I appreciated the opportunity to think about how to give feedback in Post 4. Although I have taken teacher training before, I have never been asked to break down what feedback actually is! This post helped me relate my own experiences, often negative, with feedback and to reflect on how to improve this experience for my own students.
Here are the major ideas that I have taken from the training so far:
- Learning happens through communication by relating information
- Focus on lining up learning activities, assessments, and learning outcomes
- Focus on “activating” students vs. the transmission of information
- Focus on task-related feedback that allows students to bridge the gap between performance and goals
Questions that I have:
- Within what is often a highly competitive environment oriented towards grades, how can I help students feel comfortable making mistakes in order to truly engage with class material? I am not sure there is an easy answer here, but I think focusing on the progress taken towards measurable goals instead of right or wrong answers will help.
- How can I learn to better tailor feedback to different students with different needs in order to bridge the gap between performance and goals? I think this may come from having as much sustained engagement as possible with students in order to learn their individual needs.
Goals in my own teaching:
- To cover all three of Hattie’s questions (Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?) when I deliver feedback
- To remove self-directed feedback to focus instead on task-related feedback
