# data[].attributes.headline
Great Website with lots articles and tips

# data[].attributes.subject
Great Website with lots articles and tips

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There is a simple thing you can do right now to ensure better classroom management next school year. It only takes a few minutes. The way it works is to list the five most disruptive, annoying, and stressful misbehaviors you witnessed last school year. ... Read more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a simple thing you can do right now to ensure better classroom management next school year. It only takes a few minutes. The way it works is to list the five most disruptive, annoying, and stressful misbehaviors you witnessed last school year. ... Read more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively with these free graphic organizer templates, available for download. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming.

Printable Graphic Organizers

Select a blank graphic organizer from the following categories depending on your curriculum needs.

Sequence of Events

Main Topic and Key Details

Compare/Contrast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Downloadable Graphic Organizer Templates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Use these graphic organizer templates to help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively, structure writing projects, and more.

# data[].attributes.headline
Good overview article of how to support English Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Good overview article of how to support English Learners

# data[].attributes.headline
Colorin Colorado--Great supports for English Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Colorin Colorado--Great supports for English Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
12 Ways to Upgrade Your Classroom Design | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Money and space are not prerequisites for learning-friendly design. Try any one of these ideas to make your classroom a better place for students to learn.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is the blog by the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Blog - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Michael Linsin ( transcript):

Sponsored by Write About and Peergrade
In my first few years of teaching, student talking was like popcorn.
I gave the class instructions for some kind of work; let's say journal writing. And for a few seconds, they did it. Things were quiet. Then, like that first kernel of popcorn, one student said she didn't know what to write, so I walked over to her desk to help her. While we talked, two more raised their hands-two more pops-and said they were stuck, too. I signaled to them that I'd be over in a minute, but in the meantime, someone else was closing his journal, finished already. Another pop. The two who were stuck asked him what he wrote about.

The room needs to stay quiet so we can concentrate, I told them.

Someone else had a question. Another pop. I squatted by her desk, and behind me, a conversation started between two others. Pop pop. Another journal closed while a different hand went up.

Okay people, I said, this time louder. Let's keep it down. And with rascally smiles, they turned back to their journals to pretend to write some more. At this point, it had turned into a game.

Someone needed to sharpen their pencil. Pop. Someone else decided to race them over to the sharpener. Pop. In a matter of seconds, the whole room had erupted, a huge hysterical bowl of popcorn, exploding all around me, and I couldn't find my way out.

And then I yelled.

If this sounds anything like you, you're not alone. I hear it from teachers all the time. One of the things they don't teach us in our education courses is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down in order to get anything accomplished.

To find solutions to this problem, I went to Michael Linsin, the creator of Smart Classroom Management and my go-to person for all classroom management needs. Last year, he taught us how to set up a clear, simple classroom management plan. Now he's going to help us understand the causes of excessive talking, what you should be able to realistically expect from students, and how you can fix the problem.

First, two quick caveats.

One: I believe students need to talk. People need to talk. So if you're shooting for a classroom environment where students sit silently and do rote seat work all day long, where they never have an opportunity to talk to their peers, where they never get out of their seats, and where the work is not engaging, you are going to have problems.

Two: A big part of good classroom management is building good relationships with your students. If you haven't taken the time to get to know them as individuals, if you mispronounce their names, if you regularly use sarcasm or make them feel stupid for asking questions, then they aren't going to want to behave well for you. And that's a different problem.

So this post is based on the assumption that you're planning engaging lessons and you have a decent relationship with your students. Without those two, these solutions might kind of work, but you're still probably not going to love your job.

Why It's Happening

Before you can solve this problem, you have to understand its cause. According to Linsin, excessive talking-talking that occurs during independent work time or direct instruction-happens for two reasons.

Reason 1: They don't believe you mean it.

Despite the fact that you specifically tell students not to talk, deep down they don't believe you mean it. "Or they don't care," Linsin says.

"At some point," he explains, "Your authority has faded. If you're able to teach to a quiet classroom in the beginning of the year and now you're not able to, or if it happened right off the bat, then somehow at some point, the students' respect for you and for the process, for the classroom, and your authority has faded."

