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Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback

Quality Teaching Practice

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SDUSD’s Professional Learning

Mission/Vision Statement

Our work is about widening the sphere of success by engineering equitable learning conditions for all students. We believe classrooms can be places of hope where teachers and students imagine the kind of society we could live in and where educators design meaningful and inclusive educational experiences in order for students to be agents of change and make this hope a reality.

Our district’s mission/vision statement is supported by our Quality Teaching Practices. Teachers use practices to have meaningful, inclusive, and equitable learning experiences so students achieve academic outcomes. These practices will help develop content knowledge, agency, and social emotional competence. These practices allow opportunities for students to enter and remain in the sphere of success.

In addition, there is a growing body of research that confirms that the quality of teaching is what matters most for students’ development and learning in school. Teaching is a professional endeavor, one in which effective practice is driven by an understanding of knowledge in the field and a commitment to all students and their families. Highly effective teaching requires knowledge, skills, artistry, passion, and commitment. The California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP) can help develop effective teaching.

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Quality Teaching Practices are best implemented in a way that is culturally responsive and sustaining.

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Cultural Proficiency is a mindset that encompasses explicit values, language, and standards for effective personal interactions and professional practices at all times.

Culturally proficient educators ensure lessons are designed to value and respect the cultural identity of the learner and her or his family and friends.

Culturally proficient educators recognize students’ cultural displays of learning and meaning making. They use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the student knows to new concepts.

Culturally proficient educators are constantly aware of the critical role that cultural identity and cultural perceptions play in the dynamics of the classroom environment.

In her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond tells us:

“Culturally proficient instructors are aware of the power and potential of the inner curriculum for individual learners. Lessons are designed to value and respect the cultural identity of the learner and her or his family and friends. Culturally proficient instructors are constantly aware of the critical role that cultural identity and cultural perceptions play in the dynamics of the classroom environment.”

In her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond tells us:

“Culturally proficient instructors are aware of the power and potential of the inner curriculum for individual learners. Lessons are designed to value and respect the cultural identity of the learner and her or his family and friends. Culturally proficient instructors are constantly aware of the critical role that cultural identity and cultural perceptions play in the dynamics of the classroom environment.”

In Culturally Proficient Leadership, Terrell and Lindsey tell us:

"Cultural proficiency is a mindset for how we interact with all people irrespective of their cultural memberships. Cultural proficiency is a worldview that carries explicit values, language, and standards for effective personal interactions and professional practices. Cultural proficiency is a 24/7 approach to our personal and professional lives. Most important, cultural proficiency is NOT a set of independent activities or strategies that you learn to use with others - your students, colleagues, or community members."

As such, these ideas around cultural proficiency should be connected to how you implement the Quality Teaching Practices (QTPs).

To learn more about being culturally responsive and sustaining, you might read the following books:

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond

Cultivating Genius, Gholdy Muhammad

The Pedagogy of Confidence, Yvette Jackson

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Dr. Bettina Love

Culturally Proficient Instruction, Terrell and Lindsey

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What is “Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback”?

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The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback.

John Hattie

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Check for Understanding & Provide Feedback

Use this Quality Teaching Practice to understand, validate, and support students’ social, emotional, and academic needs in the moment.

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When we check for understanding and provide feedback, we are able to notice and name what students are doing and adjust instruction accordingly. We deliberately provide clear, specific, actionable feedback that will develop students’ agency and academic achievement.

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The Goal...

For learning to be effective and meaningful, students should receive and act on feedback that is clear, specific, and relevant to the learning objective.

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Why is “Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback” important?

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William Glasser

This is at the heart of all good education, where the teacher asks students to think and engages them in encouraging dialogues, constantly checking for understanding and growth.

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John Hattie’s Research

Check for understanding and provide feedback refers to the strategies used during teaching to direct and support student engagement and understanding. It involves using strategies to monitor understanding, adjust instruction in the moment, and provide meaningful feedback.

Mean

Effect

Size 0.60

Zone of Desired Effects

Teacher Effects

Develop-mental Effects

Reverse Effects

Strategies included in John Hattie’s list of factors related to “Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback” range from an effect size of 0.48 (Questioning) to 0.75 (Evaluation and Reflection) and highly affect student achievement.

