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Student Self-Assessment | Teaching Commons

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A valuable process on its own, self-assessment may be paired with peer assessment. Applying knowledge gained through peer assessment, students' self-assessment can be a potent next step in actively promoting their own learning and achievement.

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This Glossary explains influences related to student achievement published in John Hattie's Visible Learning for teachers (Hattie 2012; 251ff). You can find an older list of influences related to student achievement in Hattie (2009) Visible Learning.

1. Student Self-Reported Grades

Self reported grades comes out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform. In a video Hattie explains that if he could write his book Visible Learning for Teachers again, he would re-name this learning strategy " Student Expectations " to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teacher finding out what are the student's expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability.
Example for Self-reported grades: Before an exam, ask your class to write down what mark the student expects to achieve. Use this information to engage the student to try to perform even better.
Hattie cites five meta-studies:

Mabe/West (1982): Validity of self-evaluation of ability (Abstract)

Fachikov/Boud (1989): Student Self-Assessment in Higher Education (Abstract)

Ross (1998): Self-assessment in second language testing (Abstract)

Falchikov/Goldfinch (2000): Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education (Abstract)

Kuncel/Crede/Thomas (2005); The Validity of Self-Reported Grade Point Averages, Class Ranks, and Test Scores (Abstract)

2. Piagetian programs

Piagetian programs are teaching methods based on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and his concept of children's stages of learning. The meta-study of Jordan and Brownlee (1981) that Hattie cites found that in primary school age there is a close correlation between the performance on Piagetian tests of the thinking level and achievement tests in mathematics and reading.

The Piagetian stages include:

Sensorimotor stage (new born - 2 years old): Infants learn by the basic senses including seeing, hearing and touching and construct an understanding of the world by coordinating those experiences with physical, motoric actions.

Pre-operational stage (2 - 7 years old): Children are able to understand basic concepts and symbols, but do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information.

Concrete operational stage (7-12 years old): Children in these ages start solving problems in a more logical fashion but abstract, hypothetical thinking has not yet developed.

Formal operational stage (12 years old onwards): Children and adolescents develop abstract thinking and are able to perform hypothetical and deductive reasoning.

Watch this video to find out and see how children in different ages think differently.
Example for Piagetian programs: Focus on the thinking processes rather than the outcomes and do not impose the adult thinking process on to children.
Hattie cites one meta-study: Jordan and Brownlee (1981) Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Piagetian and School Achievement Tests. ( Abstract)

3. Response to intervention

Response to intervention (RTI) is an educational approach that provides early, systematic assistance to children who are struggling in one or many areas of their learning. RTI seeks to prevent academic failure through early intervention and frequent progress measurement. Watch this video to learn more about Response to intervention.
Examples and more information for Response to intervention: www.interventioncentral.org
4. Teacher credibility

According to Hattie teacher credibility is vital to learning, and students are very perceptive about knowing which teachers can make a difference. There are four key factors of credibility: trust, competence, dynamism and immediacy. In an interview Hattie puts it like that: "If a teacher is not perceived as credible, the students just turn off."
Examples for teacher credibility: Earn trust by showing trust towards pupils. Appear highly organised in the presentation of the subject matter. Develop a powerful style of speaking that uses few verbal hesitancies such as "OK" or "you know". Reduce distance between teachers and students by moving or moving away from barriers (e.g., desk, podiums). Source: cie.asu.edu
5. Providing formative evaluation

According to Hattie (2012) and Black & Wiliam (2001) formative evaluation refers to any activity used as an assessment of learning progress before or during the learning process itself. In contrast with formative assessment, the summative assessment evaluates what students know or have learned at the end of the teaching, after all is done. Watch this video to learn more about the difference between formative and summative assessment methods. In another video you can learn from teachers who describe their experience with formative evaluation.
Example for formative evaluation: Spend the same amount of time or even more on formative assessment as you spend on summative assessment. Give descriptive feedback to students: What is the goal? Where are you in relation to it? What can you do to close the gap?
Hattie cites two meta-studies:

Fuchs & Fuchs (1986): Effects of systematic formative evaluation (Abstract)

Burns & Symington (2002): A Meta-analysis of Prereferral Intervention Teams: Student and Systemic Outcomes (Abstract)