So even if they hear you, even if they understand that you want quiet at a certain time, they don't believe anything negative will happen if they ignore your request. If they come to you with this behavior, it's likely that it has just been part of their conditioning.

"Because so many teachers struggle with this problem," Linsin explains, "many after a while kind of throw up their hands and just decide they're going to talk over students, they're going to do their best to keep things as quiet as possible during independent work time, so the students come to you (from) classrooms where the teacher asked them to be quiet but doesn't really follow up on it."

Reason 2: They don't understand what "no talking" means.

This one is going to be harder for teachers to believe, but bear with us here: "No talking" may not mean exactly the same thing in different contexts, and if your students are talking more than you want them to, there's a good chance you're working with different definitions.

"When they come to your classroom," Linsin explains, "and they've had teacher after teacher say the same thing, yet continue to allow it to happen in the classroom, then students think, Well, he or she just means we need to kind of keep our voices down, or We're mostly quiet, but if we have important things to say to a neighbor, then we're allowed to do that. And so they're confused as to what the definition of 'quiet' really is."

In many cases, Linsin notes, the problem is likely being caused by a combination of both of these reasons. But notice that neither reason is a blanket statement about students being disrespectful. This is why I like Linsin's approach: He puts control for classroom management in the teacher's hands, rather than placing blame on the student. That's not to say that you won't have disrespectful students, but shifting the blame to them means you have no power over the situation. Blaming the students simply isn't a useful way to address the problem.

"When students are not doing something that you've previously taught them how to do," Linsin says, "whether it's talking or entering the classroom, and they don't do it well, even though the students are responsible for their behavior, when most of the class is not doing what you ask, it's on you. It's about you. There's some disconnect there, there's something they're not understanding."

What You Should Be Able to Expect

Some teachers might wonder whether it's reasonable to expect students to be quiet at all, especially if they are younger. Linsin says yes without hesitation. "You should absolutely expect, no matter where you're teaching or what grade level, that the students are able to sit quietly while you're giving instruction or directions, and they should be able to sit quietly and work during independent work times."

Should there also be times when talking is permitted? "Absolutely," Linsin says. "It's really important to give students an opportunity to express themselves, to get up and move around, to work in groups and pairs and discuss. Classrooms should be vibrant and interesting, exciting places, and so I'm all for getting students up and moving and having fun. Those things just make classroom management stronger, and they free you to ask anything of your students, including silence."

The Solution

If you came here looking for a few tricks to end excessive talking, the bad news is that you won't find anything clever or earth-shattering. The good news is that the solution is pretty simple, and it requires no behavior charts, tokens, or Jolly Ranchers.

Step 1: Define expectations in explicit detail.

"The fix," Linsin says, "is to define, in detail, exactly what you want during independent work time and when you're teaching a directed lesson."

If you believe you've already done this, and it hasn't worked, the issue is probably lack of detail in your explanation. Linsin says you need to go far deeper than what most teachers probably do.

"So you may bring a desk or a table up in front of your classroom, sit down, and pretend to be a student. You may have other students acting as models also. Show students how you expect them to behave while you're giving instruction, and then how you expect them to behave when they're doing independent work."

"It's also important to include what not to do," he adds. "So you'll model those exact behaviors that you're seeing, those exact talking behaviors, whether it's side-talking or standing up and whispering to someone, or whatever your classroom looks like. Even if it's chaotic, whatever that chaos looks like exactly, you want the students to be able to see themselves in your modeling and what isn't okay."

Step 2: Have students practice.

Once you've modeled the desired behavior, have students practice it, just like you'd have them practice any skill you're teaching.

Linsin gives an example of what this might look like. You'd start by saying, "'I'm going to give you 60 seconds, and I want you to show me what good listening looks like, and no talking. So let's pretend I'm standing and giving you a lesson. I want to know what that looks like.' And then you'll stand and maybe you'll cross your arms and put your hand under your chin, and you'll watch them."

