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We talked about this briefly, and I wanted to add this good video about how to integrate art into a class with SPED students.

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Teaching through the arts can be a great entry point into content. Through engaging, arts-rich instruction, students are hooked into learning. But even more than just an entry point, arts-integration can provide a scaffold for helping students tackle increasingly complex cognitive tasks.

Lindsay Young, a High School teacher at Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, California, does an amazing job using the arts to scaffold important reading skills. Lindsay teaches an English Language Development class for long-term English Language Learners who are in Special Education. Close reading, a key reading skill, can be hard to master, but Lindsay helps her students develop their abilities by close reading portraits the way that they would a text.

Lindsay introduces six components to consider when analyzing portraits: clothing, gestures, posture, facial expression, setting, and props. After having her students look closely at portraits, students make inferences and use evidence to support their reasoning. Once they have practiced these skills with artwork, students will be able to apply these same skills when working with texts.

Using arts as a scaffold helps all students - particularly ELLs and students in Special Education - develop key skills in an accessible environment. Lindsay is a master of providing scaffolding. When introducing activities, she gradually releases responsibility to students using an I Do, We Do, You Do approach. She introduces activities by modeling her expectations, then guiding students through how to do the activities before allowing them to work independently.

In addition to providing step-by-step support for her students, Lindsay encourages all students to participate in class by using tools like laser pointers and a timer. With the right scaffolds and opportunities to participate, all students can master complex content.
Lily Jones taught K/1 for seven years in Northern California. She has experience as a curriculum developer, instructional coach, teacher trainer, and is also a contributing writer for Teaching Channel.

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Arts Integration, Special Education & ELLs

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Teaching through the arts can be a great entry point into content. Through engaging, arts-rich instruction, students are hooked into learning. But even more than just an entry point, arts-integration can provide a scaffold for helping students tackle increasingly complex cognitive tasks.

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Use the main AASD teacher website to connect with curriculum posted

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Use the main AASD teacher website to connect with curriculum posted

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This allows you access to all curriculum that is posted on the AASD website.

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specific to math curriculum

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Click on the left for the OEU's at the grade level you are teaching

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This document has great ways to seek feedback both from students and other teachers

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Some great tips about ways to accept feedback (specifically from students, but could be easily adapted to feedback from adults!)

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I don't know where I would be as a teacher-as a person-without having honest, specific (often painfully brutal) feedback from great mentors. Yet, perhaps even more powerful than feedback from my mentors has been the feedback I've received over the years from my students.

I'll be honest-I amstill nervous every time I ask for feedback from the very people I hope to motivate, challenge, and inspire. Maybe it's because my most common nightmares involve realizing that I'm teaching a terrible lesson-and that I'm suddenly naked (please tell me I'm not the only one who has those nightmares . . .).

But, no matter how badly I want to pee my pants every time I ask students for feedback, it has been worth the fear every time. And, through a lot of trial-and-error requesting feedback, I've learned a few mentalities and strategies that have made a critical difference.

Adolescents aren't the most tactful social group. Blame it on their still-developing prefrontal cortices or their cocktail of hormones. So, sometimes their feedback is a bit more biting than an adult's would be.

In those moments when students write high-level feedback like, "You suck," I have to remind myself not to take the abysmal ad hominem to heart-even when my inner-immaturity wants to kick in and say, "No! You suck . . . suck face!" Growth is not made through grudges.

This isn't to say I should ignore it. Harsh comments like those are possibly a greater signal than any that I have some work to do in building a relationship with the student. If I don't make an effort to seek to understand the why behind the comment, well then, the student was right; I do "suck."
2. Humility is a pre-requisite for good teaching.
Teaching is our identity. We wear our profession with pride, often finding ways to bring it up whenever we can (especially for discounts). Sometimes, though, pride can be our downfall as any suggestion for improvement becomes a personal hit. I have to give myself permission to know that when I fail-which I will-it as an extension of what I did, not who I am.

I dropped my pride when I realized that the best teachers I know-whether they had been teaching for three years or thirty-were the ones asking for feedback from everyone and accepting it without a flinch.

I found myself sabotaging my own willingness to adopt feedback by qualifying (or "disqualifying") my responses with a "but" or "however."

For example:

"I agree that I need to work more on organization and having a clear flow to our lesson. But, you'll need to learn to be flexible in life, so it's really not that big of a deal."

"I can see where this student is coming from with that feedback, but they don't have a Master's degree in education. I do."

"You're right: That joke I made may have crossed the line. However , we've joked a lot in the past and it hasn't been an issue."

"I know many of you think learning about pronoun-antecedent agreement is boring. But, I have to teach it because it'll be on the state test."

Ultimately, these "disqualifiers" model an external locus of control. They are corrosive habits of:

Justification - Saying the behavior is "okay" or excusable because . . .;

Blame - Passing the root behavior onto some other person or thing;

Denial - Discrediting that something is an important issue (or assuming it's not there).

If I'm not going to take internal locus of control of my teaching, I might as well quit and let the robots do the teaching.