6. Micro-teaching

Micro-teaching is a video recording of a lesson with a debriefing. The lesson is reviewed in order to improve the teaching and learning experience. In Visible Learning Hattie describes micro-teaching as a practice (often in laboratory settings) that "typically involves student-teachers conducting (mini-) lessons to a small group of students, and then engaging in a post-discussion about the lessons" (Hattie 2009, 112). You can find plenty of microteaching videos on Youtube to get an idea of this method ( example). Technical aspects are less important than the later analysis which allows teachers to get a microscope-view on your own teaching. Under the guidance of a supervisor, the student-teacher is first asked to present a self feed back of his mini lesson, then the team gives feedback to provide positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.
Examples for micro-teaching: Since its invention in the 1960s at Stanford University by Dr. Dwight Allen, microteaching has become an established teacher-training procedure in many universities and school districts. You can find more information on micro-teaching here or here.

Hattie cites four meta-studies:

Butcher (1981) An experimental investigation of the effectiveness of a value claim strategy unit for use in teacher education (Unpublished M.A. Macquarie University Sydney)

Yeany/Padilla (1986): Training science teachers to utilize better teaching strategies (Abstract)

Bennett (1987): The effectiveness of staff development training practices (Unpublished Ph.D. University of Oregon)

Metcalf, K. K. (1995). Laboratory experiences in teacher education (Abstract)

7. Classroom discussion

Classroom discussion is a method of teaching, that involves the entire class in a discussion. The teacher stops lecturing and students get together as a class to discuss an important issue. Classroom discussion allows students to improve communication skills by voicing their opinions and thoughts. Teachers also benefit from classroom discussion as it allows them to see if students have learnt the concepts that are being taught. Moreover, a classroom discussion creates an environment where everyone learns from each other. In this video by Heather Joseph-Witham you can see how to lead a classroom discussion effectively.
Examples for an effective classroom discussion: Create a series of questions for the students to think about. Allocate enough time in the lesson for an elaborate discussion. Make sure that students can freely express their opinion without being laughed at or ridiculed. You can find helpful tips on planning, moderating and reflecting on classroom discussion in a paper by William E. Cashin (PDF).
8. Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students

The presence of learning disability can make learning to read, write, and do math especially challenging. Hattie admits that "it would be possible to have a whole book on the effects of various interventions for students with learning disabilities" (Hattie 2009, 217) and refers to a meta-study of Swanson, Hoskyn and Lee (1999). To improve achievement teachers must provide students with tools and strategies to organize themselves as well as new material; techniques to use while reading, writing, and doing math; and systematic steps to follow when working through a learning task or reflecting upon their own learning. Hattie also discusses studies which found that "all children benefited from strategy training; both ths with and those without intellectual disabilities."
Examples for effective interventions for students with learning disabilities: One strategy discussed in a paper by Neil Sturomski: "Teaching Students With Learning Disabilities To Use Learning Strategies" (PDF) is called "DEFENDS". This strategic approach helps secondary students write a composition in which they must take a position and defend it (Ellis, 1994). Each letter stands for a strategic step: You can find further information in a papber by H. Lee Swanson and Donald Deshler (2003): Instructing Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: Converting a Meta-Analysis to Practice (PDF)
D ecide on audience, goals, and position
E stimate main ideas and details
F igure best order of main ideas and details
E xpress the position in the opening
N ote each main idea and supporting points
D rive home the message in the last sentence
S earch for errors and correct
9. Teacher clarity
Examples for teacher clarity, learning goals and success criteria: This short video provides a great example for a lesson intended to let students write a good "How-to book". The teacher explains how to develop and set clear learning goals and success criteria before the students actually start the writing activity.
Hattie defines teacher clarity quoting the (unpublished) work of Fendick (1990) as "organization, explanation, examples and guided practice, and assessment of student learning - such that clarity of speech was a prerequisite of teacher clarity." (Hattie 2009, 126) One of the main points of Hattie's books about Visible Learning is the importance to clearly communicate the intentions of the lessons and the success criteria. Clear learning intentions describe the skills, knowledge, attitudes and values that the student needs to learn. Teachers need to know the goals and success criteria of their lessons, know how well all students in their class are progressing, and know where to go next.