Keep this instruction light, he says. Keep it fun. "You'll stare at them and you'll walk around the room, and you'll watch one of them, and you'll nod your head and say, 'Mmhmm, okay, that looks good. Mmhmm. Chin up a little higher!' It's okay to have fun with it. None of this is a punishment. It's just good teaching. Whether you're teaching how to find a topic sentence or how you want your students to line up before recess, it's all teaching. So it's okay to have fun with it. It's okay for them to laugh at some of the things you say or to see themselves in the behaviors, which they love, by the way, especially if you exaggerate it and have some fun with it."

The Sign Strategy: Students are often put in an awkward position when a classmate tries to talk to them during these quiet times. They want to follow your guidelines, but they also don't want to be rude to a classmate. Agree on some kind of physical sign they can give each other at these times. "It can be a scissors or peace sign or whatever's culturally acceptable wherever you teach. And all they do is just hold the sign up, and the sign means, 'I'm really sorry, but I have to listen to the lesson,' or 'I'm really sorry, but I have to do my work.' And you can tell them that if they give the sign and that student who sees the sign turns and gets back to work, you will not enforce a consequence, because they're showing responsible behavior."

Step 3: Teach the consequences.

"Walk them through the exact steps that would happen if they turn and talk to a neighbor, for example," Linsin says. "The exact steps a misbehaving student would take from your initial warning to contacting parents or whatever your consequences look like."

In order to do this, you have to know what your consequences are. Spend some time making sure you're clear on that. If you need help, read our post on creating a classroom management plan.

Step 4: Do it for real.

Once students have been taught your expectations and have practiced exactly what they look like, it's time to apply it in a real lesson. "Have a directed lesson ready," Linsin advises, "to have them prove to you they can do it in practice."

If you've taught the expectations in detail, students should do a good job, but if they don't, you need to enforce your consequences exactly as you described. "You almost hope during that first wonderful lesson, that one student maybe turns, and so the class can see that you're holding them accountable."

If enforcing your consequences is difficult for you-and for many teachers, it will be-read Linsin's post on why teachers struggle to consistently enforce consequences.

Step 5: Continue to define expectations in small chunks.

This last step is crucial. From this point forward, keep telling students what is expected of them before every switch in classroom activity. When you are about to do group work, let students know that talking within the group is okay. If you then switch to independent work, remind them that absolute quiet will be expected. Briefly describe what that will look like, even spelling out what not to do if that fits the activity.

Taking time to do this might seem unnecessary, but being clear ahead of time will prevent problems. "Anytime you can give a reminder before misbehavior," Linsin says, "it's a good thing. Anytime you give a reminder after you see misbehavior, it's a bad thing. You should be holding students accountable, but be preemptive whenever you can."

Learn More from Michael Linsin
The Happy Teacher Habits
(Links to this book are Amazon Affiliate links, which means I get a small commission on purchases you make through my links at no additional cost to you.)

There's more where this came from.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Come on in!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What they don't teach us in education courses is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down. Help is on the way.

# data[].attributes.body
http://paultough.com/helping/

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful article by Grant Wiggins on giving feedback to students

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful article by Grant Wiggins on giving feedback to students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Vol. 70

No. 1

Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?

You have 0 free articles left this month.

Create an account and get additional free articles.

Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement.

Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

The term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feedback, strictly speaking.

Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. I hit a tennis ball with the goal of keeping it in the court, and I see where it lands-in or out. I tell a joke with the goal of making people laugh, and I observe the audience's reaction-they laugh loudly or barely snicker. I teach a lesson with the goal of engaging students, and I see that some students have their eyes riveted on me while others are nodding off.

Here are some other examples of feedback:

A friend tells me, "You know, when you put it that way and speak in that softer tone of voice, it makes me feel better."

A reader comments on my short story, "The first few paragraphs kept my full attention. The scene painted was vivid and interesting. But then the dialogue became hard to follow; as a reader, I was confused about who was talking, and the sequence of actions was puzzling, so I became less engaged."

A baseball coach tells me, "Each time you swung and missed, you raised your head as you swung so you didn't really have your eye on the ball. On the one you hit hard, you kept your head down and saw the ball."