John Hattie developed a way of synthesizing various influences in different meta-analyses according to their effect size (Cohen’s d). In his groundbreaking study “Visible Learning” he ranked 138 influences that are related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects. Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this ‘hinge point’, in order to find an answer to the question “What works best in education?”

John Hattie updated his list of 138 effects to 150 effects in Visible Learning for Teachers (2011), and more recently to a list of 195 effects in The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education (2015). His research is now based on nearly 1200 meta-analyses – up from the 800 when Visible Learning came out in 2009. According to Hattie the story underlying the data has hardly changed over time even though some effect sizes were updated and we have some new entries at the top, at the middle, and at the end of the list.

Click here to see Hattie’s list of Influences and Effect Sizes.

The following influences correlate to Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback:

Questioning (Effect Size 0.48): A practice by which an instructor or textbook writer poses factual or conceptual questions to students. This educational practice dates to Greek antiquity, if not earlier.

Formative Evaluation (Effect Size 0.48): This involves providing instruction or feedback during the lesson rather than at the end (summative) of a lesson or series of lessons. As Bob Stake noted, when the cook tastes the soup, it is formative evaluation; when the guests taste the soup, it is summative evaluation.

Strategy monitoring (Effect Size 0.58): A metacognitive practice whereby a student monitors her or his own strategies to complete a task. It often involves students being trained both in problem-solving techniques and in monitoring techniques (through which they observe how and whether they are following problem solving protocols).

Appropriately challenging goals (Effect Size 0.59): A necessary precondition for meaningful learning, appropriately challenging goals provide the preconditions for student engagement and the development of intrinsic motivation. Numerous scholars have suggested that students thrive most when teachers describe clearly the ultimate goals of a particular course of instruction, and when they formulate such goals to be challenging but achievable. The Goldilocks’s principle of challenge is not too hard, not too easy, and not too boring.

Feedback (Effect Size 0.70): Feedback has for more than a century been regarded as critical to skill and knowledge acquisition, and yet debates have emerged about the most effective means of providing feedback. As critical is the variability in feedback influences. Feedback in the classroom can be defined as “information allowing a learner to reduce the gap between what is evident currently and what could or should be the case”. Specifically, feedback is information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, self/experience) regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding that reduces the discrepancy between what is Definitions understood and what is aimed to be understood.

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5-Dimensions of Teaching and Learning

Dimension: Assessment for Student Learning
The teacher uses systems and routines for recording and using student assessment data (e.g. anecdotal notes, conferring, etc.) The teacher uses formative assessment data to make in-the-moment instructional adjustments, modify future lessons, and give targeted feedback to students. The teacher provides feedback that fosters students’ metacognition to promote their role as editors of their work and that of their peers.

Guiding Questions
How does the instruction provide opportunities for all students to demonstrate learning? What opportunities are provided for students to revise their work based on teacher and peer feedback? How does the teacher’s understanding of each student as a learner inform how the teacher pushes for depth and stretches boundaries of student thinking? How does the teacher adjust instruction based on in-the-moment assessment of student understanding?

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Quick Read

Link: How can students self-assess when teachers do all the grading and work?

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We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

Bill Gates

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Strategies and Teacher Moves that Support “Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback”

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Feedback is not advice, praise, or evaluation. Feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal.

Grant Wiggins

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In Teaching Practices from America’s Best Urban Schools, the authors tell us that in high-performing urban schools, teachers check each and every student to ensure that everyone makes progress in mastering the lesson content.

Checking for understanding is done in multiple ways.

Checking for understanding is not an event. It is a way of teaching and is ongoing and continuous.

Checking for higher levels of understanding leads to adapting instruction.

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3. TEACH

4. REFLECT

2. PLAN

1. PREPARE

To be Culturally Responsive when implementing “Check for Understanding” strategies, consider the following as part of your lesson design cycle...

Ensure all voices are being heard.

Use what you understand about students’ identity, mindset, and skills to correctly interpret and respond to student needs.