Hattie cites one meta-study:

Fendick (1990): The correlation between teacher clarity of communication and student achievement gain (Unpublished Ph.D. University of Florida)

10. Feedback
Examples: Related to the notion of "feed up, feed back and feed forward" teachers must answer three feedback questions: "Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?" Constantly ask the students in order to maximize the feedback from the learner back to the teacher. Create a classroom climate where error is welcomed. In this short video John Hattie talks about what feedback means and how to make feedback work effectively for learning in the classroom.

According to Hattie and Timperley (2007) feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative. They developed a model of effective feedback that identifies the particular properties and circumstances that make it work. Feedback on task, process and self regulation level is far more effective than on the Self-level (e.g. praise wich contains no learning information). Descriptive feedback is closely related to providing formative assessment (see above). In an interview Hattie emphasized that the most powerful feedback is that given from the student to the teacher. This feedback allows teachers to see learning through the eyes of their students. It makes learning visible and facilitates the planning of next steps. The feedback that students receive from their teachers is also vital. It enables students to progress towards challenging learning intentions and goals.

Glossary by Sebastian Waack. Follow me on Twitter. Always happy to talk!

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Glossary of Hattie's influences on student achievement - VISIBLE LEARNING

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This Glossary explains influences related to student achievement published in John Hattie's Visible Learning for teachers (Hattie 2012; 251ff). You can find an older list of influences related to student achievement in Hattie (2009) Visible Learning. 1. Student Self-Reported Grades Self reported grades comes...Read more ›

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Self reported grades comes out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform: so where does that leave us?

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Video

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Sean McComb uses various methods to give students personalized and customized feedback on their writing. He starts his class with a mini-lesson as a way to provide feedback to all his students. Next, students move into a workshop model where they access feedback through highlights on their papers, voice notes, student models or one-on-one conferences.

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Edutopia

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Feedback: The Long View - Does Feedback Improve Learning?

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Feedback: The Long View - Does Feedback Improve Learning?

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Susan Brookhart

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by 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. The "long view" of feedback, using the metaphor of a telescope lens, helps us remember to focus on the consequences of feedback. Did the feedback improve student learning?

Feedback is effective if it "feeds forward" (Moss & Brookhart, 2009, pp. 44-59)-if it "is used by the learner in improving performance" (Wiliam, 2011, p. 120). Actually, there is still debate in the field of formative assessment as to what constitutes "formative"-does the feedback have to change performance or is it enough that the feedback could be used to change performance? To my mind, this distinction matters little when you are giving feedback to a student with the intention of feeding learning forward. If some positive consequence for learning does not ensue, then the feedback has failed in its purpose. That doesn't have to be cause for weeping and wailing-just keep trying. Try to learn from the failure. What was the cause? Did the student not understand the feedback? Was the feedback too much or too little? Did the student understand but not have an opportunity to do revisions or do further studying in a timely fashion? Whatever the cause, learn from it and adjust your feedback accordingly.

What the Research Shows

I'd like to start the research section of this chapter with a personal story. I have done some research about students' uses of formative assessment information myself. I was interested in how students interpret the feedback that is available to them and what they do with it. This research was part of a broader research agenda that sought to describe how classroom assessments of various sorts affected student learning and motivation. As part of that research, I interviewed elementary, middle, and high school students about their classroom assessments and their responses to them. The story I will tell here is about the high school students.

I visited classes in two high schools, and I talked with a variety of students. They ranged in socioeconomic background, attendance and behavior records, health and well-being, attitudes toward school-everything you can imagine. One of the things that struck me the most was that the successful students, most of whom were college-bound and intentionally applied themselves to their studies, used every bit of information they could get-whether it was intentional feedback or not-to move their learning forward. If students are to improve, they must develop an increasingly complex understanding of themselves as learners, of their learning goals and the criteria for success, and of strategies that help them improve. Successful students test their concepts of themselves as learners and of the quality of their work against the evidence they get in their feedback. Successful students are willing to have the quality of their work confirmed or challenged, knowing they have the means to meet the challenge (Brookhart, 2001). Conversely, the less successful students were more likely to see assessment and feedback as under their teacher's control, not their own.

