Feedback

I had the best time this week.  Well, let's be honest.  Monday and Tuesday were rough, but man, by Wednesday, I felt on a roll, making the magic happen. And then there's Friday where I overslept by two hours, but man I felt well rested!

We're at that point in the year where students can start demonstrating they are learning which gets me thinking: how am I going to give feedback to all 150 of my students? I mean, seriously!  I know feedback not attached to grades is powerful.  I know feedback is one of the best ways to improve student learning (duh!).  But what type of feedback is sustainable?   Sustainable implies I don't spend 12+hours at school each day to give them meaningful feedback.

Itechnology 

I understand that too often technology gets in the way of learning.  Sometimes teachers spend so much time trying to figure out how to use some piece of technology that they forget what the students should be learning.  My love of technology isn't regularly clouded with such cloudiness.  Technology represents an outstanding way to give feedback swiftly and more regularly.  Here are three different ways I used technology in my three courses to provide feedback to students. And, trust me, I didn't spend inordinate amounts of time prepping these things, but I am very up to speed on tools available to me and I am relentless when figuring them out.

9th Grade Intermediate Algebra

Seriously, look how adorable they are talking to each other about math!
Aren't they the best!

The two units we start the year with are review of concepts they have seen in 8th grade algebra.  I've been grappling with how to get them engaged and recognizing their common mistakes and misconceptions yet also learning to work together in pairs and teams.  Today we were working on simplifying expressions where students need to distribute a -1 to all the terms inside of the parentheses.  To get them talking about the math and working together, one student had a marker and one pulled up a "Unicorn Race" on Socrative.  The game had 10 questions with multiple choice answers (not ideal), but the goal was to accurately solve your problem and your unicorn would move across the screen.  If you were incorrect your unicorn would stay put.  It was the perfect mixture of competition and collaboration to get them talking about how to simplify the expressions.    What I found the most powerful was the learning that happened between the day of the Unicorn Race and when I asked the same question the next day, this time without the answer choices.

Here's the original question. When I posed the question on day two, I didn't reveal the answer choices.

The graph below shows the results on day one when they worked with a partner.

As you can see, over half of the students selected the same wrong answer on day one.  But the next day, in a quick show of hands and after visually scanning student's papers, ALL of my students got it right.  I mean c'mon!  How awesome is that!  We celebrated and moved on to good old pencil and paper for our next concept of solving equations with distributive property. 

If you aren't familiar with Socrative.com, it is worth your while.  It has four options for creating your own assessments, you can share them with colleagues and get spreadsheets and item analyses of the results.  The interface is very user friendly and it is quick to get your students to the site and enrolled in your class for an assessment.  Next on the list to explore feedback in this class: PLICKERS!  

Algebra 2 and the Google Add-On AutoCrat

As I investigate ways to give students feedback on their homework without grading each homework, this week I gave a Homework Check on google forms.  This worked well because the questions were around evaluating functions and describing a domain.  I asked three simple questions from their homework a few nights prior.  I can't say they did very well on the problems, but the goal was to give them feedback on their learning meaning the assessment was formative.

There are some strong misconceptions formed when our high school went to gradebooks that were required to have 80% of grade be Summative Assessments (commonly thought of as tests and quizzes) and 20% of the grade be Formative Assessments (commonly thought of as homework, classwork).  Many people assumed that meant the Formative was less important since it represents less in the gradebook.  I cannot stress enough that formative only equals 20% because we are bound to make mistakes when we are learning something.  Formative assessments aren't worth less, they represent less in our gradebooks because we don't want to penalize students for not knowing something early on in the learning.  Instead their grade will represent what they know and can do once a summative assessment appears.  If I had it my way, the grade would be 100% Summative and we would find a way to get students to do the daily work (formative work) necessary to be successful on the summative rather than enticing them with points in a gradebook.  

OK. Rant over.

Back to the homework check.  I asked three questions and the spreadsheet looked like this after students submitted their solutions:

Conditional formatting is one of my favorite quick tools.  I set it up to automatically highlight many of the correct answers so I could do a quick scan and see how students were doing with the concepts. This gives me, as the teacher a pulse on the class.  I now know in general how well the students understand the concepts.  

But, formative assessment shouldn't stop at the teachers.  Using the google add-on Autocrat, I sent the results back to the students in a google document.  The document populates itself with the students' responses and had the correct answers already written up.  Each student received an email and they were instructed to reflect on how they did.  Here is a sample of the student work:

Bam!  Student Self Reflection sheet created with the click of a few buttons!

The documents also organize themselves into a folder in my google drive account so I can follow up and leave additional comments for students if necessary.  

I can't stress enough how easy this all was.  Yes, I am good at technology and I persisted even when the documents didn't send out the first time, but after getting over those initial bumps, the benefits far outweigh the little bits of extra work and headaches encountered.

