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ASCD Express 8.20 - Feedback Unlocks Reluctance

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Maximizing the power
of formative assessments

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Maximizing the power
of formative assessments

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What a difference a
word makes: Assessment for learning  rather
than assessment of learning helps students succeed

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What a difference a
word makes: Assessment for learning  rather
than assessment of learning helps students succeed

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formative assessment
to assessment for learning: A path to success
in standards-based schools

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formative assessment
to assessment for learning: A path to success
in standards-based schools

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Q&A: How to give
effective feedback to your          students

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Q&A: How to give
effective feedback to your          students

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A Conversation with Author Susan M. Brookhart

Willona M. Sloan
Q: In what way is feedback an important component of the formative assessment process?
A: Feedback is the glue that holds the whole formative assessment process together. The process is about starting with a clear idea of the learning goal and what good work looks like, comparing current work to that, and taking steps to move closer to that goal. Feedback sounds like it would be that middle component-comparing current work to the goal-but, in reality, it links all three components. Good feedback helps the student compare current work to the goal in light of those criteria for good work, and good feedback helps the student figure out how to move closer to the goal. And, most importantly, teacher feedback is only good insofar as it helps the student understand the possibilities for improvement. It supports students' involvement in their own learning.
Q: How much feedback is too much?
A: Too little feedback leaves students wondering what you thought of their work, and too much leaves them with that "eyes-glazed-over" feeling. So, one way to check on your feedback is to check for students' understanding. Don't just say, "Do you see what I mean?" They'll say, "Yes," of course. Really check. For example, [ask your students] "What is the most important thing you're going to do next?" Another way to check on your feedback is to observe its results. Is the next work better in the intended ways?

It's also a good idea to have a plan or routine, based on the amount of feedback you have found is most often appropriate for your students. For example, you might decide that on every paper you'll note at least one strong quality and one suggestion for improvement. You can vary your basic plan for different students' needs, but at least you start with a plan.
Q: You say an example of bad feedback is writing "voluminous comments" on poor-quality papers and almost nothing on good-quality papers. What type of feedback would be useful on good-quality papers?
A: Good students, like any students, want their teachers to notice their good work. Not commenting on good-quality papers is a huge missed opportunity. If good feedback helps the student compare current work to the goal (referred to as "description") and helps the student figure out how to move closer to the goal (referred to as "suggestions for improvement")-what do you do when the student has already met the goal? The "description" part stays the same; at minimum, select one or several features of the student's work that has clearly met the criteria and tell why.

The "suggestions for improvement" part becomes suggestions for expansion or enrichment of student understanding. Enrichment can take at least two forms: expanding understanding into related content or expanding skill in the same content beyond the expectations built into the rubric or performance criteria. Here's an example of feedback intended to expand understanding into related content: "This report about prisms shows you really understand how prisms refract light. Did you know that some prisms also reflect light, like in binoculars? See what you can find out about prisms that reflect light, and you can share it with your group." And here's an example of feedback intended to expand expectations beyond current expected performance levels: "This report about prisms shows you really understand how prisms refract light. In your next report, see if you can find a picture or graph to illustrate every point in your report."

And finally, don't forget that even students who have met goals should engage in further goal-setting. Ask them what they would like to aim for next, perhaps giving some suggestions in both categories: expanding content or pushing performance standards. Have them state their next goal and describe how they'll get there.
Q: How can teachers convey to all students that they are "agents, active learners, the captains of their own ship of learning"?
A: Every student, no matter what the age or developmental level, is an active learner. There is no such thing as "passive learning." So [teachers need] to believe that. Don't fall into the trap of trying to "help" by giving passive prescriptions to poor students and assuming active participation only for good students. Either a student is captain of his or her own ship of learning-or there is no ship, no learning. Treat all students as if this were true, because it is.

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Q&A: How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students

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A Conversation with Author Susan M. Brookhart Willona M. Sloan Q: In what way is feedback an important component of the formative assessment process? A: Feedback is the glue that holds the whole formative assessment process together.

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6
Using Assessments Thoughtfully

Tom Schimmer

Confidence separates those who persist from those who give up. When students have confidence, when they believe they'll eventually be able to achieve, they can learn almost anything. Without confidence, regardless of how on point a teacher's instruction is, learning stops.

Understandably, teachers tend to anchor their efforts to raise student achievement in good pedagogy and instruction. Educators often compartmentalize any focus on students' dispositions or emotions into a separate program, kept at arms' length from the teaching of curricular standards. This leaves students feeling as though their potential academic success has little to do with how they think or feel or how they approach learning. Our foremost job as teachers, however, is to develop, maintain, and enhance students' confidence as learners. The rest is just the (albeit very important) details.

Assessment practices significantly affect whether students develop confidence or whether they decide that they can't learn, no matter how they try. Over the years, I've recognized the centrality of confidence and have changed my assessment approach accordingly.

When I taught math at McNicoll Park Middle School in Penticton, British Columbia, I became increasingly frustrated with my limited ability to engage several specific students in my math classes. Searching for something to add to my repertoire to enhance engagement, I discovered research on formative assessment and sound grading practices, including relevant examples and tools. After implementing these research-based practices, I experienced positive results-but the most important outcome of adopting formative assessment was an unanticipated shift in my students' attitudes, exemplified by a student I'll call Chris.

Chris, an 8th grade boy, was popular and social, and he placed learning far down on his continuum of priorities. His attendance was spotty, his success in math was minimal, and his behavior was increasingly challenging.

One morning, students were engaging in a self-assessment process. I had begun unpacking my curricular standards into specific elements, indicators, and targets and sharing these with students. Students were reviewing these elements and checking off which ones they felt they'd mastered. As Chris went through his list, he turned to the student next to him and said, "I guess I do know some stuff in math."

I was floored. I hadn't anticipated that implementing research-validated assessment and grading practices would shift the attitudes of struggling students. Many students who'd been ready to give up exhibited the same reaction as Chris. And although Chris didn't become a straight- A student, his level of engagement dramatically rose. He realized that he didn't "suck at math." And I realized that I was on to something-the overlap between effective assessment strategies and student confidence.

Why Confidence Matters

Discussions about student confidence can easily go sideways. A focus on developing confidence can be misunderstood as a focus on making every student feel good regardless of results. Sometimes people infer that developing confidence is about lowering expectations to a point where it's impossible for the student to fail. Neither of these actions creates true confidence. We should develop our students' self-esteem but remember that self-esteem is insufficient for success in academic subjects.