I wish you could have been there with me as I talked with the successful students. If you are a teacher, you have met some of these students yourself. There was the shy senior in the Anatomy class who had just heard the day before that she was accepted into Harvard. There was the ebullient sophomore in an English class who acknowledged that he didn't think he was going to enjoy a poetry-writing assignment because he didn't really like poetry, but once he got into it found that "it wasn't that bad and I enjoyed it" (Brookhart, 2001, p. 165). There was the sweet 11th grader who used her interview and research assignment to find out more about what life must have been like for her great-grandfather, who had died two years before. These students, with the help of their teachers, all saw that the information about their learning conveyed by their classroom assessments was useful to them. They all figured out ways to use the information themselves. It was so wonderful to share the insights of these proactive, self-regulated learners.

One of the main points of this chapter is that you can scaffold this kind of experience with formative feedback for all students. You can, and should, deliberately plan lessons that include opportunities for students to use feedback. These opportunities can be structured to help students learn how to self-regulate-how to monitor their learning, incorporate feedback into their thinking, and adjust their next steps.

Some research suggests that the weakest link in the formative assessment chain is teachers' use of feedback. Heritage, Kim, Vendlinski, and Herman (2009) found that teachers were better at drawing conclusions about students' understanding from assessment information than they were at designing the next steps in instruction. If teachers have a hard time deciding on the next step based on formative assessment information, how much harder will it be for students? And yet some teachers routinely give students feedback that they intend to be used "next time" they do something.

"Next time" feedback is ineffective. The longer the time between receiving feedback and recalling it, much less using it, the more the feedback message fades from specific descriptions and suggestions to a general memory of evaluation. As much as we would like to believe it, students will not memorize our feedback and call it to mind the next time it is relevant. We have to structure those opportunities for students by planning immediate opportunities for students to use the feedback. We have to take the "long view" for feedback to be effective.

Recall from Chapter 5 that the last phase of the self-regulation of learning process is reaction and reflection. The last phase of the formative assessment cycle is "Where to next?" Taking the long view of feedback, not just giving feedback but following up with opportunities for students to use it, connects theory and practice. And, simply, it works.

Strategies for Helping Students Use Feedback

Using feedback from teachers does not come naturally to all students, but you can teach them to do it. You can also harness the usefulness of the feedback that comes from self- and peer assessment, both of which have their place and also their limits. Figure 6.1 summarizes the strategies discussed here.

Figure 6.1. Strategies to Help Students Learn to Use Feedback

Model giving and using feedback yourself.

Teach students where feedback comes from.

Teach students self- and peer-assessment skills.

Increase students' interest in feedback because they own it.

Teach students to answer their own questions and develop self-regulation skills, necessary for using any feedback.

Be clear about the learning target and the criteria for good work.

Use assignments with obvious value and interest.

Explain to students why an assignment is given.

Make directions clear.

Use clear rubrics.

Have students develop their own rubrics, or translate yours into "kid-friendly" language.

Design lessons that incorporate using the rubrics as students work.

Design lessons in which students use feedback on previous work to produce better work.

Provide opportunities for students to redo complex assignments.

Give new but similar assignments for less complex learning targets.

Give opportunities for students to make connections between the feedback they receive and the improvement in their work.

Ideally, both self-assessment (internal feedback) and teacher feedback (external feedback) should help students control their learning. New concepts and skills will require more teacher regulation, including teacher feedback that describes performance and also suggests strategies for improvement. The strategies you suggest and model will become part of the students' repertoire for practicing that skill. The criteria you describe in your feedback will become part of the students' own criteria for viewing that kind of work. Gradually more and more self-assessment should occur: as concepts become more familiar, students come up with their own learning strategies, and less teacher feedback is needed.

Modeling How to Give and Use Feedback

Modeling is one of the best ways to teach. It's more than a classroom strategy; it's embodied in our culture, in sayings we use all the time to illustrate life lessons. "Practice what you preach" charges people to model. "Do as I say, not as I do" is an admission that when we don't practice what we preach, there is little reason for others to do what we advocate.

You can model giving and using feedback as part of lessons. I once observed a high school poetry lesson during which the teacher showed students a poem she had written, the comments of a friend, and then the revisions she had made. The students discussed why the changes were improvements and what the teacher had done in order to follow the suggestions. She provided something of a think-aloud about her decisions as a writer as she revised her poem after the feedback. She described what she was trying to express (it was a poem about darkness) and what effect she wanted the poem to have on her readers. Then she described the process of considering each suggestion with that in mind and deciding how to revise her poem accordingly.

