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I think that it is all well and good to provide the feedback to the students but they need to know what to do with it and act on it to be impactful.  Many a time I find that my students are focused on corrections and completing a task rather than learning from their mistakes.  If the learner is not motivated and interested in making changes to their current approach no amount of feedback on the part of the teacher will be effective.  I have tried using -  writing, addressing the group and also speaking to students individually but the amount of change lies within the learner and that is something we need to focus on first.

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A. Assessment scores and evidence offer us a part of the puzzle in understanding individual student's needs. Using TOS is another useful tool to get a better picture of the understanding of the entire class. By mapping understanding based on a collective set of skills or content will reveal common sets of errors, misunderstanding and knowledge gained. This allows teachers to focus effectively on what to do next rather than to teach whole chunks of content.

B. Such scores may not reveal enough information as there may be
(i) inherent flaws within assessment items
(ii) inaccurate use of assessment item
A good eg of this is the use of spelling scores as an only source of information. One of my students does consistently well for spelling (averaging 85% based on data I collected). However, he is not able to effectively use the words from the spelling outside of spelling time.

C. In terms of learning vocabulary (as done through the spelling exercises), application of the learnt items is important. Classroom activities to enhance application that I have tried for my P3 EL PO class - Using guided story-mountain (varying activities to match abilities of students)

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Understanding the types of feedback (FB) is important. This helps teachers construct how feedback is to me given.
- For instance, there are times when individual FB is needed (e.g. a repeated mistake by student and hence requiring specific strategy by the student. I found this important for my PO classes where some of them had repeated issues like leaving out full-stops and starting paragraphing)
- There are also times where entire class FB becomes important. This is where use of TOS can aid the teacher decide when class FB is important. (e.g. in my class, during compo writing, a common issue was the lack of detailed description. As a follow up classroom activity, I decided that the whole class works on this by helping each other build up strategies to describe details in each given picture)

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Emotive aspect of feedback:

In order for students to not develop Automatic Negative Thoughts when receiving feedback, students need to be able to identify, catch and avoid their ANTs. They also can use the 5R Framework to reframe their perspective. I feel that this requires deliberate action from the teacher, especially for younger students. We recently talked about Growth Mindset in class and this is in line with getting students to reframe their ANTs and understand that their teacher is trying to help them improve and not point out their flaws. Since I teach younger students (P3s), I am quite intentional about reminding them that it is alright to make mistakes and we are all learning together as a class. When I get students to come up to the board to solve a problem or when I show students’ work on the visualiser, I also emphasise that the goal is for everyone to learn together and not to embarrass anyone if they make mistakes. Hopefully, this will encourage students to see feedback in a more positive light.

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A. Assessment scores do not tell us the specific learning gaps students have. Since TOS provides more information on the nature of the question (e.g. understand, apply, analyse), we can more accurately determine if the mistake was due to lack of understanding or difficulties with application or analysis.

B. It also does not tell us the specific learning gaps. It is possible for results to be inconsistent depending on how questions are crafted and if there is only one question assessing that assessment item, it might not paint an accurate picture of a student’s level of understanding.

C. For P3 EL, it is usually done in stages. Using the example of vocabulary, students are first exposed to the words during SBA/KWL. They then do spelling, where the words are given in context but spelt wrongly. Hence, students will require basic understanding of the word to be able to decipher what word they need to spell. Next, they would create a semantic map linking words of the same category together. This would require them to have a slightly deeper level of understanding of the words to categorise them. Finally, they will apply the words used in writing, which requires them to not only know the meaning of the words but use them in context.

(Picture shows similar stages for a grammar lesson on use of adjectives/nouns to describe a head noun. The writing shown is Free Writing, so other grammatical/spelling errors were not corrected.)

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Enhancing Students' Receptivity to Feedback

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Enhancing Students' Receptivity to Feedback

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Background
Assessment and Feedback is one of the 4 core Teaching Areas (TA) in the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP), and one key principle in Differentiated Instruction (DI). Feedback, given in right doses at appropriate times and in the right modes has proven to have the greatest impact on both young and adult learning. There are 3 aspects to consider in providing effective feedback to learners. They are the thrill (the emotive domain), the will (the attitudes of learners in receiving and providing feedback) and the skill of feedback (the cognitive aspect where learners are taught how to interpret and act on feedback).

Learning Intention
In this module, the Learning Intention is to discover the why and how of enhancing the thrill of feedback (students’ receptiveness to feedback).

What Do you Have to Do:
What are the 3 aspects of feedback we should consider before giving feedback? View this video and comment on any aspect of feedback mentioned in the feedback- the types of feedback, the emotive aspect of feedback, the cognitive aspect of feedback. Remember to type your name before you type and publish your post!