After reading Rosabeth Moss Kanter's book, Confidence, I understood three important points. First, when a student can't see any of his or her weaknesses-or any of his or her strengths-that learner will be overconfident or underconfident. Unless confidence is based on evidence of success, it may represent false hope. Kanter (2004) defines confidence as grounded optimism nestled in the "sweet spot between arrogance and despair" (p. 8).

Second, I began to view students' experiences in school through the lens of winning and losing streaks. Kanter writes that "failure and success are not episodes, they are trajectories" (p. 9). Each assignment, assessment, or learning activity a student experiences is shaped by previous learning events. My priority shifted to setting my students up for a positive growth trajectory. Third, and most important, I learned that confidence was the key to developing "stick-to-it-iveness" with regards to learning among struggling students.

I began to consider whether each of my assessment and grading practices contributed to students' confidence or raised students' anxiety. Anxiety interferes with memory, attention, and concentration (Chan, 2001). If a practice raised anxiety, I changed it or stopped using it. I had been using punitive grading practices like zeros and late penalties. My revelation about confidence sealed the fate of those practices. To use such practices, I now believe, unravels most of teachers' good work.

Practices That Boost Confidence

Assessment practices that help students believe in themselves are rooted in a formative assessment approach. In this approach, teachers look at students' work to determine where each learner is in terms of the learning targets, but not to grade the work. Although this approach isn't new, our understanding of how formative assessment is linked to attitudes about learning is. Let's consider six practices that lift kids' confidence.

1. Unpack curricular standards.

Unpacking curricular standards serves a dual purpose. First, it allows teachers to precisely plan the sequence of instruction and gain greater clarity about what assessment results represent. Just as a coach must examine the specific elements of technique when an athlete throws a football or serves a volleyball, teachers need to be able to examine the specific elements of learning. For example, rather than simply telling a student to make a more effective argument, a teacher could zoom in on whether the student's point of view is muddy, her reasons aren't clear, or her proof is incomplete.

Second, such unpacking gives students intimate access to the curricular standards, and this clarity boosts confidence. Standards are written for teachers; they often leave students in a fog about what they're supposed to learn. Unpacking curricular standards identifies the foundational knowledge, skills, and targets within individual standards or clusters. A student's confidence will grow as he realizes he isn't simply "bad at making an argument." Rather, he can see that his point of view and reasoning are effective, but his proof is unclear or mismatched to his position. Unpacking allows students to understand where they're skilled and where they still need to improve.

2. Infuse assessment into instruction.

Good coaches are always assessing their players, evaluating every throw, catch, set, shot, and rebound against the standard of excellence. Feedback comes in real time. In the same way, assessment becomes instruction when the lines between assessment, instruction, and feedback are blurred; when a learning activity (like having students answer a question on exit slips) is anchored in the intended learning; and when the results of that activity elicit an immediate instructional response from the teacher (Wiliam, 2011). Students' competence and confidence grow as they receive specific, immediate information on how to correct deficiencies and solidify strengths.

3. Balance formative and summative assessment.

It's odd that some teachers understand the difference between practice sessions and games in sports (when children return home from a soccer practice, parents never ask what the score was) yet insist that everything students produce be graded. A balance between formative and summative assessment replicates the healthy distinction between practice and games. And just as there are more practices than games, there should be more formative assessment than summative.

Using more formative than summative assessment was a major shift for my students. Their anxiety dramatically lessened when they realize that every mistake wouldn't cost them in my grade book, and their willingness to try significantly increased. Just as soccer practice is for improvement, formative assessment is for improving students' abilities to meet the standards they will need to demonstrate mastery of on summative assessments.

4. Give effective feedback.

Effective feedback-feedback that's immediate, specific, accessible, actionable, transparent, and ongoing-is one of the most powerful influences on student achievement (Hattie, 2009; Wiggins, 2012). Feedback has the greatest effect when it's frequent, delivered in relation to the intended learning, and addresses the gap between where the students' learning is now and where it needs to be. Successful feedback has two other characteristics.

Good feedback isn't "too much." A high volume of feedback can leave students feeling overwhelmed, especially when they have little time to act on that feedback. The ultimate purpose of feedback is to have students take corrective action. Overloading them with tons of feedback is counterproductive and diminishes their confidence in addressing learning shortages.

Good feedback shows the way. Students need to see what they need to do next along their road to achieving standards. The feedback loop between students and teachers need not always be an epic event. Tell them what they need to do to improve, provide them time to do it, then tell them the next step, and so on. Feedback should always lean forward, making it obvious to students what's next in their learning (Wiliam, 2011). A teacher could say either, "You didn't use any transitions between your body paragraphs" or " Now let's work on establishing some smooth transitions that link each of your paragraphs." Both comments address the same concern, but the latter leans forward.

Although we must always assess student work according to standards, every piece of feedback needn't reflect how far students are from the end goal. Telling a student exactly how far away she really is from mastering a standard may be demotivating. If, for instance, a student is at a 2 on scale of 1-10, it might be best to at first give her feedback that focuses on moving her up to a 5.

5. Make students think.

Student confidence can waver if kids spend their day as passive recipients of their teacher's feedback. Students need to be thinking. If teacher feedback exclusively provides the answers, active involvement by students is less likely. And without reflecting on their work, students are unlikely to make the comparison between the expected standards and the work they're producing.

With metacognitive feedback, teachers give students cues, questions, or prompts that get them to think about the process of learning as much as the correctness of responses (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler, & Stone, 2012; Wiliam, 2011). A teacher might pose a question that asks a student to consider how he came to his conclusion rather than simply indicating whether that conclusion was correct or incorrect, sufficient or incomplete. Or a teacher could highlight a few sentences in a paragraph of student writing for that student to reconsider, but not indicate any specific changes to be made. The goal is to keep learning moving forward and to have students continually reengage with their work.

6. Develop a standards-based mind-set for grading.

Schools and districts are at different places in terms of using standards-based grading; many schools continue to report traditional letter grades. But all educators can develop a standards-based mind-set, which has more to do with how we think about evidence of learning than how we report it.

The standards-based mind-set is about accuracy. Practices like late penalties and zeros contribute to negatively distorted grades, whereas practices like extra credit contribute to positively distorted grades (O'Connor, 2011). Inaccurate grades are misleading; they leave students feeling more or less proficient than they actually are. Because students' emotional reactions to the prospect of being graded are unavoidable, the more teachers factor out emotional elements unrelated to the standards, the more our grades will support student confidence. Ask yourself, for example, do late penalties contribute to students' confidence or to their anxiety?

One practice educators should adopt is to base grades on the most recent evidence of student learning, which not only makes grading more accurate but also maintains or increases student confidence. Students earn full credit for what they've accomplished. This approach also honors the process of learning and the reality that some students take a little longer to learn. Using the mean average in grading, in contrast, works against accuracy (O'Connor, 2011) and reduces student confidence because the resulting grade is usually much lower than the most recent results would show.