You can also model openness to criticism by creating a classroom environment in which constructive criticism is expected and where "mistakes" are recognized as opportunities to learn-for you as well as your students. You express this attitude in your tone of voice and type of comment, in the opportunities for revising work and demonstrating improvement that you provide, and in your handling of that improvement. If a student is made to feel bad even after demonstrating improvement, openness to further constructive criticism is less likely.

Teaching Self-Assessment Skills

Self- and peer-assessment skills may not come naturally. These skills are best taught in context, in lessons that use a self-assessment strategy to provide students with information about their own work that they can see is useful and helps them improve. This approach teaches students where feedback comes from. They will learn the strategy at the same time as they learn how to improve their project, writing assignment, math problem solving, or whatever they are working on.

Self-assessment increases students' interest in feedback because the feedback is "theirs"; it answers their own questions and helps them to develop the self-regulation skills necessary for using any feedback. Some research evidence suggests that self-assessment is more powerful for learning than peer assessment (Sadler & Good, 2006). The reason seems to be related to self-regulation. In self-assessment, students practice how to monitor, evaluate, and make plans about their own work in relation to a learning target. This, of course, is the goal of learning, whether it's called "self-assessment" or not.

Reviews of the self-assessment research (Andrade & Brown, 2016; Andrade & Valtcheva, 2009; Brown & Harris, 2013; Falchikov & Boud, 1989; Ross, 2006) report that students who are more competent self-assessors are more humble in their self-evaluations. High achievers tend to underestimate, while low achievers tend to overestimate, their performance as compared with teacher ratings. And in general, most students are accurate in their evaluation of how well they have done on tests. Training and practice in self-assessment, opportunities to discuss criteria, the nature of the task and criteria (simple and concrete tasks work best), and experience with the subject, as well as age and student ability, all affect the quality of self-assessment.

Andrade and Valtcheva (2009) argued that self-assessment can increase both learning and self-regulation of learning. They also found that students' attitudes toward self-assessment were only negative when the self-assessment was used for grading (summative assessment). Ross (2006) and Brown and Harris (2013) also emphasize the intimate connection between self-assessment and self-regulation of learning. Self-assessment enhances an internal locus of control, supports self-referencing over norm-referencing, and leads to improved self-efficacy, engagement, behavior, and student-teacher relationships.

An Example from Elementary Math

One way to help students organize self-assessment and use it as feedback is to have them keep records of their performance and reflect on it. In one 3rd grade class, a teacher had her students make bar graphs to record each successive week of quiz scores on the multiplication facts, for 10 weeks. They also predicted how they would do the following week. Figure 6.2 shows what these "Minute Math" graphs looked like.

Figure 6.2. "Minute Math" Student Graph

Source: From Formative Assessment Strategies for Every Classroom (2nd ed., p. 216), by Susan M. Brookhart, 2010, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

In conjunction with the graphs, the teacher used a lesson plan designed to help the students reflect on their performance and make plans for what to do to improve the next week. Each week as they were doing their graphing, she asked them to think about where they were now (their current quiz score), their goal (their predicted quiz score for the next week and something they needed to learn to reach it (for example, "my seven tables")), and what they would do to reach their goal. To start their thinking, she gave them choices of study strategies that might help: study flash cards, play multiplication games, study with parents, write a number sentence, use repeated addition, draw a picture, or make an array. Students had to say which of these was the strategy they had used most last week; say how well they had followed through with that strategy; decide whether the strategy was working or not; and, based on that decision, plan to either stick with their strategy or switch to a new one. The following week they had the opportunity to evaluate again how well their strategy worked.

Notice that in this series of lessons the teacher didn't give the feedback herself. She was not in a position to know the feedback information that was needed-which study strategies each student had used and whether they had worked to the student's satisfaction. What she did do was structure repeated opportunities for self-assessment and for using the feedback thus generated. After 10 weeks, the students were accustomed to asking themselves these questions. They were used to connecting the amount and type of effort they had expended with performance. And after going through them for 10 weeks, they had internalized that list of math study strategies. These are great "learning how to learn" outcomes in their own right, but you will not be surprised to hear that everyone in the class learned the multiplication facts as well.