Probability and Statistics and Google Classroom

Google Apps for Education is, perhaps, my favorite little piece of amazingness that has rocked my teaching world.  I'm not talking about the fact that it rocked my world when it began and I've been in love ever since.  I'm saying it rocks my teaching world regularly.  Most recently, I have fallen in love with Google Classroom.  What a phenomenal tool that I cannot begin to imagine what it will become.  I've been using this tool extensively in my Probability and Statistics course.  As a first period class with mostly seniors, we had our first Hybrid day on Thursday.  Students were able to log into their google classroom, see the assignment and begin the work.  On Thursday morning, I peaked at my google drive folder with the assignments and could see who had started the assignment:

Because, you know, google is awesome like that, I can see all the assignments I've assigned in a nice little folder.  Anyone that knows me knows that I am a scatter brain.  In fact, I think my close family wonders how I successfully create lessons each day without forgetting something.  Google Classroom is making my organization so peaceful and painless.  All I have to do is create the learning opportunities and Google Classroom keeps it all in order.  Thank you google.  From the bottom of my heart, for being so darn amazing and making FREE tools for education that simplify our lives and let us focus on the learning and the teaching.

Feedback for Growth, Part 1

Push or Pull?

I recently dropped an earring behind my dresser. Naturally, I pulled the dresser out to reach back and grab the earring. The trouble came when I attempted to push the dresser across the carpet back into place. I learned it is easier to pull something out of a corner rather than push something into one. Apparently I’m a little late to this realization, but the ultimate goal remains to continuously learn, is it not?

Just in time feedback

I was recently out with a college friend who presently leads a team of people who, in turn, lead additional teams of people in the corporate world. I’ve known Tashi for nearly 15 years. As a friend she can be rather blunt and if you are sensitive, she can come off as abrasive. Over the years she has taught me a lot about being sure of myself, so sure that I can stand in a doorway with her and she can say “Rice, you’ve got lots of gray hair” and not take offense. What’s interesting is how she has effectively grown into a leader who leads by pulling rather than pushing people. I’d argue that the simple measures Tashi has taken, can be applicable to many areas of leadership including education and even in the classroom.

Tashi provides regular feedback through weekly check-ins. Feedback, whether you are in business, education, management or on the front line, functions the same. People need feedback to improve. It also provides, as a leader, your opportunity to ensure excellence among your team. I'd argue, that this feedback must be timely and actionable. Telling a basketball player he is too short is not an actionable piece of feedback. Asking the player to improve his vertical and speed is actionable.

Timely Feedback

Waiting 10 days after you see a disappointing moment in your employee will not work. It sends a message, “I don’t care that much”.  Suppose every day a student is sleeping in class. If you don’t address it for weeks, what message does that send to the student? Even worse, when a struggling student does not get feedback to improve her ability to solve quadratic equations, how is she going to feel on the day of the test? What message are we sending these children (or adults) if we are not giving them feedback to improve in a timely, actionable manner?

Adults that have a supervisor who is willing to build their capacity, coach and teach them, will step up to the plate and accomplish great things. Adults who are ignored will feel disgruntled, uninterested, and taken aback when they are suddenly reprimanded for being imperfect at the end of a sales quarter,  for instance, when it is too late to improve. Feedback must be timely and actionable.

But not too timely

Conversely, feedback that is too quick to be given can be detrimental to growth. My first few years of teaching I worked at Ann Taylor selling clothes. One of the managers would talk to me after every interaction with a client giving me feedback and telling me what to do differently. There was never an opportunity for me to be self-reflective and learn from my interactions without her telling me what to do. The general manager of the store was quite different. She would observe multiple interactions with clients and reflect back to me what she saw. I was able to grow as a sales associate with her coaching because I felt efficacy and as if my improvement mattered and was possible.  This same structure is brought into the TRX classes that I teach. If I am constantly correcting each flaw a person makes during the 60 minute workout, it might send the signal to the client that they aren’t cut out for TRX. But again if I don’t give them feedback when they are holding their straps wrong, or over-using their backs for the workout, I appear to be indifferent to their growth. It is a fine balance of feedback and letting people self-correct. 

Small Business Revolution

We should do the same as educators. Do we jump in when a student makes a mistake, or do we watch, let them struggle and see if they can find their mistake and correct it on their own? Or maybe we are a leader of a school, do we quickly discount a teacher's ability based on how they speak up at a meeting with a dissenting opinion? Or do we ask more questions to understand, and get them to reflect on what they are saying? As leaders, do we work to learn from those around us or do we constantly correct those in our charge leaving them to feel incompetent?  The choice is ours.

No matter if you are teacher, principal or lead in the corporate world.  Timely, actionable feedback is essential.  But what are other ways to pull rather than push people to greatness?  I hope to explore this more in my next post on feedback.