Note the difference between these three examples and the first three I cited-the tennis stroke, the joke, and the student responses to teaching. In the first group, I only had to take note of the tangible effect of my actions, keeping my goals in mind. No one volunteered feedback, but there was still plenty of feedback to get and use. The second group of examples all involved the deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by other people.

Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how "good" or "bad" my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is-advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn't do that would warrant such advice.

In all six cases, information was conveyed about the effects of my actions as related to a goal. The information did not include value judgments or recommendations on how to improve. (For examples of information that is often falsely viewed as feedback, see "Feedback vs. Advice" above and "Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades" on p. 15.)

Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Compare the typical lecture-driven course, which often produces less-than-optimal learning, with the peer instruction model developed by Eric Mazur (2009) at Harvard. He hardly lectures at all to his 200 introductory physics students; instead, he gives them problems to think about individually and then discuss in small groups. This system, he writes, "provides frequent and continuous feedback (to both the students and the instructor) about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed" (p. 51), producing gains in both conceptual understanding of the subject and problem-solving skills. Less "teaching," more feedback equals better results.

Feedback Essentials

Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.

1. Goal-Referenced

Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke-why? To make people laugh. I wrote a story to engage the reader with vivid language and believable dialogue that captures the characters' feelings. I went up to bat to get a hit. If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback (nor am I likely to achieve my goals).

Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course. If some joke or aspect of my writing isn't working -a revealing, nonjudgmental phrase-I need to know.

Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvious to everyone. I don't need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess. For example, a teacher might say,

The point of this writing task is for you to make readers laugh. So, when rereading your draft or getting feedback from peers, ask, How funny is this? Where might it be funnier?

As you prepare a table poster to display the findings of your science project, remember that the aim is to interest people in your work as well as to describe the facts you discovered through your experiment. Self-assess your work against those two criteria using these rubrics. The science fair judges will do likewise.

2. Tangible and Transparent

Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don't laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching.

Even as little children, we learn from such tangible feedback. That's how we learn to walk; to hold a spoon; and to understand that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. The best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it.

Alas, far too much instructional feedback is opaque, as revealed in a true story a teacher told me years ago. A student came up to her at year's end and said, "Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don't know what it means." "What's the word? " she asked. "Vag-oo," he said. (The word was vague!)

Sometimes, even when the information is tangible and transparent, the performers don't obtain it-either because they don't look for it or because they are too busy performing to focus on the effects. In sports, novice tennis players or batters often don't realize that they're taking their eyes off the ball; they often protest, in fact, when that feedback is given. (Constantly yelling "Keep your eye on the ball!" rarely works.) And we have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on "teaching" that they fail to notice that few students are listening or learning.

That's why, in addition to feedback from coaches or other able observers, video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape-captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.

3. Actionable

Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. Thus, "Good job!" and "You did that wrong" and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, What specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don't know what was "good" or "wrong" about what they did.

Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply presenting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that "many students were bored in class." That's a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, "I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student."

Such care in offering neutral, goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class, "What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?" In my experience as a teacher of teachers, I have always found such pure feedback to be accepted and welcomed. Effective coaches also know that in complex performance situations, actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn't work.

4. User-Friendly

Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproductive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.

Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement ("I was confused about who was talking in the dialogue you wrote in this paragraph"). They don't offer advice until they make sure the performer understands the importance of what they saw.

5. Timely

In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don't want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn't. I say "in most cases" to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don't want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I perform. That's why it is more precise to say that good feedback is "timely" rather than "immediate."

A great problem in education, however, is untimely feedback. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance-think of writing and handing in papers or getting back results on standardized tests. As educators, we should work overtime to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.

Before you say that this is impossible, remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher, or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool-part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it. Peer review is another strategy for managing the load to ensure lots of timely feedback; it's essential, however, to train students to do small-group peer review to high standards, without immature criticisms or unhelpful praise.

6. Ongoing

Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it. What makes any assessment in education formative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. In summative assessment, the feedback comes too late; the performance is over.

Thus, the more feedback I can receive in real time, the better my ultimate performance will be. This is how all highly successful computer games work. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris, you know that the key to substantial improvement is that the feedback is both timely and ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over-sometimes even right where you left off-to get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback. (This powerful feedback loop is also user-friendly. Games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing need, pace, and ability to process information.)

