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Session Resources: Creating a Culture of Feedback

The most recent version of today’s session slides can be found here:

http://blog.williamferriter.com

You can create your own Google Docs template* of all of the handouts by visiting this link:

http://bit.ly/MSDHandoutTemplates

*Note: This is still a work in progress!

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Creating a Culture of Feedback

William M. Ferriter

Solution Tree Author and Associate | @plugusin

http://blog.williamferriter.com

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Session Objectives

By the end of this conversation, participants will have a better understanding of how teachers can make student self-assessment a regular part of their classroom practice.

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What’s most interesting to me in Baljeet’s response to the realization that he’s not going to get a grade is how angry he is. As a teacher, I see that all the time, too. Students aren’t interested in doing any kind of work whatsoever in school unless that work is graded. That should worry us. We should be trying to develop students who are motivated by learning rather than motivated by grades.

The other thing that I think is interesting is Baljeet’s insistence that “someone give me an grade.” So often, the kids can’t see their own role in assessment – they can grade themselves if they want to. In fact, it’s sad when students don’t see their own role in rating their own progress as learners. Successful people are always learning to assess themselves and their own progress. They’re always thinking about what they know and what they don’t know. They’re not waiting for someone else to rate them.

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Learning About Grading From�the Baljeatles

After watching Baljeet lose it when he finds out there are no grades attached to his final project in Rock Camp (http://bit.ly/121BsWj), answer the following questions:

Do your students see grades in the same way as Baljeet?
What can we learn about grades from Baljeet’s song? About students? About school?

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What’s most interesting to me in Baljeet’s response to the realization that he’s not going to get a grade is how angry he is. As a teacher, I see that all the time, too. Students aren’t interested in doing any kind of work whatsoever in school unless that work is graded. That should worry us. We should be trying to develop students who are motivated by learning rather than motivated by grades.

The other thing that I think is interesting is Baljeet’s insistence that “someone give me an grade.” So often, the kids can’t see their own role in assessment – they can grade themselves if they want to. In fact, it’s sad when students don’t see their own role in rating their own progress as learners. Successful people are always learning to assess themselves and their own progress. They’re always thinking about what they know and what they don’t know. They’re not waiting for someone else to rate them.

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Learning About Grading From�the Bushkrafft

After watching Bushkrafft try to start a fire with a bow drill (http://bit.ly/14gkFz6), answer the following questions:

How is Bushkrafft’s attitude toward learning different from Baljeet’s?
What explains those differences?
Can Bushkrafft’s attitude be replicated in schools? Why or why not?

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What I like the best about Bushkrafft’s attitude towards grading is that he’s trying to learn, but he hasn’t once asked for a grade. He knows he’s doing something wrong and he’s asking for feedback, but he’s not looking for a grade. He sees the difference between grades and feedback.

My worry is I don’t know if this kind of self-driven assessment is even possible in schools. We’ve become so used to being graded and giving grades in school that I wonder if students can turn their attitudes towards what feedback in school looks like around or not. That’s my main worry.

I think this kind of student-involved assessment – this determination to get feedback without a grade – is possible OUTSIDE of school, but I’m not sure that students see it as something that is possible INSIDE of school.

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What’s most interesting to me in Baljeet’s response to the realization that he’s not going to get a grade is how angry he is. As a teacher, I see that all the time, too. Students aren’t interested in doing any kind of work whatsoever in school unless that work is graded. That should worry us. We should be trying to develop students who are motivated by learning rather than motivated by grades.

The other thing that I think is interesting is Baljeet’s insistence that “someone give me an grade.” So often, the kids can’t see their own role in assessment – they can grade themselves if they want to. In fact, it’s sad when students don’t see their own role in rating their own progress as learners. Successful people are always learning to assess themselves and their own progress. They’re always thinking about what they know and what they don’t know. They’re not waiting for someone else to rate them.

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Quick Question:

On a scale from one to five, how important is it for a student to be able to assess themselves – to accurately identify their own strengths and weaknesses and then to be able to set a direction for personal improvement?

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Are You Ready?

“So I’m wondering if you’re ready to let your students assess themselves. Not as some experiment where you end up grading them apart but where you really give the reigns over to them? If not, is it about trust? Is it about readiness? Fear?”

—Shareski, “Adventures in Assessment,”

Huffington Post (2012)

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Quick Questions

What are the reasons teachers are hesitant to make student self-assessment a regular part of their classroom practice?

What barriers prevent us from fully embracing student self-assessment as an important part of the work we do with students?

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There Has to Be Time

“If you say you don’t have time for this, you assume that the teaching is more important than the learning. Feedback is the key to reaching goals. Saying there’s no time is to confuse learning for mentioning stuff.”