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Using a TOS to Value-add to the Analysis of Students' Learning

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Using a TOS to Value-add to the Analysis of Students' Learning

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This MLU shows you how to use a Table of Specification to further analyse evidence of students’ learning while applying the assessment concepts of validity and reliability for analysis. The example used in this MLU will analyse students’ responses to Multiple Choice Questions.

Click on the OPAL link. View this video and reflect on the following question in this format:

- Include your name before you publish your responses.

- Type in your responses to the questions posed or you respond to at least one of your peers' posts. Your response can be in the form of encouragement, a comment, or a question.
- Upload evidence of students' learning in the form of artefacts. They can be in the form of videos, and/or pictures. I have provided an example of a lesson of how I gathered evidence of student learning (ongoing assessments) in an EL lesson for your reference.

Questions:

A. Why must TOS be analysed alongside students' assessment scores/evidence and learning outcomes? What is the intent of doing this?

B. Why is looking at the aggregated score (for example, 50% of the students passed this assessment item) not comprehensive enough [concept of reliability- are you using the appropriate assessment tools? and validity- is there more than one data source(s)] for you to understand students' learning gaps?

C. What other ways can you gather evidence of students' learning progress? Provide examples in your classroom, specific to your teaching subject(s).

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What are the 3 aspects of feedback we should consider before giving feedback? View this video and comment on any aspect of feedback mentioned in the feedback- the types of feedback, the emotive aspect of feedback, the cognitive aspect of feedback. Remember to type your name before you type and publish your post!  

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What are the 3 aspects of feedback we should consider before giving feedback? View this video and comment on any aspect of feedback mentioned in the feedback- the types of feedback, the emotive aspect of feedback, the cognitive aspect of feedback. Remember to type your name before you type and publish your post!  

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Background
Assessment and Feedback is one of the 4 core Teaching Areas (TA) in the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP), and one key principle in Differentiated Instruction (DI). Feedback, given in right doses at appropriate times and in the right modes has proven to have the greatest impact on both young and adult learning. There are 3 aspects to consider in providing effective feedback to learners. They are the thrill (the emotive domain), the will (the attitudes of learners in receiving and providing feedback) and the skill of feedback (the cognitive aspect where learners are taught how to interpret and act on feedback).

Learning Intention
In this module, the Learning Intention is to discover the why and how of enhancing the thrill of feedback (students’ receptiveness to feedback).

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1)    For feedback to be effective, i think students will appreciate it very much if educators can give concise feedback with good examples or alternative solutions depending on the subject areas involved. The feedback should also open the students' minds for different perspectives to the issue related and provide them with new ideas to incorporate in their future work.
Bearing in mind that everyone is different, the kind of
feedback given to the students need to be customised to the abilities of the students in order for it to be effective.

2)    To balance generic and specific feedback to students, I might consider giving real-life or easy-to-understand examples to facilitate better comprehension of the feedback provided.

3)    Some of the new things I have learnt is that it is important to create a non-threatening and more conducive environment when feedback is going to be given. It is also good to establish good rapport and understanding of the students’ learning styles and not compare them with other students when providing feedback.

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An Example of an EL lesson with various on-going assessment modes

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An Example of an EL lesson with various on-going assessment modes

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Following the Key Learning Programme session conducted by William, I have tried one of the key metacognitive strategies that he had shared- Framing thinking through sentence starters and using pictures  to activate prior knowledge and facilitate predictions.

These are the two  key FA strategies and DI principles that guided my lesson enactment: On-going assessments leveraging on peers as learning resources for one another (building a community of learners) with appropriate degree of support and challenge. I will upload more along the way to demonstrate the on-going tasks and discussions that were enacted in response to students' work. Cheers!

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Lesson Design based on Di and FA principles and strategies (michkoh 20 jan 2023)

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1) -Get students to reflect on their own work before giving feedback. Remind student to recall their previous feedback before working on their next work.
-Be mindful of ANTs before giving feedback
-give positive feedback before providing comments for improvement

2)-I have learnt how ANTs may affect feedback and we need to be mindful of it. One of the ways to avoid ANTs is to forge a positive classroom culture.
-The 5R framework is a useful guide and some of it is applicable to my subject. It is good to explore different strategies as not all students may benefit from one single strategy. Effective feedback will need to change according to the class dynamics and learners' needs.

3)-It is a challenge if we do not have a positive classroom culture or good/positive TSR. It takes some time for teachers to understand the students' profiles /learning needs/ANTs to work on the most effective feedback for them. Sometimes it needs to be customised to suit the individual students. The biggest challenge is that this is an on-going process and teachers need to reflect, be flexible and act quick so that feedback is effective for students to benefit from it.

