Enhance Academic Feedback Using Technology

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Beautiful Woman with Pencil and Folder Isolated on White. Every teacher evaluation system recognizes the necessity of giving good feedback so students will know what they did well, and in which areas improvement can be made. But how does a teacher have time to individualize feedback for so many students and for the variety of subjects they may be teaching? The answer is simple – use technology! In the past, feedback has been limited to hand-written annotations on a paper or verbal comments made in person. We have all had the experience of spending time writing out specific information for students, only to have them wad up the paper and toss it in the trash without ever looking at anything except the grade at the top of the page. Technology can change this habit by engaging the students with one of these interesting options:

Individual Podcasts
Sarah Brown Wessling collects the written work of her students, reads through them numbering areas on which she will comment, and then records her thoughts in a podcast. With the returned paper in hand, students listen to the podcast and can easily find the section she is referencing by the numbers. This method works nicely for grading typed papers, worksheets, math problems, and any other type of written work. To hear more about her and this method, listen to the video found at: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-feedback-through-technology. If you have never made a podcast, check out http://poducateme.com/ to see how easy it is to get started.

Screen Captures
A screen-casting program, such as Jing by TechSmith, allows the user to capture by video what is being done on the computer monitor, while simultaneously recording audio explanations using a microphone. The program generates a link which can be sent to the student. Suppose your students submit their work electronically. You open Jing, pull up their work on your computer, highlight, edit, and revise while explaining what you are doing. At the end, you forward the generated link to the student, who clicks on it and can instantly see what you recorded. The recipient does not have to download any software to view the recording. There are a variety of screen-casting programs available. Check this website to see what is available: http://scoutness.com/the-best-screen-capture-tools/.

Review Tools in Word
If students submit their work electronically as a word-processed document, teachers can easily make comments and revisions using the review tools in Word. Lengthy statements inserted by clicking “new comment” will be placed in a text bubble off to the side so that the format of the paper is not lost. The teacher can underline, highlight, italicize, mark through, or change text color to emphasize areas the student should review. Any changes the teacher makes (such as deleting a space, adding a comma, etc.) will be easily visible to the student when they are made using the “track changes” function. This method of giving feedback is further enhanced for the teacher if the clipboard is used. Comments made for common errors can be placed on the clipboard and simply copied to any paper where the errors are found. It saves the teacher having to retype the same instructions multiple times.

Evernote
Many teachers already use the free app Evernote to help them stay organized by creating to-do lists, saving websites, and storing photographs. The app is easy to use and can actually increase one’s productivity. It is also a good tool for giving feedback to students. Simply create an audio note with commentary on the student’s work, and make a public link that can be sent to the student’s email.
There are some things you will need to do up front for this to work successfully. First, check with your school to see what tools and technical support are available for you to use. Second, ask for training from your technology department if any of these are new to you. Third, design assignments so it will be easy to use technology for feedback. Finally, remember that saving these files can provide documentation for the future should the need arise.
Teachers know that effective feedback is priceless for students. They also know that it can be time-consuming. Using some of these tools can increase the likelihood that students will actually see or hear the feedback. Once you get accustomed to using these tools, it will increase the quality of your feedback and decrease the time invested in providing it. Enhance your academic feedback using technology!

But I told you “good job”?

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(written by Karen Lea)

When I first started teaching, I thought it was enough to tell a student “good job” or stamp their work. As we listen to researchers and students, we now know that is not enough. We need to give what is called “academic feedback.” Why academic feedback?   Marzano stated the most effective strategy for enhancing achievement is feedback that means something. Black and Dylan William stated formative assessment is one of the most effective tools to improve learning. Douglas Reeves stated academic feedback is related to lower failure rate, better attendance, and even fewer discipline problems.

What is academic feedback? Brookhart has written a book I suggest you read, How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students. Researchers define academic feedback as:

oral and written

consistent

frequent

high quality

specific

academically focused.

What does that mean for us as teachers? It means learning to give specific, academically focused feedback. This takes practice, and it takes time. One of the great benefits is this also helps us focus on individual students and take time with each student.