Strategies Worth Trying
1. Give students time and direction to prepare their feedback.
We sometimes assume that students spend their time in our classrooms critiquing our pedagogical finesse-that they dream about educational instruction (more likely, they are having nightmares of failing our lessons . . . and being naked in the process).

Sure, they are subtweeting about us or talking with their peers about what we do to annoy them, but this isn't the same as pointed, detailed feedback. That's why it's so important to give them time for a genuine reflection.

When:

Before a teacher-student conference: Tell students ahead of time that you will be asking them for honest feedback when you meet with them. Ask for it at the end of a writing or grade-check conference in which you are providing feedback. Asking for your own feedback beforehand may make students hesitant that sharing will influence your evaluation of their work.

After class: At the beginning of a class, hand students slips of paper with prompts for specific feedback. Inform them that they can write you feedback at any point during class. Have students drop off their feedback in a box before leaving class.

And remember to use specific prompts. I've benefitted from asking specific questions like:

What's one thing I should keep doing [during instruction, when giving directions, etc.]?

What's one thing I should stop doing [. . .]?

What's one thing I should do differently [. . .]?

What's the most annoying thing I do [when lecturing, when assigning homework, etc.]?

What's the best thing I do to help you learn [. . .]?

What could I do to give you better feedback [on your writing, on your quizzes, etc.]?

What did you like about the assignment I gave last night?

What did you dislike about the assignment I gave last night?

"When you ________________________, I usually stop paying attention."

"I've heard other students express frustration about ____________________ with your teaching."

2. Establish a "How am I doing?" habit.
In-the-moment feedback can also be extremely valuable. Try pausing a lesson and asking students, "How am I doing?" Tell them they can give you feedback on specifics (e.g., presenting information more clearly, talking less, explaining more, giving examples). Make this a habit so it doesn't feel awkward. The stronger your trust and relationships are with students, the more likely you will get frequent (and authentic) feedback.

Create a classroom chart that lists common feedback responses so students have options when you ask.

Also, be ready to adapt based on the feedback. If they want more examples, be prepared with examples ahead of time.
3. Set up an accountability committee.
Put together a group of students that can give you feedback directly. Meet with them periodically after class to discuss feedback they have (bribing with food is always a great way to get kids to stay after class). Better yet, empower them to gather feedback from their classmates. Be cautious that the committee doesn't have the impression of being a "favorites club," or that it is exclusive. Gather an eclectic group of students and rotate the contributors often.
4. Try Feedback Fridays.
Build traditions for feedback in order to normalize the process (and not allow for excuses to "put it on the back burner") Set aside a specific time each week for quick feedback. For me, Fridays have been a nice way to end off the week and have the weekend to mull over student feedback.

We often give students feedback with weekly grade-posting. Why not get feedback during these times as well?
5. Model your path to improvement.
Be open about what you are working to improve - and how it's going. Consider posting one thing that you are working on for the week. Admit when things aren't going well and what you are learning from the mistake. One of the biggest frustrations students have is the feeling of a "double-standard": We expect them to grow and change daily, yet we often don't model growth and change ourselves. When we own our own growth we move from assuming we are masters to ascending into models.

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A Report Card for the Teacher: 5 Tips for Getting Feedback From Students - We Are Teachers

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I don't know where I would be as a teacher-as a person-without having honest, specific (often painfully brutal) feedback from great mentors. Yet, perhaps even more powerful than feedback from my mentors has been the feedback I've received over the [...]

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A great resource Classroom Environment, routines and procedures,  parent-teacher relationship, substitute teachers, reaching all students, assessment, teacher collaboration, professional development

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se our checklist as a starting point for your self-assessment and self-improvement.

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How to complete an IEP

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To complete with new IEP forms

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How to complete them. Remember to send home to parents and put in green file.

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Directions to amend an IEP (with meeting)

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It won't let me link it, but search your google docs for 17-18 AUT PLC link to stay updated on our PLC agenda.

We also have a PLC for the large group plc, which Heidi created

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Guide that was created to help with understanding PLC's and best practice with them. There is a TON of resources attached to help you with any questions you have about PLC's.

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Here is a copy of my classroom matrix.

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You can find the Special Education Newsletters in your google drive. I attached an example of one of them. They have a TON of good information about updates from the district level.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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to post in your classroom, or throughout the building

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Self reflection checklist specific to socio-emotional learning

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Self reflection checklist specific to socio-emotional learning

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A document shared with us during staff development

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Link to the state standards

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Find assessment questions and classroom tasks that are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.  Searchable by standard.

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Providing instructional and assessment tasks, lesson plans, and other resources for teachers, assessment writers, and curriculum developers since 2011.

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Videos that describe how to be a skillful teacher: insightful and interesting ideas to use to reflect on teaching.

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Video Library | Research for Better Teaching

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These six chapters make the case that digging deeply into oneís content and analyzing the ideas in that content produces better lessons, if one takes the time to do it. But in addition to becoming an individual habit of mind for planning, these content- focused conversations are very beneficial when pairs or groups of educational professionals have them together.

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Blank form to use as needed

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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?

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning

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Great ideas for seeking feedback!

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning

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One way to provide effective feedback for learning is a ‘feedback sandwich’ to structure your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.