Reassessment deserves special mention here. Many educators think of reassessment as simply hitting a reset button to give students another shot. But a "do-over" approach will not decrease anxiety levels; the likely result will be a replication of the previous unsatisfactory result. What truly reduces anxiety is the opportunity to learn from mistakes; engage in targeted, more intensive learning; reach a new level of proficiency; and then demonstrate that new level. That's reassessment.

When I used assessment methods that promoted confidence, my students knew that reassessment came with the responsibility to use the feedback they received, target their learning going forward, and close the gaps between their current level and the standard. True reassessment sends the message that learning is never final, that we can learn from our mistakes and keep improving.

Creating Possibility

Developing real confidence-not inflated self-esteem-is about gaining competence. Although reducing students' anxiety will not alone produce competence and achievement gains (Hattie, 2009), it will positively affect students' belief that they can eventually succeed-and help them persist when facing obstacles. Through these strategic uses of assessment and grading practices, we can create an environment of hope and possibility.

References

Chan, E. (2001). Improving student performance by reducing anxiety. Positive Pedagogy: Successful and Innovative Strategies in Higher Education, 1(3). Retrieved from http://www.stlhe.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Improving-Student-Performance-by-Reducing-Anxiety1.pdf

Dean, C., Hubbell, E., Pitler, H., & Stone, B. (2012). Classroom instruction that works (2nd ed). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Hattie, J. (2009) Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge

Kanter, R, M. (2004). Confidence: How winning streaks and losing streaks begin and end. New York: Three Rivers Press.

O'Connor, K. (2011). A repair kit for grading: 15 fixes for broken grades. Portland, OR: Pearson Assessment Training Institute.

Wiggins, G. (2012) Seven keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10-16.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Tom Schimmer (@TomSchimmer on Twitter) is an education consultant in Penticton, British Columbia and the author of Ten Things That Matter from Assessment to Grading (Pearson, 2013). He blogs at www.tomschimmer.com.

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6 Using Assessments Thoughtfully Tom Schimmer Confidence separates those who persist from those who give up. When students have confidence, when they believe they'll eventually be able to achieve, they can learn almost anything. Without confidence, regardless of how on point a teacher's instruction is, learning stops.

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Developing Self-Regulating Learners

The Critical Role of Feedback

Cheryl Rose Tobey and Lynn Goldsmith

All teachers wish for their students to become engaged, successful, and enthusiastic learners, and teachers often make observations such as this: I want students to take responsibility for their own learning. I want my students to be active learners.

Teachers and researchers alike recognize that students who can monitor and regulate their own learning are more effective learners (Butler & Winne, 1995). Yet teachers may not know how to help their students learn to take charge of their own learning process.

Formative assessment is an instructional approach that seeks to develop the kind of ownership and self-regulation that promotes the development of successful learning (Heritage, 2010; Wiliam, 2011). Classrooms that engage in formative assessment practices are ones in which teachers are explicit about expectations for learning and both teachers and students monitor students' work in terms of progress toward those expectations.

The shared practice of reflecting on students' understanding in the context of clearly identified goals helps students learn to monitor their progress, receive feedback intended to promote further learning, and incorporate the feedback into subsequent work.

Three Central Questions for Regulating Learning

Teachers can help students learn to receive and incorporate feedback, and therefore monitor and adjust their learning, by helping them address the following three questions (Sadler, 1989; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Wiliam & Thompson, 2007):

1. What are the goals for my learning?

2. Where am I right now in relation to my goals?

3. If I haven't yet met my goals, what do I still need to do?

The first question sets the stage for students' self-monitoring by helping them understand and articulate the criteria against which their work should be gauged. The second and third questions support students in the monitoring process itself.

Here are some suggestions for how teachers can help students address these three critical questions, with examples from teachers who have participated in the Formative Assessment in the Mathematics Classroom: Engaging Teachers and Students (FACETS) project, a professional development and research project for middle school mathematics teachers.

Question 1: What Goals Am I Aiming for in My Learning?

In FACETS, we refer to the overarching learning focus as learning intentions (LI) and the criteria for achieving the learning success criteria (SC). Learning intentions articulate the important mathematical concepts that drive the lesson. Success criteria articulate the evidence teachers and students will use to assess whether students' work reflects achievement of the learning intentions. Self-regulating learners use success criteria as the standards against which to evaluate their own work.

It's not enough, however, for a teacher to simply state the success criteria at the beginning of a lesson and move on. At a minimum, teachers will want to check in with students about their interpretations of the criteria. Sharing and clarifying learning intentions and success criteria can quickly become a comfortable part of daily lesson routines. Consider, for example, the way coteachers Tracy and Tom introduce a lesson to their 6th grade class.

Tracey and Tom draw attention to the LI and SC they've posted on the whiteboard:

LI: Through modeling, I will understand that dividing a whole number by a fraction means finding how many of the fractional parts are "in" the number.

SC 1: I can model the division of whole numbers by fractions.

SC 2: I can explain how modeling problems can help me determine how many fractional parts are in the number.

Tracey gives everyone in the class a minute to silently read the LI, and then reads the two criteria aloud. She asks if anyone has questions about them. Although no one asks for clarification, she asks for volunteers to provide examples of models in mathematics, to be sure that students understand the terminology.
Recommendation 1: Use an established routine to share learning intentions and success criteria with students. Sharing and clarifying the success criteria at the start of a lesson offers students an initial view of how they should be gauging their work for the day. Nonetheless, it is important to build in opportunities to revisit the success criteria throughout the lesson to continue to build students' understanding of what it looks like to meet the criteria. For example, Tracey and Tom typically return to their success criteria during class discussions.
After they review the LI and SC about division by fractions, students work individually on the problem: "How many people can we feed if we have 7 sandwiches and we give everyone half a sandwich?" Tracey and Tom move around the class to see how students approach the problem.

When they pull the class together for discussion, Tom asks Vanessa to share her solution with the class because he feels that her work is helpful in moving toward meeting the SC. As Vanessa explains her solution, Tom points to each of the criteria, highlighting how her work relates to them.
Recommendation 2: During the lesson, build a shared understanding of what meeting the success criteria looks and sounds like. When teachers help students develop an understanding of the learning intention for the lesson and the criteria for judging achievement of that intention, they are providing students with the foundation for monitoring their own learning.
Question 2: Where Am I Currently in Relation to Those Goals?

One way to help students learn to self-assess is by assessing the work of peers; students may find it easier to be objective about work that's not their own.