So, what are some examples? Think about the examples below and then think about how you could start giving academic feedback to students. These examples tell the student specifics about how they met a target and instead of telling them what they could improve on, they require the student to reflect on how to improve.

1. The details in your essay give a strong case for recycling. You also gave one source to support your case. How many sources do you think would have made your case stronger?

2. You completed 7 out of 10 problems correctly and you demonstrated you understood the mathematical process. What could you do to correct the other 3?

3. Your answer to that question gives us 3 of the 5 facts. Do you want to add the other 2 facts or ask someone else to give the last 2 facts?

4. Your work on this project is stronger than the last project. You are demonstrating that you are learning. How could you make the next project even stronger?

These are just some examples. What are your examples?

Choices? But I’m In Charge

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(written by Karen Lea)

We all like choices! Think about going to a restaurant for dinner and being brought food and you didn’t have a choice about what to eat! Think about going to purchase a car and there was just one option. We all like choices! So, why don’t we create lessons that occasionally give students a choice. I know, we can’t do this all the time, but there are times we can let students choose. There are several ways to do this, but my favorite is a choice board. Plus, there are choice board already created for you. Check these out:

daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Choice+Boards

Don’t want to start that big? Ok, let’s slow down and do this a little slower. For this, I went back to the mathematics Common Core Standards. Let’s look at standards and the kinds of choices we can give students.

Grade 4 Standard – Measure angles in whole-number degrees using a protractor. Sketch angles of specified measure.

Lesson – The standard lesson is probably give the students a worksheet with angles and have them measure them. BORING! Think about other options. Here is my suggestion. Start with 3 or 4 angles on paper after you have modeled how to measure angles. Then tell them they must measure, describe, and sketch 5 more angles without leaving their seat. It is a simple choice, but they get to choose what to measure.

High School Standard – Use probabilities to make fair decisions.

Lesson – This lesson can be so much fun! After you have taught the material, have students create their own game that uses probabilities to make decisions. They decide the rules, they decide the context, and they decide if it is a physical game, a computer game, or a board game.

When did I figure out that students love choices? The week we were to learn about a mathematician. I told the students they had to prove they learned the material anyway they wanted to (I was responding to a dare from a colleague.) Guess what? One student made a comic book, one did a very artistic drawing, some did plays, some did interviews, …. They had a great time, they learned, and we all had fun with that lesson.

So, how can you give students choices? Post your ideas and let’s talk.

Lesson Planning – How do I begin? How do I end?

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(written by Karen Lea)

How many of you would go see a movie or read a book that was all mixed up? Let’s face it, we all like a good beginning, middle, and end in movies and books. So, why not in our lessons?

If you think about a book or movie, the beginning should catch your attention. I don’t know about you, but if the beginning doesn’t catch my attention I will probably quit reading the book and might leave the movie. So, how do we catch the attention of students? We call that a hook. Something that makes students curious, something that makes them want to learn more. That is our beginning in a lesson.

Let’s look at the Common Core Standards in writing as a foundation and possible beginnings.

Kindergarten Standard: Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Beginning: Be a mime for a few minutes. Tell students you are going to tell them a story without words. You want them to watch and at the end guess what the story was. Then use pictures and gestures to tell a story.

6th Grade Standard: Support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.

Beginning: Let’s face it, if you wrote that standard on the board as what you were going to do today, the students would ignore you right away. So, think about starting class with a little controversy. Act as if you are reading a news article that states dogs with long hair are smarter than dogs with short hair and give several made up claims about why this is true. Then discuss it. Middle school students love to debate and that kind of claim will grab their attention. Make the reasons so strange they start looking at you and wondering what is going on.

11th – 12th Grade Standard: Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

Beginning: If you have an iPad, there is a Twilight Zone app. This app gives you the start of a story, then stops. Use something similar to that. Show an exciting video clip, have a storyteller visit your room and start a story. Then have students, in groups if you want, finish the story. Tell them any conclusion is acceptable as long as they can provide argument how the conclusion relates to the story.

So, we have our beginnings, what about the middle? This does not mean the middle is boring; however, we do have everyone’s attention, so the middle is full of information.

Look at the standards we are using, what would be your middle? Post it here and let’s talk.