Teaching Peer-Assessment Skills

Research on peer assessment in higher education has been reviewed thoroughly (Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000). Much of the research has been about peer-teacher scoring agreement (Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000; van Zundert, 2010). However, the learning, performance, and interpersonal aspects of peer assessment in higher education have also been studied (Topping, 1998; van Gennip, 2009; van Zundert, 2010). Peer-assessment skill does not "come naturally"; training in how to do peer assessment improves its outcomes (van Zundert, 2010). Students who receive better feedback derive more learning benefits from peer feedback (van Gennip, 2009). Social embarrassment and peer qualifications as evaluators are potential issues (Topping, 1998).

Panadero (2016) and Topping (2013) reviewed research on K-12 peer assessment. Panadero (2016) showed that traditional research on peer assessment has mostly been concerned with the reliability and validity of summative scores, but more recent research has treated peer assessment as a form of collaborative learning. He found that students have some concerns about peer assessment and that a friendship bias exists in peer assessment scoring. Topping (2013) found the research base for peer assessment as a support of learning to be weak; there was little evidence suggesting that it supported learning at the elementary level, although there was some evidence that it did so at the secondary level. Secondary students questioned the value of peer assessment and noted that the feedback from peer assessment may not be accurate. Affirming and suggestive peer feedback has positive effects on learning, but didactic and corrective feedback has negative effects. Both Panadero (2016) and Topping (2013) concluded that, despite the difficulties, peer assessment should be pursued as a collaborative learning strategy. They both advise more investment in collaborative and formative peer assessment and a move away from peer grading.

I also see a use for peer assessment as part of the formative learning process, as long as it is handled carefully. As students participate in peer assessment, they are practicing applying the criteria for good work. This practice builds general knowledge about the learning target more than individuals' skill at meeting it. Peer assessment also contributes to creating a classroom environment that values feedback and constructive criticism. Because peer assessment may not be the most direct path to improving students' own learning, it should be used when the purpose of a lesson is to provide external feedback to classmates about some work they will then have an opportunity to revise.

Ground Rules for Peer Editing

Peer editing of writing or peer review of projects or assignments can be fun for all and a great source of second opinions, or it can be a waste of time. Peer editing skills improve with practice, and some ground rules help. You could make a list of ground rules and post them or pass them out as a handout. The list in Figure 6.3 is just a suggestion; adjust the list for your own students.

Figure 6.3. Ground Rules for Peer Editing

Read your peer's work carefully.

Compare the work with the rubric.

Talk about the work, not the person.

Don't judge (e.g., don't say, "That's bad"); rather, describe what you think is good about the work and what's missing or could be done better.

Make specific suggestions.

Tell what you think, and then ask what the author thinks.

Ground rules for peer editing can become the basis for a role-play lesson. Select a pair of students (or a larger group-however many students you use to peer edit) to role-play peer editing in front of the class. Give each student a copy of your ground rules, and give each of the role-play students a copy of some work-either real work or something everyone would be familiar with, such as "Little Red Riding Hood" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Arrange the desks as you would for a real peer editing session, and ask the students to role-play peer editing each other's papers while the rest of the class watches.

Without letting the class know you've done so, ask each of the students to pick one of the ground rules to break during the role-play. For example, a student breaking the third rule might say things like "You idiot! This is the worst paper I ever saw!" A student breaking the fifth rule might say something like "This is nice" and not give any more feedback, such as explaining why it was nice or what to do next. After the role-play, ask the class if they can identify which rule or rules were broken and tell why. In discussion, ask students to identify the effect that breaking that rule had on the usefulness of the peer editing. Use one role-play or several, until students have had a chance to understand and internalize the ground rules.

Peer Assessment of Class Presentations

For class presentations, usually at least one of the criteria on a rubric has to do with how clear and understandable the presentation was to the audience. The class is in a good position to give feedback about that aspect of a presentation.

For peer assessment of class presentations, make sure the students are familiar with the rubric or whatever framework you are using to structure the feedback (for an example, see the rubric in Figure 3.5). Using some sort of rubric or statement of criteria is important for focusing class observations. Usually you would not simply say, "What do you think about this presentation?" You would ask students to give feedback about how well they thought the presentation met certain criteria. The best way for the class to become familiar with the criteria is to have them available as a guide as they work on their own presentations.

As each group makes its presentation, have class members who are not in the presenting group record their view of the quality of the presentation using the rubric and also write at least one observation. The ground rules used for peer editing can be adapted here. The observation should be about the work and describe what is good about the presentation (based on the criteria) as well as what's missing or could be done better. After each group has presented, give students some group work time to review the peer assessments. Ask each group to say what they think was the most helpful piece of peer feedback they received and what they are going to do differently for the next class presentation. And, of course, you need to assign another class presentation so students have an opportunity to use the feedback.