Tracey continues the class discussion of the sandwiches problem by sharing a solution that used a different model than Vanessa's. Tracey then presents a third solution, since she wants the students to also consider work that does not meet the SC. This solution is based on a mistake she noticed on several students' whiteboards.

The class discusses whether the diagram accurately models the situation (it does), how the model relates to the corresponding number sentence (they are not equivalent), and how the work relates back to the SC.
Recommendation 3: Set the expectation that students will assess their own (and their peers') understanding relative to the stated success criteria and provide adequate class time for their assessments. As students learn to gauge their work and the work of their peers in terms of success criteria, the responsibility for interpreting the evidence no longer falls solely on the teacher.
Question 3: If I Have Not Yet Met the Goals, What Do I Do Next?

Formative feedback helps students troubleshoot their own performances and take specific action to improve the quality of the work. Dylan Wiliam notes that formative feedback "should cause thinking. It should be focused; it should relate to the learning goals that have been shared with students; and it should be more work for the recipient than the donor" (2011, p. 132).

Nancy developed a feedback handout to help students focus on where they had met success criteria and where they still had work to do. She attached the handout to students' work:

You met Success Criterion #______ when you did _______ because______.

You haven't yet met Success Criterion #_____ because ________. Consider trying ______________.

She also created a whimsical feedback "sandwich" template that serves as both a tool and a shared point of reference for reminding students to reflect on the three big questions.

In the beginning of the year, while her students are getting used to identifying and responding to learning intentions and success criteria, Nancy provides most of the feedback herself. As the year progresses, she asks students to provide the "bread" and the "filling" for the sandwich for one another's work, as well as for their own, work.

Students' initial efforts at giving feedback to peers may not be of the best quality. For many, providing substantive feedback is a new experience, and students need time and guidance to learn how to do so. Teachers' own comments can provide students with models for formative feedback, and teachers can also explicitly teach feedback skills by analyzing examples of feedback with students and together brainstorming ways to improve them.
Recommendation 4: Provide opportunities for students to both give and receive feedback. Peer feedback serves two important purposes: 1. increasing the learning resources in a classroom by having students, not just the teacher, provide formative feedback; and 2. helping students learn to apply processes of analyzing work with respect to their own self-assessment.
Acting on Formative Feedback

The purpose of formative feedback is to provide guidance for students' continued learning. It is therefore crucial that students work to understand and act on feedback instead of simply receiving it and setting it aside. Again, the teacher plays an important role in helping students learn how to engage with feedback productively.

During one of their lessons on data and probability, Sharon's 6th grade students create bar graphs. After the lesson, Sharon collects the papers and reviews them that evening. She starts math class the next day with this observation: "I noticed several common issues in your work that relate to our success criteria for the lesson. We'll talk about these for a few minutes before I return your work."

On the overhead projector, she lists the lesson's SC and records the issues, illustrating them with examples from students' papers. Sharon repeats the process for each SC, filling in the table in Figure 1 below on the overhead projector.
Figure 1. LI: I will understand how a bar graph is constructed to represent a data set.
Sharon then returns the papers, instructing the students to "use the table we just made to determine what you did correctly and what issues you may need to consider while revising your work to meet each of the SCs." As students review their work, she checks in with certain students about how and why they plan on revising their graphs.
Recommendation 5: Provide opportunities for students to use formative feedback. Teachers can help students by modeling and having students practice strategies for responding, such as revising an explanation or problem, asking for clarification about feedback, and asking for additional feedback on revised work. As teachers introduce new strategies, they can post them on a Strategy Wall to serve as a reference for the repertoire of strategies that students can draw on when considering their next steps.
Teachers can make headway in promoting their students' purposive learning by helping them consider the three central questions we highlight in this article. These are questions that, with appropriate scaffolding, even the youngest students can practice asking and answering. In providing this scaffolding, teachers help students develop the focus and discipline needed to monitor and adjust their work-to become self-regulating learners.

References and Resources

Brookhart, S., Long, C., & Moss, B. (2008). Formative assessment that empowers. Educational Leadership, 66(3), 52-57.

Butler, D. L., & Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoretical synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 65(3), 245-81.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.

Heritage, M. (2010). Formative assessment: Making it happen in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Wiliam, D., & Thompson, M. (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: What will it take to make it work? In C. A. Dwyer (Ed.), The future of assessment: Shaping teaching and learning (pp. 53-82). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cheryl Rose Tobey is a senior mathematics associate at the Education Development Center (EDC). She is the project director for Formative Assessment in the Mathematics Classroom: Engaging Teachers and Students and mathematics specialist for Differentiated Professional Development: Building Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching Struggling Students; both studies are funded by NSF. She is also mathematics specialist for the IES-funded Eliciting Mathematical Misconceptions study. Lynn Goldsmith, a principal research scientist at EDC, has studied professional development for mathematics teachers, investigated principals' instructional leadership for mathematics, examined the role that emotions play in learning, and explored possible relationships between arts education and mathematical reasoning.

ASCD Express, Vol. 8, No. 11. Copyright 2013 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.

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ASCD Express 8.11 - Developing Self-Regulating Learners: The Critical Role of Feedback

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Developing Self-Regulating Learners The Critical Role of Feedback Cheryl Rose Tobey and Lynn Goldsmith All teachers wish for their students to become engaged, successful, and enthusiastic learners, and teachers often make observations such as this: I want students to take responsibility for their own learning. I want my students to be active learners.

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Douglas B. Reeves

"I can't force them to study!" said the exasperated teacher. "I've heard the last group chant of 'All Children Can Learn' that I can stand. We don't need any more slogans-we need practical ways to get these kids engaged in learning, or we're going to have another year go down the drain."

Her colleagues in the workshop nodded knowingly as this teacher said aloud what many of them had been thinking. It was not a lack of will or desire by these teachers. They had tried to make lessons more engaging, had cut down on lectures, and had invested hours in preparing interactive and interesting lessons. Then they watched as students laughed during assemblies while inspirational speakers encouraged them to pursue their studies more seriously. Worst of all, teachers noted, it was the same parade of student leaders-not student council officers, but the unelected leaders who exert subtle but unmistakable influence on other students and even teachers-drawing followers among younger students, who emulated their dress, patterns of speech, and contemptuous disregard for academic work. Their leadership message was clear: Don't mess with us and we won't mess with you.

This scenario is not confined to the stereotypical urban school. Teachers from a growing number of schools-urban, suburban, and rural-describe the scene as if they had observed one another's classrooms. If the resulting level of despair among educators provoked by such scenarios is left unchecked, the teacher quoted above and the entire school will enter a demotivating spiral in which teachers expect less, students deliver less, and administrators withdraw, accepting with stony silence the environment of hopelessness.