—Wiggins, ASCD Conference (2010)

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Student Self Assessment Matters MOST.

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The Essential Question

“Thus, the essential school improvement question from an assessment point of view is this: Are we skilled enough to use classroom assessment to either (1) keep all learners from losing hope to begin with, or (2) rebuild that hope once it has been destroyed?”

—Stiggins & Chappuis, “Using Student-Involved Classroom Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps,”

Theory Into Practice, 44(1), p. 2

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A Closer Look at the

Characteristics of Highly

Effective, Student-Involved

Assessment

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The Essential Behaviors

Stiggins and Chappuis argue that highly effective student-involved assessment depends on:

Getting students involved in the assessment process
Getting students involved in keeping records of their progress
Getting students involved in reporting on

their progress

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The Assessment Process

“Engage students in reviewing strong and weak samples in order to determine attributes of a good performance or product.”

—Stiggins & Chappuis, “Using Student-Involved Classroom Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps,”

Theory Into Practice, 44(1), p. 5

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Explore This

In order to see what reviewing strong and weak samples can look like in the classroom, explore the High/Low Comparison Task and Revise it Once/Revise it Again handouts in your session materials.

How well would these documents help students to review strong and weak samples?

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Session Materials: Pages 9-11

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The purpose of this activity is to have participants see the different ways that I get my students to review strong and weak work samples. The points to make about each document are:

1). Rubric: One key to any kind of student self assessment is the development of a rubric that has key indicators written in student friendly language. On my rubrics, I try to have each bullet point under each heading be different levels of the same task. That allows students to see the changes that are necessary to move along the rubric. Our work with self-assessment starts by examining the rubrics and the exemplars together.

2). Exemplars: Often when you’re starting an assignment, it is difficult for students to even imagine what you’re asking them to try to tackle. That’s why I show them specific examples of each level of performance BEFORE we start to work so that students have a sense for what leveled performance looks like. My exemplar sheets also include teacher descriptions of the exemplar written in student friendly language. That’s for both parents and students to get a sense for what I’m looking for – and seeing – in different levels of performance.

3). Rating Exemplars: After looking at the rubric and the exemplars, the next step is to have the kids practice rating exemplars. The purpose of this activity is to see whether or not they can apply the rubric independently and accurately. If they can’t, I know that I’ve got more work to do introducing the expectations for the assignment.

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Record Keeping

“In effect, we use such repeated formative classroom assessments as a mirror permitting students to watch themselves grow. As they chart progress, they gain a sense of control over their own learning. This can be a powerful confidence builder.”

—Stiggins & Chappuis, “Using Student-Involved Classroom Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps,”

Theory Into Practice, 44(1), p. 3

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Explore This

In order to see what student-involved record keeping can look like, explore the Ecosystems Unit Overview Sheet handout in your session materials.

How well would Unit Overview Sheets help students to chart their own progress? How would you change them to make them more useful for your students?

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Session Materials: Pages 12-17

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The purpose of this activity is to have participants see the different ways that I get my students to record their own progress on units. The points to make about each document are:

1). Unit Overview Sheet: On this handout, the key to notice is both the section where students can write their scores down for individual tasks AND the section where students can rate their own progress on the progress bar. We return to those sections regularly. They are an important part of the progress monitoring that we do in class. Sometimes I have my students reflect on that content together with the people around them. Prove to the person next to you that your rating for yourself is accurate? How do you know that?

2). Unit Analysis Sheet: The key to this particular handout is asking students to look carefully at the evidence that they have gathered over the course of a unit of study that they either have or have not mastered required content. I want them to see that self-assessment isn’t just a gut reaction kind of thing. Instead, self-assessment should be based on evidence – and that evidence in school should come from the tasks that we’re working on in class.

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Sample of Primary Level Unit Overview Sheets

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Nicole Ricca – Kindergarten Teacher

Ms. Ricca has developed a unit overview sheet for Kindergarteners that she is giving away for free on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Read more about Ms. Ricca’s work with unit overview sheets here on her blog. Download Ms. Ricca’s unit overview template here on her Teachers Pay Teachers page.

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Getting Started with Unit Overview Sheets:

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Getting Started with Unit Overview Sheets:

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1	2	3	4	5

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Sample of Primary Level Student Data Graphs

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Andrea Knight – First Grade Teacher

Ms. Knight has developed a student data graphing system that can be purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Read more about Ms. Knight’s work with student data graphs here on her blog. Purchase Ms. Knight’s student data graphing tools on her Teachers Pay Teachers page.