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1. What are my beliefs about effective feedback practices?
Providing specific and clear feedback to students is important in order for them to improve in their learning. However, as the video mentioned, we need to pay heed to the cognitive and socio-emotional responses to feedback. Otherwise the feedback would not be useful. Hence, there is a need to know our students well so that we can customise our feedback according to each student's needs.

2. What is something new that I have learnt from this MLU?
Helping students to reframe their thinking and perspectives of feedback using the 5R framework.

3. What are some challenges in applying what I have learnt in this MLU and how I can overcome them?
I think getting every individual students to reframe their thinking and perspectives of the feedback they receive using the 5R framework might be a challenge given the amount of time we have with them.
However, it is important to do so and we need to start somewhere.

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1.     What are my beliefs about effective feedback practices?
I think feedback forms an integral part of the students’ learning. Effective feedback will be able to improve their understanding of where they are and how to get to where they need to be. It must be individualized, direct, specific and ultimately, with an action that receiving party is able to work on. Language used must be accessible for recipient.

Inversely, feedback that is unclear can also confuse and discourage learners. It can also negate all the hard work that the teacher has put in to craft the task, assess and provide the feedback. As such, adopting effective feedback practices is essential tool that a good teacher must have.

2.     What is something new that I have learnt from this MLU?

In order to be able to adopt effective feedback practices, I will have to be able to help my students’ to manage their social-emotional response to my feedback. I think helping them to manage  their ANTs and reframing their responses to the feedback is something I need to address in class. It also got me thinking about the positive culture that I must create in class that allows them to bring up their social-emotional responses within the comforts of their classroom. I also question the amount thought I use in the choice of words that I use to formulate the feedback.

I would also need to manage the cognitive response students’ will have on feedback. Helping students understand the purpose of the different types of feedbacks and finding out what are their preference would go a long way towards understanding which works best for which profile of students. It can also help me decide which feedback serves to facilitate what I would like the students to eventually achieve at the end of lesson.

3.     What are some challenges in applying what I have learnt in this MLU, and how can I overcome them?

I think one of the biggest challenges would be the lack of data. The MLU suggests we find out about the kind of feedback our students prefer and to have a discussion on how students perceive feedback. I think this should be practice done at the start of the year if possible, something we should now include as part of our routine “Tell-me-about-you” questionnaire that we use during orientation. This would give ample time for teachers to have cater effective feedback to their students eventually.

Another challenge that could possible hamper this effective practices is our expertise in handling the variety of feedback preferences and the media in which it is presented. It can be overwhelming, especially for someone who is only familiar with written feedback to suddenly excel at giving effective verbal feedback. As such, I think to be strategic, I would probably focus on harnessing a few types of feedbacks at first before expanding my repertoire.

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1. What are my beliefs about effective feedback practices?
- have different types of feedbacks
- keep feedbacks concise if possible
- avoid giving vague feedbacks
- be specific, but don't kill yourself and the student by targeting every mistake seen
- never stick to a single feedback style, since that would get students only used to a single type of feedback and might develop new ANTs when a different feedback style is used

2. What is something new that I have learnt from this MLU?
I have learnt that giving feedback is a lot more complicated, in the sense that students might not receive the feedback in the way that had planned/expected, due to the existence of ANTs. Some strategies provided requires us to start from the foundational classroom environment construction, where we need to establish good routines and a positive classroom atmosphere, where students will be able to accept feedback in a more healthy way. There is also the use of 5R framework to help reframe the thinking of the students when it comes to feedback.

3. What are some challenges in applying what I have learnt in this MLU, and how can I overcome them?
The challenges lie in the customisation process for feedback when we do learn more about the students' profile along the year. How do we find the perfect feedback style? How do we know that a feedback is most suitable for a student? I would say that it's possible for a student to respond negatively to a feedback style, but yet grow from it and mature from it more than when being exposed to other feedback styles.

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Feedback is relevant to both learners and teachers. The real benefit comes from what feedback does for both parties and how to feed-forward without being fearful of ANTs (learning is a marathon).

1. The dynamics of my class and their learning abilities (where they are at - readiness) have to be considered. Then, plan what and how to teach them about receiving feedback and how to act on it. Learners must become familiar with feedback over a few sessions before they can comprehend its intent. To help students understand "how" to react, "what" to respond to, and "where" to go next, the teacher would need to demonstrate.

2. As there are many types of feedback that could help the learners (e.g. corrective, facilitative, task-level, process-level, etc), each has its own strength. The teacher will need to consider the lesson package’s learning intention to see which feedback best suits the learner’s learning and helps them to move forward (feed-forward).