To ensure that students get the proper academic challenge to stimulate their desire to work in school, here are five practical techniques to motivate the unmotivated student: give them challenge, choice, significance, feedback, and competence.

Realize that challenge and high expectations are more motivating than low expectations.

According to the 2006 National Study of High School Student Engagement (Yazzie-Mintz, 2007), two of three high school students are bored every day in class-typically, they say, because the work isn't interesting, challenging, or relevant for them. Although teens routinely complain about work that is tedious and boring, and many refuse to comply with requirements for homework, they do rise to a legitimate challenge. Writing an essay is a chore; getting published is a challenge. Solving 20 problems is boring; solving one problem in five different ways is a challenge. Memorizing the steps of how an idea becomes law might seem irrelevant; presenting testimony before a legislative committee or local governing body is a challenge.

Provide choice.

If a test normally has 25 items, create a test with 30 and allow students to ignore five. If the purpose of a homework assignment is to practice a set of skills, create a menu of three choices so that students can choose how to demonstrate mastery. We best engage students when we seek diversity of responses rather than copying and mindless repetition.

Give students an opportunity for significance.

Many students think that they already know how to "play school"-keep your head down, don't bother the teachers, and do the minimum necessary. This path of least resistance is typified by the indolent student, who in turn is part of a society that is, in Robert Bork's (1996) memorable phrase, "slouching toward Gomorrah." Students crave responsibility and meaning, and large-scale service learning projects in small and large school systems demonstrate the power of purpose and meaning for their lives (Berman, 2008; Reeves, 2009).

Provide feedback that is accurate, specific, and designed to improve performance.

Hattie (2009) and Marzano (in press) provide powerful evidence that feedback is perhaps the single most important act of teaching. The masters of feedback in most schools can be found in the music departments. Watch a great chorus or instrumental leader provide feedback that leads immediately to improved performance. Students leave every rehearsal knowing that they are better as individuals and as an ensemble than when they entered the class. These teachers know that they need not make everything count for a grade to motivate students, but rather that they provide feedback that is clear, relevant, immediate, and constructive. Think about it-have you ever seen anyone conduct a musical group with a red pen? Feedback, not threats of low grades, leads to better performance.

Help students feel competent.

Why is it that disengaged and unmotivated students will spend hours playing video games? If violence and sex were all that was required to improve student motivation, then students in history classes would be enthralled with the lurid details of ancient and modern leaders. Video games offer more than graphic imagery-they give students an opportunity to use immediate feedback to "get to the next level." Each failure results not in disappointment and disengagement, but in the immediate pursuit of improvement.

These ideas are neither universal nor guaranteed, but taken together, they represent an opportunity to motivate both students and teachers. My students, whether they are 7 years old or eligible for Social Security, follow remarkably similar motivational patterns. They are more engaged and learn better when they are challenged, exercise choice, feel significant, receive accurate and timely feedback, and know that they are competent.

References

Berman, S. (2008, October). A superintendent's systemic notion of civics. The School Administrator, 29-31.

Bork, R. H. (1996). Slouching towards Gomorrah: Modern liberalism and American decline. New York: Regan Books/HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.

Marzano, R. J. (In press). Formative assessments and standards-based grading. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

Reeves, D. B. (2009, May). Avoiding the land mines. Educational Leadership, 66(8), 89-90.

Yazzie-Mintz, E. (2007). Voices of students on engagement: A report on the 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement. Retrieved from Indiana University Center for Evaluation & Education Policy website: http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse/pdf/HSSSE_2006_Report.pdf

Douglas B. Reeves is the founder of the Leadership and Learning Center in Salem, Mass.

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Douglas B. Reeves "I can't force them to study!" said the exasperated teacher. "I've heard the last group chant of 'All Children Can Learn' that I can stand. We don't need any more slogans-we need practical ways to get these kids engaged in learning, or we're going to have another year go down the drain."

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Building skills through independent learning

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Building skills through independent learning

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ASCD Express 8.11 - Building Skills for Independent Learning

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Maximize student
achievement with  formative
assessment

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Maximize student
achievement with  formative
assessment

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ASCD Express 6.01 - Maximize Student Achievement with Formative Assessment

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Terry Heaney

Educators are not confused about the need to motivate our students. We can easily acknowledge that a motivated student will engage, persist, and produce results that are superior to students who are not motivated. However, it is just as clear that in working with older students who are struggling in school, we face significant challenges in building on their intrinsic motivation to learn. Students with a history of negative outcomes may be more resistant to motivational overtures. Although educators are considering many new approaches, a growing body of research suggests that we can motivate our students more directly with a thoughtful approach to providing feedback on assignments and tests.

For many students, the return of a test or assignment is the moment they dread the most. It is at that instant that we have their undivided attention and the opportunity to motivate them further. The nature of our feedback on tests and assignments and the way we direct future efforts can motivate students to keep up their personal fight to learn. Feedback provides a tangible, regular opportunity to build a connection with our students. The following practical feedback strategies help motivate students.
Consider using written feedback.
It should come as no surprise that students are very focused on the grade they receive on assignments, and the growing use of of rubrics and bubble sheets has emphasized the bottom line, as opposed to how it was reached. Written feedback that is more diagnostic and directive encourages students to revisit specific errors in thinking. This type of information-oriented feedback leads to greater intrinsic motivation, task engagement, and persistence in completing tasks (Bruning, Schraw, Norby, & Ronning, 2004).

When we take the time to focus student attention on ways to improve, we are saying that we believe in their ability to develop beyond the stated mark. Written comments are also private and allow students to digest your suggestions without the defensive response that can result from a public discussion.

Rethink your approach to handling errors.

There is great value in allowing students to redo assignments and make corrections. By doing so, we are acknowledging the process of learning and not just the product. Students have the chance to practice the suggested approaches, refocus on key concepts, and receive praise for correcting errors. This can positively affect students' understanding as well as their self-efficacy beliefs. If we see errors as opportunities to learn, students will be more likely to see them in the same light.

Try using green ink instead of red.

Research has shown that the color red has negative connotations, both in and out of school. One study showed that the use of red, even in labeling a test, resulted in a 10 percent drop in scores (Science Netlinks, 2007). The explanation is found in avoidance motivation: rather than trying to be successful, subjects were selecting answers to avoid mistakes. With this understanding of the emotive nature of the color red, it seems that using any other color would help students actually read the comments we take the time to write. Using green is a subtle way of saying that hope for forward movement and growth still exists.

When patterns start to emerge, include your students in setting achievable goals.