Be Clear About the Learning Targets and Criteria for Good Work

Establish clear learning targets and criteria for every lesson, then make sure the work students do to meet their targets embodies those targets and is well assessed according to the criteria; if not, redesign your assignments and criteria. High-quality assignments and rubrics or other criteria make possible good feedback. Feedback skills cannot make up for an assignment that is off the mark or work that isn't worth doing.

High-quality assignments and rubrics or criteria jumpstart good feedback. If students are mindful of the qualities of good work as they do their assignments, the feedback flows naturally from the process. Whatever the assignment is becomes the learning target for students, in a real sense. For example, when you ask a student, "What did you learn in school today?" the answer is not usually, "Our learning target was to properly use commas in compound sentences." It's more likely to be, "We did exercises about commas." If the assignment doesn't match your intended learning target in both content and cognitive level (recall versus higher-order thinking), your lesson will not end up teaching it. Further, you will not be able to give feedback on it. Feedback has to apply to the work students did, not the work they should have done.

Design assignments so they have certain characteristics. Each assignment should do the following:

Require students to use the content knowledge or skills specified in the lesson's learning target or longer-term learning goal

Require students to use the cognitive process (such as recall or higher-order thinking) specified by the learning target

Specify the criteria for good work (which will be the criteria for both feedback and final evaluation)

Provide students with complete and clear directions

Design your criteria so that they, too, match the learning target or goal. Your rubrics (or other statements of criteria) should do the following:

Require student work to demonstrate the content knowledge or skills specified in the learning target or goal

Require students to demonstrate the cognitive process (such as recall or higher-order thinking) specified by the learning target or goal

Be clear to students

Sometimes assignments themselves are well designed, but the criteria don't match. The classic example is the written report that requires research and writing but that is judged as much or more on the cover page and the mechanics as on the substance. If the rubrics don't assess the content and skill the assignment is meant to cover, the evaluation and feedback based on the rubrics won't be relevant to the learning goal.

"Kid-Friendly" Rubrics

The rubrics you use to guide and to evaluate student work may sound like "teacher speak" to students. For example, "Few mechanical errors are present, and those do not obscure meaning," or something like it, is a common description in rubrics about the mechanics of writing. If they used their own words for that same description, students might say something like this: "Not too many mistakes. It makes sense."

The rubric in Figure 6.4 is for written reports. It was designed for social studies reports, but it is general enough that it could be used for some reports in other subjects as well. It was written by a teacher according to the principles for writing good rubrics (Arter & McTighe, 2001; Brookhart, 2013). The teacher assigned students to write a report about some aspect of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The assignment specified that they select a topic, write a thesis sentence, and then support the thesis with the written report.

Figure 6.4. Teacher's Rubric for Written Projects

Suggested topics included the effect of the Lewis and Clark expedition on a particular state; the effect of the expedition on American Indians; the role of Thomas Jefferson in the expedition; and food, clothing, or shelter during the expedition. Students could pick a suggested topic or one of their own if the teacher approved it. Learning to write and support a thesis was one of the learning targets, as was learning how to do research and, of course, learning about the Lewis and Clark expedition. For example, the paper was not to be constructed as a paper "about" Jefferson's role in the expedition, but rather as a paper that began with and explored a thesis (for example, "The Lewis and Clark expedition would not have happened if Jefferson had not believed there would be both economic and scientific benefits from it"). The teacher provided some resources in the classroom and time for research in the school library. The final product was to be a written report stating the thesis, supporting it with information, and illustrating it with visuals (tables, charts, or pictures). The rubric in Figure 6.4 was provided as part of the assignment.

The rubric was appropriate for the goals of the assignment, and most of the students were able to understand it. Encouraging "kid-friendly" rubrics does not mean that most students really don't understand teacher-written rubrics. However, these rubrics are not phrased the way students would speak, and therefore won't do much to help students keep the criteria in mind for self-regulation as they work. And, important for this book, these rubrics are not phrased in a way that relates to how students will take in teacher feedback when it's given.

