Edited by Joseph Pearson and published on Beyond Borders Blog by Moreland University A key ingredient of successful student learning is timely, specific, and relevant feedback. Teachers who are “student watchers” are able to give the most impactful feedback to help learners grow target dispositions, skills, knowledge, and understanding. Small shifts in the way teachers give feedback can have large impacts. This blog post will give insights on the language of feedback, explore three aspects of feedback, and provide an outline to use while delivering feedback. Let’s dive into the world of feedback! The Language of FeedbackTeacher language, particularly in the feedback they provide, helps set the tone of a classroom. When giving feedback, teachers must consider their word choice and syntax as they seek to promote student success. One way to approach the language of feedback is to be a warm demander, a term first coined by Judith Kleinfield in 1975. To be a warm demander means to exude personal warmth towards students while holding them to high expectations for learning. This concept was brought back to the forefront in Zaretta Hammond’s 2014 book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: “Your job is to find a way to bring the student into the zone of proximal development while in a state of relaxed alertness so that he experiences the appropriate cognitive challenge that will stimulate his neurons and help his dendrites to grow.” To learn strategies for becoming a warm demander, have a look at this chart. Strategy: Use a neutral and objective tone without passing judgement of good or bad in your feedback on students’ work; comment on the task and not the learner. Components of FeedbackThere are three aspects of feedback which combine to create an effective recipe for student success. With the right tone in mind, incorporate these three aspects of feedback:
Strategy: Set the purpose, characterize how successfully the task was completed within the work sample, and indicate next steps in your feedback to students. Building strong relationships with students is essential for feedback practices to be successful. With a foundation of trust and understanding with students, teachers can become warm demanders in the classroom. The Reading and Writing Project out of Columbia University offers an outline of how to approach relationship building. (As you read these steps, can you identify the three aspects of feedback mentioned above, namely feed up, feedback, and feed forward?) When providing feedback in a one-on-one conference with a student, try using these steps over a period of five to seven minutes:
Strategy: Set aside time to meet with each student individually for five to seven minutes to provide concise and specific feedback following the cycle of feedback above. Implementation of Feedback To ensure that feedback given to students is received effectively, teachers must engage in follow-up actions that allow for reflection and implementation. Students must have dedicated time to engage with and use feedback. Teachers should therefore provide students with time to implement feedback, make mistakes, and reflect as they become active participants in the learning process. While students work to actively apply the feedback they receive, teachers have space to ask open-ended questions based on the feedback they provide: “What are you working on?” “What are you thinking about?” “What are you proud of?” “What will you try next?” “What is working well for you?” These questions promote metacognitive thinking which inspires students to consider how they learn best and what their needs are. These elements help ensure that the feedback is received in such a way that students can incorporate it into their learning and apply it to future learning. Strategy: Be a reflective practitioner by looking for signs of the impact feedback is having on learning and reflecting on how feedback is received by students. Next StepsAs you prepare to apply your learning from this blog post in your own classroom, analyze the following two videos of teachers giving feedback through the lens of the strategies presented in this post. Identify the language used, the components of feedback, and how the feedback was implemented by students as you consider the potential impact on student learning: Austin's Butterfly- coaching students to give good feedback to each other Grade 5 writing conference Finally, reflect on your practice given the strategies presented in this post as well as the sample videos of effective feedback. Even small shifts in our approach to providing student feedback can have large impacts on classroom culture and student achievement.
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Beyond Borders Blog on Moreland University's Professional Learning site Imagine a classroom of students asked to do a worksheet of graphing or statistics problems. What are the expressions on students’ faces in this classroom? Now, imagine a classroom of students asked to identify a personally-relevant problem they face in their lives and then empowered to find a creative solution using graphing or statistics as a tool. What are the expressions on students’ faces in this classroom? A key difference between these two scenarios is the level of student cognitive engagement in the learning tasks described. While students may comply with the assignment in the first example, they will likely engage more deeply in the second example because it is a more personally-relevant and purposeful task. In a previous blog post, we defined “engagement” and focused on one specific type called “emotional engagement.” To summarize, engagement is the degree to which students are attentive, curious, and involved in their own learning. This post will focus on cognitive engagement strategies that can boost student learning and achievement. Students are cognitively engaged when they play an active role in their learning journeys. In the face of challenges, students who are cognitively engaged set goals, plan steps, monitor progress, solve problems along the way, and reflect on their learning. How do teachers help students develop these habits and increase their cognitive engagement? Below are some best practices teachers can leverage to increase cognitive engagement in their classrooms. Ask Better Questions Teachers can immediately promote deeper cognitive engagement by asking “non-Googleable” questions. Consider: If a student can look the answer up on the internet, what is their motivation to learn and discover the answer on their own? Challenge yourself to plan and ask more rigorous questions by diving into Higher Order Thinking and Depth of Knowledge. Some examples of cognitively-engaging questions to ask students are below:
Teachers often tell students to, “Think before responding.” Students may engage in deeper and more analytical thought when teachers provide direct instruction on critical-thinking skills. Harvard’s Project Zero suggests that students who are taught the process of deep analytical and critical thinking are more likely to access prior knowledge and skills in their work. An example of a “Thinking Routine” recommended to improve critical thinking by the Harvard Project Zero is called, “See, Think, Wonder.” When asking students to analyze an image, for example, ask them what they see, what they think may be happening, and what they wonder as a result of the previous two. Harvard’s “Thinking Routines” are divided into categories including understanding, exploring, reasoning, connecting, perspective taking, and divergent thinking. To learn more, read Ron Richthart’s Making Thinking Visible and Creating Cultures of Thinking: 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools. Move from Procedural to Problem-Solving Tasks Procedural learning opportunities are prescriptive and dictate to students each step of the process of completing a task. On the other hand, Project Based Learning (PBL) opportunities allow students to identify problems, brainstorm solutions, and design the process by which problems are solved. In this way, students can begin thinking about “why” we learn in more meaning-driven experiences. Here is an example of a simple PBL:
Help Students Think about the Learning Process Metacognition is the process of contemplating and reflecting on how we each individually learn. According to Nancy Chick from Vanderbilt University, “Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one’s thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance. Metacognition includes a critical awareness of a) one’s thinking and learning and b) oneself as a thinker and learner.” Teachers can help students become cognitively engaged by promoting metacognition in the classroom. Taking time to help students learn how to think about their own learning helps them become lifelong learners. Some reflection prompts that promote metacognition might include the following:
Cognitive engagement starts with teachers shifting their own habits and approaches to student learning as well as their own professional development and continuing education. Teachers should commit to enhancing students’ cognitive engagement by prioritizing their interests and goals as part of the learning process. They can also plan for more rigorous and meaningful learning experiences in student-centered classrooms. Teachers might ask,”How can I know I am helping students increase their cognitive engagement?” The following success criteria for cognitive engagement set out by Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2020) in, The Distance Learning Playbook, help teachers to reflect on their own practice:
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