It is telling, too, that performers are often judged on their ability to adjust in light of feedback. The ability to quickly adapt one's performance is a mark of all great achievers and problem solvers in a wide array of fields. Or, as many little league coaches say, "The problem is not making errors; you will all miss many balls in the field, and that's part of learning. The problem is when you don't learn from the errors."

7. Consistent

To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.

Progress Toward a Goal

In light of these key characteristics of helpful feedback, how can schools most effectively use feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The key is to gear feedback to long-term goals.

Let's look at how this works in sports. My daughter runs the mile in track. At the end of each lap in races and practice races, the coaches yell out split times (the times for each lap) and bits of feedback ("You're not swinging your arms!" "You're on pace for 5:15"), followed by advice ("Pick it up-you need to take two seconds off this next lap to get in under 5:10!").

My daughter and her teammates are getting feedback (and advice) about how they are performing now compared with their final desired time. My daughter's goal is to run a 5:00 mile. She has already run 5:09. Her coach is telling her that at the pace she just ran in the first lap, she is unlikely even to meet her best time so far this season, never mind her long-term goal. Then, he tells her something descriptive about her current performance (she's not swinging her arms) and gives her a brief piece of concrete advice (take two seconds off the next lap) to make achievement of the goal more likely.

The ability to improve one's result depends on the ability to adjust one's pace in light of ongoing feedback that measures performance against a concrete, long-term goal. But this isn't what most school district "pacing guides" and grades on "formative" tests tell you. They yield a grade against recent objectives taught, not useful feedback against the final performance standards. Instead of informing teachers and students at an interim date whether they are on track to achieve a desired level of student performance by the end of the school year, the guide and the test grade just provide a schedule for the teacher to follow in delivering content and a grade on that content. It's as if at the end of the first lap of the mile race, My daughter's coach simply yelled out, " B+ on that lap!"

The advice for how to change this sad situation should be clear: Score student work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre-and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.

"But There's No Time!"

Although the universal teacher lament that there's no time for such feedback is understandable, remember that "no time to give and use feedback" actually means "no time to cause learning." As we have seen, research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning. And there are numerous ways-through technology, peers, and other teachers-that students can get the feedback they need.

So try it out. Less teaching, more feedback. Less feedback that comes only from you, and more tangible feedback designed into the performance itself. And, of course, send me some feedback on this article at gwiggins@authenticeducation.org.

Feedback vs. Advice

› You need more examples in your report.

› You might want to use a lighter baseball bat.

› You should have included some Essential Questions in your unit plan.

These three statements are not feedback; they're advice. Such advice out of the blue seems at best tangential and at worst unhelpful and annoying. Unless it is preceded by descriptive feedback, the natural response of the performer is to wonder, "Why are you suggesting this?"

As coaches, teachers, and parents, we too often jump right to advice without first ensuring that the learner has sought, grasped, and tentatively accepted the feedback on which the advice is based. By doing so, we often unwittingly end up unnerving learners. Students become increasingly insecure about their own judgment and dependent on the advice of experts-and therefore in a panic about what to do when varied advice comes from different people or no advice is available at all.

If your ratio of advice to feedback is too high, try asking the learner, "Given the feedback, do you have some ideas about how to improve?" This approach will build greater autonomy and confidence over the long haul. Once they are no longer rank novices, performers can often self-advise if asked to.

Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades

› This is a weak paper.

› You got a C on your presentation.

› I'm so pleased by your poster!

These comments make a value judgment. They rate, evaluate, praise, or criticize what was done. There is little or no feedback here-no actionable information about what occurred. As performers, we only know that someone else placed a high or low value on what we did.

How might we recast these comments to be useful feedback? Tip: Always add a mental colon after each statement of value. For example,

"Good work: Your use of words was more precise in this paper than in the last one, and I saw the scenes clearly in my mind's eye."