Talking with your students about setting specific, short-term goals to improve the kinds of errors they are making strengthens the connection between you and each student, clearly demonstrates that you see them as capable of improvement, and involves them directly in their own learning outcomes. Too often, the goals outlined in individualized education programs or other long-term planning documents are just too far in the future to seem relevant and are created without the involvement of the person they are meant to benefit-the student.

These strategies build motivation by focusing on an activity every teacher already does and not on budget allocations or new approaches. Each of these feedback strategies builds a stronger relationship with the student, clearly communicating belief in that student's ability. Acknowledging the effect that our feedback can have on students shifts our thinking as well. Motivating our students becomes an authentic, regular experience that allows us to use their efforts as the vehicle. In this sense, motivating students to learn becomes something we do with them instead of to them.

References

Bruning, R., Schraw, G., Norby, M., & Ronning, R. (2004). Cognitive psychology and instruction (4th ed.) Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education Inc.

Science NetLinks. (2007). Seeing red. Retrieved from http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=323

Terry Heaney is a Learning Strategies teacher at Calgary Academy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The academy specializes in helping students with learning challenges.

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Terry Heaney Educators are not confused about the need to motivate our students. We can easily acknowledge that a motivated student will engage, persist, and produce results that are superior to students who are not motivated.

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November 2005 | Volume 63 | Number 3
Assessment to Promote Learning Pages 39-43

Jan Chappuis

During the last decade, many schools have begun to emphasize formative assessment. As teachers work to develop short-cycle or common assessments and engage in data-driven decision making, they typically remain in the central decision-making role. This approach reflects the underlying assumption that teachers control learning. Although teachers must create the conditions for learning, however, students ultimately decide whether they feel capable of learning and whether they will do the work. Therefore, students are equally important users of formative assessment information. The research tells us why.

Necessary Components of Formative Assessment

In their 1998 synthesis of research, Black and Wiliam reported that formative assessment produced significant learning gains, with effect sizes between 0.4 and 0.7. They noted, however, that in schools achieving these gains, students were the primary users of formative assessment information. In such schools,

Formative assessment began with offering students a clear picture of learning targets.

Students received feedback on their work that helped them understand where they were with respect to the desired learning target.

Students engaged in self-assessment.

Formative assessment provided an understanding of specific steps that students could take to improve.

Sadler (1989) had previously reported similar findings. In describing the role of formative assessment in developing expertise, he identified three conditions required for students to improve:

The student comes to hold a concept of quality roughly similar to that held by the teacher, is able to monitor continuously the quality of what is being produced during the act of production itself, and has a repertoire of alternative moves or strategies from which to draw at any given point. (p. 121)

This research on effective formative assessment suggests that students should be able to answer three basic questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? and How can I close the gap? (adapted from Atkin, Black, & Coffey, 2001). The seven strategies described in the following sections can help ensure systematic student involvement in the formative assessment process (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2004).

Where Am I Going?

Students need to know what learning targets they are responsible for mastering, and at what level. Marzano (2005) asserts that students who can identify what they are learning significantly outscore those who cannot.

Strategy 1: Provide a clear and understandable vision of the learning target. Share the learning targets before you begin instruction, in language your students can understand. For example, when introducing a reading comprehension unit calling for inference, you might say, "We are learning to infer. This means we are learning to make reasonable guesses on the basis of clues." Or provide students with a written list of learning targets described in student-friendly language, such as,

We are learning about fractions. We are learning to

Read and write fractions with halves, thirds, fourths, and tenths.

Read and write mixed numbers (whole numbers plus fractions).

Change fractions written as tenths into decimals.

When working with more complex content standards that call for performance assessment, such as "Writes clearly and effectively," introduce the language of the scoring guide that the school will use to define quality. To do this, ask students what they think constitutes good writing, and then help them identify where their concept of good writing matches the concepts in the scoring guide. If the scoring guide is above students' reading level, you might want to create a student-friendly version.

Strategy 2: Use examples of strong and weak work. To know where they are going, students must know what excellent performance looks like. Ask students to evaluate anonymous work samples for quality and then to discuss and defend their judgments, using the language of the scoring guide in the case of performance assessments. Such an exercise will help students develop skill in accurate self-assessment.

Teachers often use strong examples, or exemplars, but avoid using weak examples because they worry that students will accidentally emulate them. On the contrary, when students evaluate weak examples that mirror common problems, they become more proficient at identifying their own weaknesses and gain a better understanding of quality. To introduce work samples to students, you might

1. Distribute to students a student-friendly version of the scoring guide you will use to evaluate their final products.

2. Choose one aspect of quality (one trait) to focus on.

3. Show an overhead transparency of a strong anonymous sample, but don't let students know it's a strong example. Have students work independently to score it for the one trait using the student-friendly scoring guide. You may ask students to underline the statements in the scoring guide that they believe describe the work they're examining.

4. After students have settled on a score independently, have them share their scores in small groups, using the language of the scoring guide to explain their reasoning.

5. Ask the class to vote and tally their scores on an overhead transparency. Then ask for volunteers to share their scores and the rationale behind them. Listen for, and encourage, use of the language of the scoring guide.

6. Repeat this process with a weak anonymous sample, focusing on the same trait. Do this several times, alternating between strong and weak papers, until students are able to distinguish between strong and weak work and independently give rationales reflecting the concepts in the scoring guide (Stiggins et al., 2004).

Where Am I Now?

When my daughter was in 3rd grade, she once brought home a math paper with a smiley face, a minus 3, and an M at the top. When we asked her what the M meant she had learned, she looked at us as though we were trying to trick her and replied, "Math?" When we asked her what that meant she needed to work on, she frowned and ventured, "Math?"

Papers marked like this one do not give students the information they need. At best, such marks might tell the student, "I'm doing OK in math," but they will not enable the student to assess his or her own strengths and weaknesses. You can use the following two strategies to help students identify how they are currently performing in relation to the learning and actions that are expected of them.

Strategy 3: Offer regular descriptive feedback. Black and Wiliam (1998) recommend that to improve formative assessment, teachers should reduce evaluative feedback-such as " B+. Good work!" or "You didn't put enough effort into this"-and increase descriptive feedback, such as "You maintained eye contact with your audience throughout your whole presentation" or "Your problem-solving strategy for dividing all the people into equal groups worked well right up to the end, but you need to figure out what to do with the remaining people."

The quality of the feedback, rather than its quantity, determines its effectiveness (Bangert-Downs, Kulik, Kulik, & Morgan, 1991; Sadler, 1989). The most effective feedback identifies success and also offers students a recipe for corrective action (Bloom, 1984; Brown, 1994). Grades and other coded marks-such as ✓ + and 92%-do not tell students what areas they need to improve. Instead, such marks signal that the work on this piece is finished.