The ending! We usually think this is it, right? Not quite, just stay tuned! The ending is your bringing the lesson to a close. You might repeat the beginning, you might give the conclusion yourself, …. When you create the ending, you are answering the question – What do I want the to remember?

BUT WAIT, you aren’t finished! Students need time to reflect. Reflection is as important as the beginning. I like to give students a sticky note or 3X5 card and have them write the most important thing they learned and up to 2 questions they still have. Then I ask them to write why they think this lesson is important. Careful here, let them be honest. It will assist you in planning future lessons.

So, try it. Tell us about your beginnings and reflections.

Modeling: Essential for Learning

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(written by Karen Lea)

Do you remember learning to tie your shoes? Or learning to bake a cake? Or learning to  read? I am guessing you did not learn by watching a video or listening to a lecture. You learned by being shown, and by practice. The same principle applies to our teaching! We must model for our students. Ok, so that is easy is mathematics, science, and some other hands-on subjects. Yes, but do we really model? Do we

  1. use visuals or examples that are relevant
  2. model while thinking out loud so students hear the process
  3. concisely communicate what we are doing and what is needed
  4. do we present/model logically
  5. do we model/present only what is needed and leave the extra “stuff” out

We must become deliberate in our modeling so students learn. Math VIDS (fcit.usf.edu/mathvids/strategies/em.html) has some great information on modeling in the classroom. How do we do that? Let’s look at the Common Core standards and focus on Reading Informational Text.

Grade 4 Standard – Describe the overall structure (chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.

Lesson – The standard says “describe,” but that does not mean “tell.” If we just say the words, very few students will understand. Telling isn’t modeling. So, how do we model this? Think about how we can “show” students the text. You can use timelines to show chronology. Do we do this on paper? We can, but why not use technology? Check out www.softschools.com/teacher_resources/timeline_maker/ or www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/timeline/. There are several sites that allow you to use technology to create timelines. Model how to use the software, and model how to decide what goes first on the timeline. Let the students hear you think about your decisions of what to put in the timeline. Then you have them create timelines.

What about comparisons and cause/effect? Again, use technology and let the students hear your thinking. Start with some examples in the classroom where students compare objects. Start with life examples where you talk about cause and effect such as not setting an alarm clock might mean being late for school.

So, modeling is not all about the teacher doing and the students watching. It is the teacher doing while involving the students in the thinking, in the doing, and in all aspects of the process. Modeling also means starting with the teacher doing most of the work for one example, then for a second example the teacher does less, until for the 4th or 5th example the students are doing most of the work. Modeling is a progression of teacher doing less and students doing more. Don’t have time to do 5 examples? If you do not take the time to ensure all students understand, then you will be spending time reteaching. Why not take the time in the beginning instead of later?

Grade 6, 9 – 10 Standard – Determine the meanings of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.

Lesson – This can be a fun lesson or a very boring lesson. The boring lesson? Look up the words in a dictionary. Not fun for a 6th grade student. So, how can we make this lesson motivating? Modeling finding the meanings of words and phrases within a text. Try this: take a list of prefixes, suffixes, and root words and have students make up new words. They must define the and use them in a sentence. This is a fun way to introduce parts of words. Have students present their words, definitions, and sentences. Then have students write a story with their new words. Whenever I use this lesson we all have a great time laughing and it challenges me. Students get to see me stop them in a story and say “wait, I need to figure out that word.” Then I get the parts of words and model how I am figuring out what the word means. They love stumping me! Then move into a piece of text and again stop and say “wait, let’s figure out what that word means.” Have the students help you discover word meanings using parts of words. The next day start saying “wait, in context, I think the word means this” and show the students how you use clues in the writing to discover word meanings. Model the thinking. Give your students the gift of learning how to discover word meanings.

Again, modeling means the teacher does most of the work the first time, then gradually the students do most of the work.

Takes time? Yes! However, you are giving students a valuable gift of learning to learn instead of relying on the teacher for learning. So, give it a try! Take a lesson where you would “tell” the students and recreate it as a modeling lesson. Tell us about it!