"This is a weak paper: Almost from the first sentence, I was confused as to your initial thesis and the evidence you provide for it. In the second paragraph you propose a different thesis, and in the third paragraph you don't offer evidence, just beliefs."

You'll soon find that you can drop the evaluative language; it serves no useful function.

The most ubiquitous form of evaluation, grading, is so much a part of the school landscape that we easily overlook its utter uselessness as actionable feedback. Grades are here to stay, no doubt-but that doesn't mean we should rely on them as a major source of feedback.

References

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.

Mazur, E. (2009, January 2). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50-51.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action.

We create practical, timely, affordable professional learning to help educators and instructional leaders provide students with a modern, equitable, and quality education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?

# data[].attributes.headline
Routine for Group Roles to Increase Student Participation

# data[].attributes.subject
Routine for Group Roles to Increase Student Participation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
60 Second-Strategy: Cooperative Learning Roles

# data[].attributes.body
Getting to Know Your Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Relationship building is key to good teaching. This system will help you quickly get to know students and benefit from those connections all year long.

# data[].attributes.headline
Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD): Incredible training to support language learners through engagement, language strategies and rigorous differentiation. This completely changed my teaching!

# data[].attributes.subject
Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD): Incredible training to support language learners through engagement, language strategies and rigorous differentiation. This completely changed my teaching!

# data[].attributes.body
https://begladtraining.com/

# data[].attributes.headline
Using Data to Inform Instructional Practice 

# data[].attributes.subject
Using Data to Inform Instructional Practice 

# data[].attributes.body
An article from National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), "Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
0:00 / 1:32•Watch full video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Protégé Effect: 3 Ways to Maximize Peer-to-Peer Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Without spot-on classroom management, dealing with unruly students can be maddening.

It's easy to lose your cool.

And when you do, when you yell, scold, and wag your finger, you're often rewarded with immediate improvement.

A thorough dressing-down can stop misbehavior in its tracks. But the price is exorbitantly high.

Yelling is a costly mistake.

Here's why:
1. Improvement is temporary.
Yelling only works in the moment. Like a playground bully, it's used to intimidate students into compliance. The only reason why it works is because the teacher has an unfair size and/or authority advantage.
2. It doesn't change behavior.
Behavior only changes when students want to behave better-which is the result of strict accountability combined with a teacher they like and trust. In the end, yelling causes more misbehavior, not less.
3. It weakens your influence.
Yelling will cause students to secretly dislike you, distrust you, and desire to disrupt your class. Let's face it. Even one revengeful student can make your life miserable. You need your students on your side.
4. It replaces real accountability.
Teachers who yell tend to do so instead of following their classroom management plan. Students learn quickly that if they can endure their teacher's outburst, they can be on their way without being held accountable.
5. It sabotages real accountability.
Teachers who lecture, yell, or scold while escorting students to time-out, drive a wedge through the teacher/student relationship, causing anger and resentment. So instead of sitting in time-out and reflecting on their mistake, your students will be seething at you.
6. It causes students to tune you out.
When you yell, you train your students to listen to you only when you raise your voice. In other words, they learn that unless you're shouting, you must not really mean it. Before you know it, you'll be giving directions like a carnival sideshow barker.
7. It's stressful.
Yelling is a sure sign that you let misbehavior get under your skin. It's an expression of frustration, of taking behavior personally, and of trying to get even with students. It's also terribly stressful. It's bad for your health. And it makes teaching a cheerless slog.
8. It's difficult to defend.
Yelling at students is near the top of the list of parent complaints. And it's difficult to defend. "I'm sorry, I just lost my cool" is about the best you can do. The fact is, no misbehavior, and no level of disrespect, warrants yelling at students.
9. It's graceless.
Have you ever seen yourself on video losing your cool? Probably not, but one thing is for sure: it ain't pretty. You might as well grab a megaphone and shout, "Hey everybody-students, fellow teachers, administration-I don't have control of my class!"
10. It provides a poor model.
Students are more influenced by what you do than by what you say. When you yell, react emotionally to misbehavior, or otherwise lose your composure, you provide a poor model for your students for how to behave when things don't go their way.
Instead Of Yelling...
No matter how frustrated you may get with your students, yelling should never be an option. Although it often works in the moment, the cost of gaining momentary control is much too high.