Here are some simple actions you can take to provide effective feedback:

After students have practiced using a scoring guide with anonymous work and they understand the meaning of the phrases in the scoring guide, highlight phrases that describe strengths and weaknesses of their work. If you are working with a multitrait scoring guide, limit feedback to one or two traits at a time.

Have students traffic light their work (Atkin et al., 2001), marking it with a green, yellow, or red dot to indicate the level of help they need. Allow students with green and yellow dots to provide descriptive feedback to one another, while you provide feedback for students with red dots.

Strategy 4: Teach students to self-assess and set goals. In giving students descriptive feedback, you have modeled the kind of thinking you want them to do as self-assessors. As a next step, turn that task over to students and guide them in practicing self-assessment and goal setting. You may find it useful to have students identify the strengths and weaknesses of their work before you offer your own feedback. Have them complete a form like the one in Figure 1 and staple it to their work when they turn it in. Respond with your feedback, either on the form or orally.

To help students align their expectations with yours, ask them to turn in a scoring guide with their work, highlighting in yellow the phrases in the guide that they believe represent the quality of their work. On the same scoring guide, highlight in blue the phrases that you think describe their work, and return the guide to them. Where the highlighted phrases are green (blue over yellow), your feedback matches the student's self-assessment. Any highlighted phrases that remain blue or yellow, however, indicate areas in which the student probably needs to refine his or her vision of quality (Stiggins et al., 2004).

If you are using a selected-response test, you can arrange the items according to the learning targets they assess and give students the list of learning targets correlated to the test item numbers. When they receive their corrected test, students can identify which learning targets they have mastered and which learning targets they need to work on further. They can then develop a plan for how they will improve the targeted areas. This practice is especially effective if students have the opportunity to retake the test.

How Can I Close the Gap?

The final essential step in making formative assessment work is to keep students in touch with what they can do to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be.

Strategy 5: Design lessons to focus on one aspect of quality at a time. This strategy breaks learning into more manageable chunks for students. For example, suppose that students are learning to design and conduct scientific investigations, and one part of the scoring guide describes the qualities of a good hypothesis. If students are having trouble formulating hypotheses, they can refer to that portion of the scoring guide as they differentiate between strong and weak examples of hypotheses, practice drafting hypotheses, give one another descriptive feedback on their drafts, and assess their own drafts' strengths and weaknesses.

Strategy 6: Teach students focused revision. Let students practice revising their work before being held accountable by a final grade. You might begin with one of the anonymous, weak work samples that your students have evaluated (see Strategy 2). Focusing on just the single aspect of quality that they evaluated, ask students to work in pairs to either revise the sample or create a revision plan describing what the anonymous student needs to do to improve the work. Then ask students to apply the same process to their own work, either revising it to make it better or submitting a revision plan. For example, after assessing their draft hypotheses in science, students could use the scoring guide to write out what they need to do to improve their hypotheses.

Strategy 7: Engage students in self-reflection and let them document and share their learning. We know the power of self-reflection to deepen learning for adults. It also works for students. One of the strongest motivators is the opportunity to look back and see progress.

In a skill-based course, such as physical education, students can fill out a daily form that asks two questions: "What are two important things you learned from today's class?" and "What is one goal you have for tomorrow's class?"

Student portfolios can also promote students' self-reflection. In collecting their work and insights in portfolios, students have the opportunity to reflect on their learning, develop an internal feedback loop, and understand themselves better as learners. To use portfolios in this way, students must clearly understand their learning goals, the steps that they have taken toward reaching those goals, and how far they have come. Involving students in parent-teacher conferences can accomplish the same purpose. Students gain insight from explaining to their parents the learning that their work represents, their strengths as learners, and what they plan to work on next.

Students at the Center

The seven strategies described here are designed to help students better understand their learning goals, recognize their own skill level in relation to the goals, and take responsibility for reaching the goals. By expanding our formative assessment practices to systematically involve students as decision makers, teachers acknowledge the contributions that students make to their own success and give them the opportunity and structure they need to become active partners in improving their learning.

References

Atkin, J. M., Black, P., & Coffey, J. (2001). Classroom assessment and the National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Bangert-Downs, R. L., Kulik, C-L. C., Kulik, J. A., & Morgan, M. T. (1991). The instructional effect of feedback in test-like events. Review of Education Research, 61(2), 213-238.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139-148.

Bloom, B. (1984). The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Leadership, 41(8), 4-17.

Brown, A. L. (1994). The advancement of learning. Educational Researcher, 23(8), 4-12.

Marzano, R. (2005). What works in schools (PowerPoint presentation). Available: www.marzanoandassociates.com/pdf/ShortVersion.pdf

Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

Stiggins, R. J., Arter, J., Chappuis, J., & Chappuis, S. (2004). Classroom assessment for student learning: Doing it right-using it well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training Institute.

Jan Chappuis is an author and consultant at the Assessment Training Institute, 317 SW Alder St., Ste. 1200, Portland, OR 97204; 503-228-3014; jchappuis@assessmentinst.com.

KEYWORDS

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November 2005 | Volume 63 | Number 3 Assessment to Promote Learning Pages 39-43 Jan Chappuis During the last decade, many schools have begun to emphasize formative assessment. As teachers work to develop short-cycle or common assessments and engage in data-driven decision making, they typically remain in the central decision-making role.

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Praise and
feedback in the primary classroom: Teachers'  and
students' perspectives.

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Praise and
feedback in the primary classroom: Teachers'  and
students' perspectives.

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Providing Opportunities to Use Feedback

Susan M. Brookhart

Feedback can lead to learning only if the students have opportunities to use it. One of the best ways you can help students learn to use feedback is to make sure you build in opportunities for students to use it fairly soon after they receive it.

Design lessons in which students use feedback on previous work to produce better work. For learning targets that involve knowledge and understanding of facts or concepts, for example, use a series of homework and in-class assignments, and perhaps quizzes, that will enable students to see what they know and what they still need to understand. Feedback from each successive assignment should inform studying and work on the next assignment. By the time of the unit test or other assignment that counts for a grade, students will be at the top of their learning curve. They should be able to see how the work along the way helped bring them to that point. If some students don't, point it out to them.

Another example of designing lessons that build in opportunities to use feedback involves careful structuring of work on long projects. Build in formative checkpoints along the way, so that successive work is informed by feedback and the final product is the best each student can do. One or more of the following checkpoints could be included in the directions for a social studies or science project, for example:

1. Having a brief conference after students have chosen a topic; or, for older students, providing written feedback after they have written a paragraph supporting why their topic is relevant and researchable.