Inquiry, Curiosity, Exploration: Keys to Motivation

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(written by Karen Lea)

Planned a great lesson? Excited to teach the content and you KNOW what you have planned will excite students and they WILL learn? Ever planned a lesson like that and then you wondered what went wrong? We all have. We have all been there. But there are three keys to avoiding that. No guarantees, sometimes a lesson just flops. But, we can be strategic in including at least one of the keys to avoid the lesson that is just not motivating for our students.

We are in luck! The Common Core standards are great for teaching the three keys.

Let’s look at those three keys. The basic idea is to have students asking questions to learn. That means we must teach students to ask questions. We must also make it safe and acceptable to ask questions. Questions that are relevant. If a student asks a question to take the class off task, just comment that is a valuable question and you would love to answer it after school or you will put it on the list for questions on Friday. So, how do we build these keys into lessons?

Let’s look at the English Language Arts Standards: Speaking and Listening.

Elementary (3rd grade)

Standard – Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Lesson – The first time you try this, take it slowly. Everyone is learning to think deeper and that takes time and patience. Take a text, read the first paragraph. Ask the students to write down what they think the main idea is and record those on a board. Be sure and not allow giggling or remarks. All ideas are valuable and there is no right or wrong at this point. Choose 3 or 4 and ask the student why that might be the main idea. Probe to get students thinking. Let others help students give a why. Then read another paragraph and at this point ask if anyone has any questions about any of the main ideas. Help the students ask other questions why they choose that main idea. Allow a respectful discussion as you add or delete some of the class main ideas. Continue with this process until you come to an agreement. Notice you are not telling the main idea, you are guiding them. Does this take longer? Yes! But you are helping students think, that is important. You are helping them take ownership for their opinions. You are using inquiry.

Middle School (6th grade)

Standard – Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study.

Lesson – Think about the concept you are teaching. Then find random pictures that are somehow related to that lesson and some that are not. Post those around the room with numbers. Tell the students the topic of the day. Randomly assign numbers and give students 5 minutes to write why they think that picture relates to the topic. Have them write on a sticky note and put on the picture. Then have them take a different colored sticky note and write 3 questions they have about the picture. You now have their input on the lesson. They are curious about the pictures, you have questions to answer, and you are doing more than just talking. You are using curiosity.

High School (11th – 12th grade)

Standard – Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.

Lesson – Show several video clips of speeches and ask students to rate the speeches. Do not give them any help, let them come up with their own rating. Talk about when people listen to or don’t listen to a speaker. Let students explore rubrics on the Internet that discuss rating speeches. Give them guidance, but let them have time to explore ratings for presidential speeches and speeches at award ceremonies. Then as a class, develop a rubric where you are gently leading them to point of view, … and the other elements in the standard. They key for motivation is letting them explore instead of you giving them how speeches are rated.

Now it’s your turn. Go to the Common Core Standards and choose a standard for your grade level. As you plan a lesson, how can you motivate students using inquiry, curiosity, or exploration? Post your ideas and let’s learn together.

Thinking and Conflicts

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(written by Karen Lea)

At first read, this book might seem like a marriage/family relationship book. Don’t let that stop you from reading it. I have used this book as a required text in a few courses and students always remark on how applicable the book is to teaching. Personally, I also find it useful in all relationships. If you are an educator who has ever had a conflict with a student, had students who had conflict with each other, or had a conflict with a colleague, …., well, this is a must read!

peopleproblemsblog.com

 

Meaningful Connections

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images(written by Karen Lea)

As a new teacher, you are probably being asked how your learning objectives are linked to standards. You might even be asked to display your objectives and/or standards for each lesson. On top of taking attendance, learning student names, classroom management, … are you wondering how you will accomplish that? Don’t despair, it is not as daunting as it seems!

Why do we link objectives to standards? Hopefully, you are using the standards as a foundation for what you teach so your students are learning the material they should be learning – the science of teaching. Then you take the standards and create objectives for your students – the art of teaching. You think about the question “What do I want students to learn and how will they demonstrate that learning?” Look at the example below where we have taken the standard to “solve problems” and made it creative by having students “create a blueprint.” That is making a meaningful connection between the standards and objectives. That is linking the science of teaching to the art of teaching. We have also included writing which is a focus of common core standards. Yet, it is not just writing an explanation, it is a persuasive essay.