Connect to students’ prior knowledge and experiences so the learning is relevant to their lives.

Plan for multiple perspectives and entry points.

Revise what you understand about your students based on new information about their identity and mindset.

Reflect on evidence of equitable/inequitable outcomes and plan for more equitable outcomes.

Select texts and activities that match what you understand about your students identity (culture, race, gender, language).

These considerations are adapted from the SDUSD Lesson Design Cycle Supporting Equity and Inclusion.

Geneva Gay (2002) defines culturally responsive teaching as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively.”

Gholdy Muhammad (2019) explains that Gay’s “premise rests on the philosophy that teachers can’t teach until they deeply know and understand cultural and ethnic ways of knowing and being and this includes the tools, protocols, values, traditions, and ways of living...teachers using this approach see curriculum as a tool of power and a disruption of marginalization...when students do not receive such curriculum [or pedagogy] with elements of care, love, and respect at the center, they tend to display resistance to the curriculum and instruction, as well as to teachers and to the school...this resistance is usually called defiance and negative behavior in students today.”

Planning and preparing for students in a culturally proficient way requires a commitment to understanding self, culture, and identity. Planning and preparation for teaching should include culturally responsive and sustaining practices.

As you implement this Quality Teaching Practice, you should consider all of the above as part of your lesson design cycle in order to best meet students’ needs.

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Implemented alongside other

Grounded in standards

Tied to explicit learning objectives

Strategies that support “Check for Understanding

and Provide Feedback” are...

Authentic and relevant to students’ lived experiences

Implemented alongside other Quality

Teaching Practices

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Quick Response

Use a system to check every students’ level of understanding efficiently by having them respond in unison.

A quick response could be:

Show on individual white boards
Give a thumbs up or thumbs down
Call and response
Designate areas and move to the place you agree with
Answer with tech tools such as electronic clickers or Kahoot!

Video: Participation Cards (A Quick Formative Assessment Tool)

Tip:

Prompt students to participate fully in order for the unison response to be meaningful.

Follow up with students who were slow to respond or did not answer.

Determine which students answered correctly or incorrectly and adapt your instruction accordingly.

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Question and Collect

Check for understanding frequently by questioning, listening attentively, and keeping track of what students understand.

Ask basic questions before complex ones to ensure mastery of basic concepts. Record what each student understands, what makes sense to them, or whether they can explain in their own words. Name what they are doing.

Prompt for higher levels of understanding by asking questions that require students to:

Compare or contrast
Explain or describe
Infer
Analyze
Evaluate

Tip:

Differentiate the questioning to maximize student mastery.

You might ask one student to describe and then ask another to explain.

You might call upon one student to answer a challenging question, and then call upon another student to answer a very similar question.

Target questions to students’ current level of skill or need.

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Objective-Driven Discussion

Check for understanding by engaging students in group discussions and partner talks focused upon the lesson objective.

Stimulate discussion with thought provoking questions. You might also ask students to:

Explain what they understand
Teach the student next to them
Draw a diagram/picture and explain

Monitor the discussion by listening to determine if students understand the key concepts and lesson objective.

Considerations:

Zaretta Hammond tells us that talking to learn is deeply rooted in oral cultural tradition. It gives students the opportunity to organize thinking, hear how thinking sounds out loud, listen to others respond, and hear others add to our thinking. In short, while it gives educators insight into what students understand, it also helps students solidify understanding.

Video: Using Hand Signals for Equitable Discussion

In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond talks about instructional conversation being one of the most important tools for culturally responsive teachers. It provides the space for students to form, express, and exchange ideas through dialogue, questioning. Many protocols can help students engage in meaningful instructional conversation and keep focus. Three suggestions are:

Helping Trios: Each student presents something they are working on to get help from classmates. Students work in triads.
Chalk Talk: Using markers and one large sheet of butcher paper, in silence students write responses to an essential question. Students are able to build on other written ideas.
World Cafe: Students rotate through tables discussing an essential question and recording parts of their conversation.

Listening in on student discussions is a great way to check for understanding, whether using protocols, classroom norms for discussion, or another strategy to get students talking.