2. Having a brief conference or providing written feedback after students have developed a work plan or an outline.

3. Having a brief conference or providing written feedback on drafts of written reports, charts and materials, or other components, depending on the assignment.

For certain kinds of assignments, offering students the opportunity to redo the assignment after feedback can work. Assignments that are about developing mental learning targets (longer-term learning goals like writing or problem solving) can be appropriate for revision. Students can incorporate suggestions from feedback into revisions and make the work better.

Be careful to structure the terms under which you will accept revised assignments for credit. You want to avoid the situation in which students will do something, then check to see if it's good enough, and then do what you tell them to do. This undermines self-regulation and works against all the good principles this book has advocated. Students who have done the best they could the first time and then genuinely see how to do better will benefit from the opportunity to redo an assignment-and they should have that opportunity if it is possible within the classroom structure. Give other students who do not need to redo the assignment equally rewarding opportunities to build on their strengths, in effect, using feedback as well, to avoid being taken advantage of.

Assignments that are about mastering content knowledge need new but similar assignments for the same learning targets. If students have gone over a test and realized which facts and concepts they didn't understand, for example, and you give them the same test again, their near-perfect score won't reflect near-perfect knowledge. It will simply reflect their memorizing the answers they got wrong the first time. However, once students have gone over a test, it is a good idea to give them an opportunity to show that they did use that feedback to improve. What is needed in this case is a new but similar assignment: a test on similar content but with different questions, for example, or another assignment that requires knowing the same content.

Finally, give opportunities for students to make the connection between the feedback they received and the improvement in their work. It may seem obvious to you that Sally's great work on her second paper is a direct result of her working on weaknesses identified in the previous paper. But Sally won't necessarily see that, and even if she does, her sense of self-regulation and control will be helped if she has a chance to identify the connection and take pride in it. Sometimes an additional bit of oral feedback about the process is all it takes: "Sally, I see that you really worked on adding details like we discussed after your last paper. I hope you're proud of yourself. Those extra details make this paper so much more interesting to read."

The principles discussed in this book about planning, giving, and helping students use feedback are based on research about how students learn. They apply to all subjects. However, different subjects emphasize different kinds of assignments. Because feedback is specific to the work done and the strategies needed to improve that work, typical feedback may look a little different from subject to subject. We turn next to content-specific examples of feedback.

From How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students (p. 73-75), by Susan M. Brookhart, 2008, Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Adapted with permission.

Susan Brookhart is an educational consultant and author.

ASCD Express, Vol. 8, No. 1. Copyright 2012 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.

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ASCD Express 8.01 - Providing Opportunities to Use Feedback

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Providing Opportunities to Use Feedback Susan M. Brookhart Feedback can lead to learning only if the students have opportunities to use it. One of the best ways you can help students learn to use feedback is to make sure you build in opportunities for students to use it fairly soon after they receive it.

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GETTING STUDENTS INVOLVED IN THE CLASSROOM

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GETTING STUDENTS INVOLVED IN THE CLASSROOM

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Encouraging student involvement: An approach to teaching communication

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(2003). Encouraging student involvement: An approach to teaching communication. Communication Studies: Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 133-136.

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Instructional communication research about student motivation generally fails to explain the mechanism by which communication influences learning motivations, while motivational theories in psychology and education focus almost exclusively on cognitive and structural explanations. Addressing that interdisciplinary exigency, this study explains and tests a mechanism by which the facework dimension of instructional communication (specifically teacher feedback about student work) addresses important learner identity needs and thus predicts students' intrinsic learning motivations, interaction involvement, and task‐mastery orientation toward their schooling. Instructional face‐support was found to predict each of the outcomes tested, with solidarity and tact facework as generally the best specific predictors. The discussion extends existing research and theory about classroom communication's influence on student motivations and involvement.

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Sustaining the desire to learn: Dimensions of perceived instructional facework related to student involvement and motivation to learn

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Instructional communication research about student motivation generally fails to explain the mechanism by which communication influences learning motivations, while motivational theories in psychology and education focus almost exclusively on cognitive and structural explanations.

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Involvement the Cornerstone of Excellence

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Involvement the Cornerstone of Excellence

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Involvement the Cornerstone of Excellence

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(1985). Involvement the Cornerstone of Excellence. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 35-39.

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This article describes a project designed to ensure that class participation in a large introductory commercial law course is assessed fairly and reliably. The subjectivity often associated with this type of assessment is minimized by involving students in the specification of clear criteria and the assessment process as they were asked to assess themselves and their peers. Formative feedback is given mid‐way through the semester so that students have the opportunity to take remedial measures where necessary and teachers can reinforce positive behaviour. The data are analyzed to determine the relationships between the assessments given by the students, their peers and tutors. There is evidence of some gender bias in Week 13 that is not consistent with the final marks. Finally, the combining of the individual assessment of the criteria is shown to be a good estimate of the final class participation mark given by the tutors and the students.

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Student involvement in assessment: a project designed to assess class participation fairly and reliably

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This article describes a project designed to ensure that class participation in a large introductory commercial law course is assessed fairly and reliably. The subjectivity often associated with this type of assessment is minimized by involving students in the specification of clear criteria and the assessment process as they were asked to assess themselves and their peers.

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Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement

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Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement

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The assessment of students an activity central to the role of any professional in further and higher education, and is an area that is the subject of constant innovation and debate.
This book provides a scholarly account of the many facets of assessment, with a particular focus on student involvement. Peer and self-assessment are powerful assessment tools to add to the existing tutor-based methods of assessment and feedback, and this book is a comprehensive guide to the the methods and issues involved.
Practical and accessible in style, yet grounded in research and rich in evidence-based material, Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement will be valued by all FE or HE professionals wanting to enhance both the effectiveness and quality of their assessment methods.

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Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement

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The assessment of students an activity central to the role of any professional in further and higher education, and is an area that is the subject of constant innovation and debate. This book provides a scholarly account of the many facets of assessment, with a particular focus on student involvement.

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Fluency & Remembering (Haughton Learning Center)

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Offers two distinct approaches to oral reading instruction that can be incorporated into primary-grade literacy curricula and includes lesson plan ideas, vignettes and examples, and reproducibles.

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Idea: Analyzing the Effect echo reading on Fluency

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Idea: Analyzing the Effect echo reading on Fluency

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Idea: When do students choose to practice fact fluency
during center time?

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Idea: When do students choose to practice fact fluency
during center time?

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Idea: Using read alouds to promote/improve written responses to literature

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Idea: Using read alouds to promote/improve written responses to literature