Example:

Standard – Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale. (This is a common core mathematics standard for 7th grade.)

Objective – Students will compute lengths and areas of a classroom to create a blueprint of the classroom indicating the scale used.  When finished, students will write a “sales pitch” to a person explaining why their blueprint is accurate and should be purchased.

Within the objective, we have included the “what” and have included the “how.” This will keep us on task in the classroom and will tell the students what the task is. When we post this objective for the students, we are letting them know the task at hand and that it is important enough to post. We have also included multiple levels of Bloom’s taxonomy which is important to ensure our students are critical thinkers.

So, here is the challenge, take the common core standards and create objectives for your classroom. Post them here and let’s help each other take the science of teaching and connect to the art of teaching. Choose a grade level, or several grade levels. The standards are listed by grade levels and are taken directly from the common core standards.

K: Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.

1: Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.

2: Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces.1 Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.

3: Partition shapes into parts with equal areas. Express the area of each part as a unit fraction of the whole. For example, partition a shape into 4 parts with equal area, and describe the area of each part as 1/4 of the area of the shape.

4: Draw points, lines, line segments, rays, angles (right, acute, obtuse), and perpendicular and parallel lines. Identify these in two-dimensional figures.

5: Classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties.

6: Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

7: Know the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle and use them to solve problems; give an informal derivation of the relationship between the circumference and area of a circle.

8: Apply the Pythagorean Theorem to determine unknown side lengths in right triangles in real-world and mathematical problems in two and three dimensions.

Group work? My students can’t handle it!

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images(written by Karen Lea)

Ever heard or said it yourself? “My students can’t handle group work?” You are right! Most students cannot handle group work if there is not a plan. If students are just told to work in groups, then of course most cannot handle it. Most of us wouldn’t accomplish much in faculty meetings if we were told to get in groups and do something without a plan or accountability. It is human nature. So, how do we make groups work?

 First, let us look at why we should use groups in our classrooms. One reason, although not the most important, is “Grouping Students” is an element of the Tennessee rubric for teachers. The most important reasons are from research:

         Promotes higher-level reasoning

         Raised test scores

         Deeper understanding of material

         Better classroom management

         Culturally preferred

         Higher self-esteem

         Greater motivation

All good reasons, right? That does not mean that tomorrow we tell the students to work in groups. As teachers, we need to plan group work for it to be successful and yield the results suggested from research. All of that research stated group work was only successful with the proper planning.

Planning! What do we mean by planning for groups?

First: assign roles for the groups. There are various ways to do this, and you do not have to invent the roles. Look at these websites for help on assigning roles. This is crucial to the success of group work. Every person needs a job and needs to be held accountable for that job.

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson277/cooperative.pdf

http://www.plsweb.com/Products-Resources/Newsletter/Newsletter-Archives/September-2010

http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/roles.html

Second: all students needs to be held accountable. I like to create a rubric for the group work and for individual work. Ok, as a student I hated group work because I did all the work or earned a low grade because of my group. Let us solve that – give two grades. One for individual work based on the roles or individual assignments, and one for working cooperatively as a group. I prefer to have students do individual work, then combine that work as a group. That way I ensure they get credit for their own work, not the work of others. I like these rubrics.

http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/btg/ed/evaluation/groupwork.htm

http://ed.fnal.gov/trc_new/rubrics/group.html

Third: I vary the groups. Sometimes I decide on the groups based on grades. At times I want the groups to contain a mixture of high and low achievers. At times I want all the high achievers in one group so I can focus on the lower achievers. At times I want single gender groups. I also vary the size of groups.

Fourth: reflection is important. I like to give students a sticky note and in the last 5 minutes of class tell them to fill the sticky note answering the questions

         Today I learned …

         What I did best today ….

         What I could do better …

         Questions I have …

If you are already grouping students, look at these guidelines and change some things if you are not following them. If you are not grouping students, check these out and try it. Take a risk some day and have students work in groups. Group work does not mean a week long project. Group work can mean 10 – 15 minutes. So, the challenge is do some sort of group work once a week.