselves is: “Now what”?

After reviewing your students' reflections through a closure activity or looking at how did kids on a recent formative assessment you will want to be able to give them some meaningful, personalize feedback about their understanding and progress.

Today’s instructional tip comes from a Teaching Channel video called Making Feedback Meaningful. Sean McComb, a high school English teacher, provides strategies about how to give timely, differentiated and meaningful feedback to students. Although this is an ELA example, these strategies apply to all content areas.

In this powerful 10-minute video Mr. McComb presents these strategies:

- One on one conferencing

- Small group instruction on a targeted skill

- Use highlighting to limit time spent on writing feedback

- In a Google Doc, try using voice notes for feedback

- In Word, highlight and provide comments

One word of advice Mr. McCombs gives is try not to give too much feedback to students. Make them grapple with what they know and how your feedback will lead to their next steps. Giving students meaningful feedback very time consuming. These strategies will help you balance your work & home life along with giving kids the support they need from you.

As always, we welcome any suggestions for next week!

Bridget & Brooke

What Does Lesson Closure Include?

Last week's Teaching Tip was an introduction to lesson closures, which we compared to "sticking the landing" as a gymnast.  You were given some end-of-lesson strategies or formative assessments to incorporate into your lesson closures. Here is the link to that Teaching Tip in case you would like to reread it.

This week we continue with the concept of closure. Ann Sipe of Grandview School District created a handout entitled "Lesson Closure with Examples, or 40 Ways to Leave a Lesson."  You can read her entire handout, along with 40 formative assessment/closure activities here.

We have also captured some of Sipe's great ideas below and added a few of our own:

What is Lesson Closure?

• what the instructor does to wrap up the lesson in a meaningful way and smoothly transition to the next lesson
• a quick review to remind students what they have learned (or should have learned) in terms of meeting the learning target. This works best when students are doing the thinking, not when the instructor is summarizes for them
• a part of the lesson that includes formative assessment to tell you:
• how well students have met your learning target, can summarize main ideas, can evaluate class processes, can answer questions posed at the beginning of the period, and can link to past and future learning
• if additional practice is needed
• whether you need to re-teach the concepts or skill, or can move on to new learning
• not complete without student self-assessment and reflection against the learning target and success criteria
• an opportunity for students to draw conclusions, connect learning to past learning or personal experiences, make inferences, ask questions, deepen their understanding of concepts, and begin to draw connections to upcoming lessons
• something you can do in five minutes
• something that takes place at the end of the learning target, which may or may not be at the end of the period

Sticking the Landing: Closure in the Classroom

Sticking the landing. This phrase is typically used when referring to gymnasts as they finish their routine with a perfect landing. 

This phrase also applies to closure in the classroom.

Tyler Reese, an educational blogger, writes: “How a lesson ends can affect a learner's ability to organize, evaluate, and store information presented in class. Although we give emphasis to hooking students' interest at the start of instruction, the end is often hurried and overlooked. These emergency landings leave students struggling to absorb newly acquired knowledge as they rush out the door to the drone of homework reminders and announcements. Teachers tend to subconsciously undervalue closure; as a result, they don't plan for it and miss out on the opportunity to collect rich learner feedback.”

One take-away from this article that many teachers found comforting was that closure doesn’t have to be at the end of the lesson. It can, in fact, happen during a transition in the middle of class or even at the beginning of the period the next day! Providing enough time for kids to reflect on the days learning is just as important as what they are reflecting about.

We can have the most amazing lesson with student talk, engaged students, and critical thinking. We could be on fire with our teacher moves, questioning strategies and checks for understanding. But, if we don’t give kids enough time to reflect and connect to that new learning we would expect the same results a gymnast would if they didn’t stick the landing-- a less than perfect lesson.

Start sticking the landing in your classroom by reading about Reese’s strategies to plan routine closure in your classroom! Need strategies for a closure activity? Visit our formative assessment blogs for ideas!

A Few More Fun Formative Assessments

 Last week we featured a few creative, new formative assessment ideas for you to try out.  Since most buildings are continuing to fine-tune their formative assessment skills and to pack their toolboxes full of strategies, we are offering a few more fun strategies this week for you to try out.

These ideas are adapted from “56 different examples of formative assessment,” a Google Slide show curated by David Wees, Formative assessment specialist, New visions for Public Schools.  You can view the entire slide show at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nzhdnyMQmio5lNT75ITB45rHyLISHEEHZlHTWJRqLmQ/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=

1. 3x Summarization: To check understanding, ask students to write three different summaries: One using 10-15 words, one using 30-50 words, one using 75-100 words. Students can compare/contrast with peers and/or look at teacher models via the document camera.  The differing lengths  require different attention to detail and can help you to see how well students understand the content.
2.  Three Things: Students should list three things/strategies/ideas on a 3 x 5 card or a Google Doc that a peer might misunderstand about the topic.  Instantly you can assess your students' depth of knowledge.
3.  Chalkboard Splash:  Position 5-7 individual students around the room in front of a whiteboard or large butcher paper sheet.  You might have small groups of students stand beside/behind the student who is writing. Give students a prompt, a problem, or a question, and ask each of the students to respond individually.  Their small groups can either help them , or evaluate their work . You can sit at the back and observe all working simultaneously. You can also point out unique or astute ways of solving the problem.
4. Partner Quizzes: Have partners work together to solve a problem or answer a question, providing feedback to one another. Then give them a similar problem that they must solve independently, which is then submitted to you.

These strategies are from “Focus On Student Learning - Instructional Strategies Series Book Two: 60 Formative Assessment Strategies,” by Natalie Regier, M. Ed.    http://www.stma.k12.mn.us/documents/DW/Q_Comp/FormativeAssessStrategies.pdf​

1.        One Minute Essays: The one-minute essay is a quick formative assessment strategy that allows you to gauge student understanding of a particular topic. Pose a question to the students, and have the students respond. Tell them that they have one minute to write down their response. Use questions that cause students reflect on learning and make personal connections with their own lives.
2.         Response Cards:  Ask a question, and have students respond by choosing to hold up one card from a pile of cards he/she has been given. The most common response cards are yes/no questions, but you could also use “a,” “b,” “c”, “d” cards for multiple choice; “agree” or “disagree” cards; true/false cards; math operations cards; punctuation cards; etc., cards with your students.
3.        Three Facts and a Fib, or Three Truths and a Lie: This is a great strategy to find out what students have learned about a unit of study. Students write down three facts and one fib about the  topic. They take turn sharing their three facts and a fib with a partner, in a small group, or with the entire class. Students must identify the “fib” and explain why it is untrue.