For more on developing effective classroom discussion, sign in and visit San Diego Unified School District’s resource library (RELY):

Kindergarten Academic Conversation

K-1 Academic Conversation

TK-2 Structured Math Talk

3rd Grade Academic Conversation

3-5 Structured Math Talk

4th Grade Academic Conversation

5th Grade Academic Conversation

6th Grade Language Arts Collaborative Conversation

8th Grade English Collaborative Conversation

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Lift or Shift

In the moment, provide feedback and adjust instruction to correct misconceptions and affirm accurate responses.

Pay close attention to student work or discussion to make decisions about what to lift (amplify understandings) or how to shift (leverage misconceptions).

Decide what you will listen for and how you will lift or shift to immediately adjust and respond to student understanding. Consider whether you will:

Provide feedback and instruction privately (if only one or a couple students need it)
Provide feedback and instruction publicly by using voice-overs or pausing the whole group
Use a student example to provide the lift or shift by sharing and explaining their work and thinking

Tip:

You can plan ahead what you might lift or shift during a lesson. Determine your task or prompt: What will you ask students to do?

Anticipate what students might say that you would lift (meaning or strategy) and what they might say that you would want to shift (meaning or strategy).

Determine when and how you will lift or shift (e.g., voice-over, student model, summary, re-read with focus).

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Keep Track

Use a tool such as a checklist, matrix, or note-taking grid.

In the moment, keep track of what students say and do in order to determine who needs further support and what type of support is needed.

Use your notes to provide feedback that is specific, explicit, and timely.

Example:

A checklist is a

quick and easy

way to keep

track of what

students

understand.

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Feedback

Feedback can be provided for academic, social, and behavioral expectations.

Begin with a check-in. Then state the purpose of the feedback and affirm your belief in the student’s capacity as a learner by citing progress and growth.
Validate the student’s ability to master the learning objective. Analyze the task together and identify the easy and hard parts.
Deliver feedback that is specific, actionable, and timely. Together, revisit and analyze the learning objective and success criteria. Create space for the student to react to what he has heard and how he feels about it.
Give the student specific actions they can do, such as new strategies or steps for revision, to improve. Provide a way to track progress.
Ask the student to paraphrase what they heard - what is wrong, what needs to be fixed, and how to fix it. Offer emotional support and encouragement. Restate your belief in the student and set up a time to follow up.

Tip: Students can be taught how to provide and receive feedback.

Tip:

Feedback is delivered either publicly or privately and should be:

instructive rather than evaluative;
specific and in the right dose;
timely;
delivered in a low-stress, supportive environment.

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Conferring

Conferring is a great way to check for understanding and provide feedback by engaging in a conversation with a student. Conferring is not about fixing a student’s work, but rather about deepening understanding and developing agency. To engage a student in a conference:

Identify an area of need by:

Asking an open-ended question such as, “How is it going?”
Asking follow-up questions such as, “What strategy are you using?” or, “What do you understand about this part of the success criteria?”
Looking at the student’s work together.

2. Support growth by:

Giving feedback, naming an area of strength and an area of need.
Modeling or coaching the student to try on the desired strategy or process.
Trying it together as guided practice.
Linking to the learning objective

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TEACHER SELF-REFLECTIONS

How do I/can I provide learning experiences that allow me to check for understanding?

How will I know if my students understand the content? The strategies?

How can I monitor and support student progress toward learning expectations?

How do I/can I provide feedback that is timely? Clear? Actionable?

How can I align tasks with learning expectations?

How can I empower my students by utilizing the Check for Understanding and Provide Feedback QTP?

In what ways am I culturally responsive?

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Resources

Secondary Signature Strategies

Lesson Design Cycle

Hattie/Marzano

Visible Learning

5 Dimensions of Teaching & Learning

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To plan with your team and/or for further assistance

with coaching and training, please contact:

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THANKS

Email: AcademicsThroughAgency@sandi.net

Join our Quality Teaching Practices Google Classroom using class code:

Web: Academics Through Agency

Twitter: @SDUSD_ASquared