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Reporting on Progress

“When students are prepared well over an extended period to tell the story of their own success (or lack thereof), they experience a fundamental shift in their internal sense of responsibility for that success.”

—Stiggins & Chappuis, “Using Student-Involved Classroom

Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps,”

Theory Into Practice, 44(1), p. 3

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Explore This

In order to see what preparing students to tell the story of their success can look like, explore the Not Yet/You Bet handout in your session materials.

How well would Not Yet/You Bet lists help students to tell the story of their own success? How would you change it to make that storytelling easier for your kids?

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The powerful part of both of these activities is that students don’t automatically know what to look for when they are assessing their own work. More importantly, they don’t know how to explain their level of performance to other people. If you are going to help students to be able to do that work, they need structures and support.

That structure and those supports are provided on this document by the extensive list of additional questions that students have to answer when working through their self-assessment. While those questions may seem excessive to some – I’ve had peers tell me that their kids would be overwhelmed by the handout – I think that those questions are important because they provide multiple entry points into the assessment for students.

Any kid can find at least one question that they are willing and/or able to answer simply because there are so many to choose from.

What I also like about those questions is that they provide a transparent look into the kinds of things that ANY assessor should be thinking about and/or looking at when evaluating performance on individual tasks. The simple truth is that there isn’t a heck of a lot of transparency around those things in the minds of our students right now. They can’t do that work without our help.

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Lessons Learned

The vast majority of my kids reported never taking the time to systematically assess their own work in any subject or any grade level.

The vast majority of my kids gave themselves accurate feedback when assessing their own work.

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How sad is the first lesson learned? Most of the kids who roll into my sixth grade classroom have never done any kind of this self-assessment work at all. What does that say about schools? Aren’t we crippling students when we teach them that assessment is something that is ONLY done by outsiders? Is it REALLY possible to be a lifelong learner if you don’t have the skills necessary to assess your own progress? We simply HAVE to get better at developing these skills in our students at all ages.

I like the second lesson learned. My worry was that students weren’t going to be able to do this work effectively. I had it in my head that they would lie about their progress – or worse yet, not be able to make accurate judgments about what they could and couldn’t do. I figured that because they were kids, this work would be too hard for them to do effectively. I was wrong. When I double-checked their work, I found that they were often harder on themselves – spotting weaknesses that I would have probably forgiven – than I would have been on them.

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Lessons Learned

The vast majority of my kids enjoyed giving and receiving feedback from their peers more than receiving feedback from me.

The vast majority of my kids wanted to give themselves a number rating anyway.

http://bit.ly/TRselfassess

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Session Materials: Page 18

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The third lesson learned in fun: "You only wrote me two sentences, Mr. F" one of my favorite boys told me, "and it took you a WEEK to give me my paper back. That's not very helpful!“ And the thing was, he was right. With 140 papers to grade, giving feedback takes forever – and that’s to give an incredibly small amount of feedback to every child. Totally defeats the purpose of formative assessment – which depends on being timely and directive. If kids learn to do this on their own, however – and can do it accurately – timely and directive is doable.

The fourth lesson is instructive: Statements like, "I would rate my work a 3 out of 5," or "I would give myself an 80 for this" were sprinkled everywhere in the student self assessment work that we do. What's more, when we talked as a class about what my kids liked and disliked about self-assessment, more than a few students mentioned that the thing they liked the least was NOT having a final number to refer to. "I just want to know what I would have earned," they'd say. That just reinforces the point that grades have become such an indelible part of school culture that moving towards something more responsible will be hard to do.

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The trick for teachers is to start small. Emphasize that I didn’t start these practices all at once – and I don’t use all of them during every unit. Even more importantly, I’m still polishing all the practices. The unit overview sheets changed this year and the way that I am using them with students has changed every year. My self-assessment sheets are still things that I only use once in a while with kids. I’m hitting this home run 50 feet at a time. That makes it manageable for me and for my students.

Original Image Credit: Baseball by Paco Mexico

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacomexico/3292574548/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 22, 2012

Concept from The Method Method

http://www.amazon.com/The-Method-Obsessions-Start-up-Industry/dp/1591843995

Slide by Bill Ferriter

The Tempered Radical

http://bit.ly/temperedradical

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The Tempered Radical

http://blog.williamferriter.com

Twitter Username: @plugusin

Email: wferriter@outlook.com

Bill Ferriter has about a dozen titles—Solution Tree author and professional development associate, noted edublogger, senior fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network—but he checks them all at the door each morning when he walks into his sixth-grade classroom!

Bill Ferriter

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Thank You!

To schedule professional development at your site, contact Solution Tree at 800.733.6786.

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