So instead of being that teacher, the one with the reputation for yelling and for "being mean," why not be the one that every student wants as their teacher?

To start, create a classroom management plan that works-and stick with it. And then work on building influential relationships with students; the kind of personal leverage that causes them to want to behave.

If you haven't done so already, please join us. It's free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Reasons Why You Should Never, Ever Yell At Students - Smart Classroom Management

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Without spot-on classroom management, dealing with unruly students can be maddening. It's easy to lose your cool. And when you do, when you yell, scold, and wag your finger, you're often rewarded with immediate improvement. A thorough dressing-down can stop misbehavior in its tracks. But the price is exorbitantly high.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186

# data[].attributes.headline
Video about using real-time data (via aggressive monitoring) to adjust instruction on the fly

# data[].attributes.subject
Video about using real-time data (via aggressive monitoring) to adjust instruction on the fly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aggressive Daily Monitoring Enables In-the-Moment Adjusting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A discussion technique based on peer feedback helps students delve into complex texts and develop communication skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Features

To improve reading skills, many teachers are harnessing the technology they already have

Instead of investing in prepackaged software programs, many teachers are harnessing the technology they already have-such as webcams, audio recorders, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools-to boost literacy in students.

"With schools being so cash-strapped, we can't go around and buy a new program all the time," says Adina Sullivan, a 4th grade teacher at the 720-student San Marcos Elementary School in California. "You can go with something that you can find a lot easier at no cost and make it work for what you need, rather than [using pre-packaged software.]"

Sullivan, who is a lead technology teacher at her school, works with English-language learners to help build vocabulary and fluency.

"When you start with the learning standard and match the tool to the learning standard and then to the student's level, it's easier if [teachers] have more flexibility. Sometimes prepackaged materials can be a little limiting," she says.

For instance, in her classroom, Sullivan uses photos licensed under creative commons, an alternative to copyright that allows varying degrees of sharing, as a jumping-off point to start a conversation with her students.

"It gives them a mental image to connect to," she says, "a familiar, relatable scene so we can discuss what we see in the photo as a class and build the vocabulary."

Then the students can transition into a writing exercise, says Sullivan.

Sullivan also uses audio recorders to have student-teachers read sets of vocabulary words, then she creates matching PowerPoint presentations with the words and burns them onto DVDs for the students to take home and listen to.

Most students in her classroom do not have computers at home, but they do have DVD players, says Sullivan. And having a variety of student-teachers record the words makes students more adept at recognizing what they are.

Sullivan also uses audiobooks in her classroom.

"Hearing a model reader helps with the fluency and the comprehension," she says.

Recently, her class listened to the audiobook of James and the Giant Peach, and at the end of the unit, only two students did not pass the test-a vast improvement. When Sullivan gave her students a choice of reading their next book out loud or listening to the audiobook, they chose audio.

Webcams and Podcasts

Timothy Frey, an assistant professor of special education, counseling, and student affairs at Kansas State University, has been researching how to use webcams to improve reading fluency and comprehension in elementary school students.

Working with two elementary schools in Kansas, Frey observed 27 2nd through 4th graders over 16 weeks as they used webcams to see themselves reading and then he identified their mistakes.

Within the first five weeks of the experiment, all of the grade levels made at least two fewer mistakes per minute.

"New technologies are making amazing inroads into helping students overcome some of the challenges that have prevented people from keeping up with reading," says Frey. "The technology is just a tool that is engaging and allows [students] to do the instant playback."

Lisa Parisi, a 5th grade teacher in New York's 4,000-student Herricks Union Free School District, on Long Island, and co-author of the forthcoming book Blogging in the Middle Years, places a major focus on her students' reading skills.

"The last two years I really looked at the data to see how the kids were doing using all of this technology, and in both the past two years, I ended the year with no children below grade level in reading," she says. "I do think that technology has a very large part in that."

Parisi uses podcasting to help her students practice fluency.

"One of the really neat things to do is have the kids edit their own podcasts," she says. Then they can literally see the pauses or mistakes they made in the editing program and correct them.