3. Personal take, the teacher must also be sensitive to individual learners’ needs when facilitating the class. Setting a safe environment for learning is essential for everyone in the classroom, including the teacher (positive environment and positive TSR). Setting boundaries - being respectful of self and others, setting individual expectations – being responsible, and having ownership of learning, and classroom routines.

Allowing co-construction together as a class to tackle and overcome ANTs. Guiding the learners on how to reframe their thoughts using 5Rs frameworks.

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My beliefs about effective feedback practices

The purpose of feedback is to advance students’ learning. Other than improving students’ learning, the process of giving and receiving feedback is also a good opportunity for teachers to impart and for students to cultivate the Growth Mindset and build self-efficacy.

With the belief that all students are learning at their own pace, feedback given should avoid comparison with other students and association with “punishments” to build a positive attitude and disposition towards receiving feedback.

Something new that I have learnt

1. To help students to develop greater understanding and appreciation of the feedback given, it is worthwhile to invest time to understand students’ beliefs in feedback giving and co-construct expectations and routines of feedback practices with them. In so doing, it helps to cultivate positive classroom culture, enhance teacher-student relationship and build safe environment for learning.

2. Strategies on reframing students’ perspective of feedback by applying the 5R framework.

Challenges and how to overcome

Challenge 1: To be a skillful and effective teacher in identifying and applying the suitable type of feedback (i.e. immediate vs delayed, guided vs open, individual-level vs class-level, task vs process etc.) by accurately assessing my students’ learner profile and readiness.

Challenge 2: How to balance specific and generic feedback such that the feedback is constructive for students while remain transferable across topics / tasks.

I can practise (and role-model) Growth Mindset by taking “baby steps” and equipping myself with the knowledge of the types / level of effective feedback, and intentionally practise a few of them to develop my feedback literacy.

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I.   I feel that as teachers, feedback is a useful tool to inform students of their strength and weaknesses.   Feedback should not be generic.  As teachers, it is important to provide our students with effective feedback which is constructive and specific.  By providing constructive feedback, we will boost our students’ morale and triggers their confidence.   Constructive feedbacks not only highlight students’ areas for improvement but it also allows students to improve in their learning.

II.   I realized that not all students understand feedback given by teachers.  Sometimes, students who received feedbacks are unable to apply such feedbacks appropriately.  As such, it is important for teachers to go through these feedbacks with students and discuss how best to apply it.

III.   I find it a challenge to ensure students’ understanding on various forms of feedback and its purpose; as well as ways students can be supported when given feedback.

Jamilah

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This session focusses on Dylan Wiliam’s fourth key strategy-

Activating Students as Learning Resources for One Another.  From the 2 case studies and videos, they explicated how:
1.  how student self-assessment helps teachers filter the rich data that arise in class discussion and activity so that professional judgments can be made about the next steps in learning;
2. Peer and self-assessment play a vital role in students becoming familiar with the way that work is judged.

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Dylan Wiliam- Peer and Self Assessment feedback

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Dylan Wiliam- Peer and Self Assessment feedback

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Dylan Wilam Peer and Self Assessment.mp4

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New Staff Induction Programme S1- Content top up AL (8 Mar)

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In this session, we showed examples from EL and Mathematics classrooms, on how LI and SC are used to guide and empower learners to reach their learning goals.

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New Staff Induction Programme S3-Content top up AL (8 Mar)- for sharing

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In this AL session, we explored the characteristics of a good learning intention and how it is closely aligned to the success criteria.

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Session 1, 8 March 2022- Group's 1 reflections

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Session 1, 8 March 2022- Group's 1 reflections

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Group 2's members also talked about how a learner-centric LI and SC should possess both simple and precise language accessible to learners.

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Session 1, 8 March, Group 2's reflections

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Session 1, 8 March, Group 2's reflections

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Case Study 1_Peer Feedback in Speaking.MOV- Peer feedback in Speaking

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Case Study 1_Peer Feedback in Speaking.MOV

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Group 3 provided an insight on how differentiated SC can help in the process differentiation for learners of varying readiness, interests and profiles.

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Session 1, 8 March, Group 3's reflections

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Session 1, 8 March, Group 3's reflections

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A.      It allows teachers to assess the nature of students’ learning through the principle of repeated trial reliability. It is more reliable when multiple items assessing the same learning outcome give consistent results.

B.      Looking at aggregated scores is not enough as it cannot inform us about specific nature of students’ learning gap. Perhaps students did not respond as expected as the assessment questions could be crafted poorly.

C.       Test/assessment such as spelling, listening comprehension, reading assessment