Parisi also uses blogs to engage her students in reading and writing.

"They have contests to see who can get the most comments," she says. And what most students have figured out is that the better their writing is, the more visitors and comments they receive.

Authentic Audience

Hooking her class up with students from other parts of the world also motivates her students to focus on their grammar and pronunciation, says Parisi, especially if the students they are working with are not native English-speakers.

"It just makes them work harder," she says. The Internet allows her students to engage with an authentic audience, says Parisi, which motivates them to record podcasts or write blogs that are more polished than what they might create for just the teacher.

Teaching students to read in an authentic context is a key part of being literate, says Jeffrey Wilhelm, a former middle and high school teacher who is now at Boise State University, where he does research on struggling readers.

"Being literate has always meant the capacity to use a culture's most powerful tools to create and communicate meanings," he says. "If you're not teaching with [technology], you're not only not preparing the kids for the future, you're not preparing them for the present moment."

Technology, such as the Internet and Web 2.0 tools, makes it easier for teachers to tap into students' interests and personalize what they are reading, he says.

For instance, during a unit about satire, Wilhelm had his students post jokes to a wiki. Afterward, the class read through the jokes and identified what made each one funny.

"We were defining satire, pastiche, misdirection," he says, and because it was in the context of funny jokes, the students were engaged.

"Most of the technological [interventions] that I see are decontextualized," he says, "but it's only going to help [the student] comprehend better if [he or she] is inquiring about something [he or she] cares about."

Katie Van Sluys, a member of the Urbana, Ill.-based National Council of Teachers of English and an associate professor of literacy at DePaul University in Chicago, also believes that using technology to connect students with meaningful audiences and resources can promote important literacy skills.

Using the Internet to go over the daily weather report with kindergartners, for example, or reading through current events with middle school students can engage children with authentic, personalized information, she says.

And using technology also provides an opportunity to teach other kinds of literacies, such as digital and media literacy, says Van Sluys.

"You have to be a savvy reader and consumer-perhaps even more so because of the types of information and the amount of information you can access," she says. "You need to be able to say, 'What does this mean for me? What does this mean for the world?' That's part of the reading curriculum."

'Thoughtful' and 'Intentional'

Internet resources can also help teachers in other content areas incorporate literacy lessons into their classrooms.

For instance, Teachers' Domain, an online repository of free media resources for teachers run by the Boston-based WGBH Educational Foundation, provides multimedia-rich science and social studies curricula infused with literacy lessons.

"It's really designed to give content teachers who do not necessarily know literacy strategies ... some simple guidelines on comprehension skills and building vocabulary," says Carolyn Jacobs, the national accounts manager for Teachers' Domain.

The lessons include a glossary of terms, videos, interactive Flash activities, and text boxes for students to submit answers in.

So far, there are about 15 lessons, with plans to create 25 more in 2011, says Jacobs.

Technology can help "extend a teacher's reach" says Gail Lovely, a former K-8 teacher who started her own company, Lovely and Associates, to help teachers integrate technology into curriculum. However, teachers need to be careful to integrate it thoughtfully and intentionally, she says.

"My bias is that a caring adult will always read a book aloud better than a computer can," she says. "We have to be thoughtful about where the technologies fit best."

Using VoiceThread, for instance-which allows users to create collaborative, multimedia slide shows with images, documents, and videos-is an innovative Web resource that can be used in a thoughtful way, says Lovely. And another Web resource, Storybird, allows students to tap into a library of illustrations to create digital books, says Lovely.

"One of the cautions is that it's not about doing the same thing with new tools. It's about doing new things or difficult old things with tools that make it easier," she says. "We want to use these tools in intentional ways to make a difference."

Published in Print: February 9, 2011, as Boosting Literacy

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Features Instead of investing in prepackaged software programs, many teachers are harnessing the technology they already have-such as webcams, audio recorders, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools-to boost literacy in students. "With schools being so cash-strapped, we can't go around and buy a new program all the time," says Adina Sullivan, a 4th grade teacher at the 720-student San Marcos Elementary School in California.