To help students understand the criteria, monitor work on their reports, and understand teacher feedback, the teacher prepared an exercise for the day she gave the assignment. After she presented the assignment itself, she put the students in groups of three or four. She gave each of them a copy of her rubric and a blank template. The template consisted of the same grid as the rubric, with the criteria titles and level numbers, but with the spaces for the descriptions of each level left blank.

The students "translated" the rubric into their own words, using their blank forms as worksheets and filling in one copy per group, with agreed-upon language, to turn in to the teacher. The teacher presented these as choices, and the whole class decided what they would list for each cell in the rubric. As needed, the teacher gave guidance and feedback orally during this discussion-for example, if the students seemed to have missed an aspect of one of the descriptions. The result was a kid-friendly rubric like the one in Figure 6.5, which was easier and more fun to use than the teacher's. The exercise also produced a deeper benefit.

Figure 6.5. Kid-Friendly Rubric for Written Projects

Understanding text and putting it into one's own words is the classic comprehension activity. An important result of this exercise was that the students understood the criteria and therefore were better able to exercise self-regulation as they worked and to understand feedback as a comparison of their work with the criteria.

Design Lessons Where Students Use Feedback

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 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.

For example, I once observed a 5th-grade teacher going over a math worksheet with problems to solve like 3002 − 284. The worksheet had 20 problems, and the student had done only 12 of them correctly. In the eight problems he got wrong, the issue was always borrowing across multiple digits. As the rest of the class was working, the teacher gave feedback in the form of working through the first of the eight incorrect problems with the student, having him articulate what she was doing at each step. Then, the teacher asked the student to work through the next incorrect problem himself, still articulating what he was doing at each step. Finally, the teacher gave the student an assignment: rework the other six incorrect problems using the same logic and strategy for borrowing. The revised assignment was not graded, although the teacher did review it and give the student more feedback: he had used his strategies well and had only one problem that was still incorrect, this time because of a copying error when he borrowed.

Now that the teacher and the student know the student has improved in borrowing across multiple digits, they will monitor the next practice work, and eventually the student will show his mastery on a test that will count in his grade. Notice that the teacher designed these instructional steps in such a way that the student got to use feedback for learning, in assignments that gave him a chance to see himself improving, and only then, finally, take a test that reported this learning.

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:

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

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

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

Make sure students 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."

Formative Use of Summative Assessments

The intention of feedback is to be formative, to help students learn, and the best use of feedback happens before work is submitted for grading. However, some excellent opportunities for providing feedback come after summative events. Good students will take this feedback information, tuck it into their repertoires, and move on. All students can benefit from feedback on summative assessment if you provide another opportunity to incorporate it.

For certain kinds of assignments, offering students the opportunity to redo the assignment after feedback can work. Assignments that are about developmental learning goals (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 (more similar, but not identical, problems about borrowing across multiple digits, for example), or another assignment that requires knowing the same content.

Giving Feedback When Returning a Test or an Assignment

Make sure you go over the last unit's test or assignment before launching into the next unit or assignment. Feedback isn't "feedback" unless it can truly feed something. Information delivered too late to be used isn't helpful. Make sure when you give feedback that there is time built in to actually use the information. Otherwise students will quickly learn to ignore feedback.

Clarify the relationship between the learning target and what you're doing when you give group feedback. Be explicit. For example, "I want you all to be able to ... so we need to review ...." Go over the test questions or assignment, giving special emphasis to patterns of results and the particular group strengths and weaknesses they illustrate. Invite students to review their feedback on individual assignments or to analyze their test results for more specific information on their own needs.

Students quickly learn that a test is an important evaluation that becomes part of their grade. For that reason, many students focus on the grade and stop there. Thus, tests are usually full of information that does not get used. An analysis of test results can be a gold mine of information, but only if students know that they will get a chance to use the information, that it isn't too late to profit from the feedback.

You can structure a test so it is a learning opportunity instead of a "final word" on learning. Formative Assessment Strategies for Every Classroom (Brookhart, 2010) includes a tool for going over tests as a small-group activity and suggests ways to use the information from that group work. Stiggins (2007) suggests ways to go over tests as an individual activity. The form in Figure 6.6 uses ideas from both sources and could be used as the basis of a self-assessment lesson after a multiple-choice test or a short-answer test with clear right and wrong answers. If the test is a multiple-choice test, put the key (A, C, D, B, and so on) in the "correct answer" column before using the form with students. The form can also be used for math tests or other constructed-response "right-answer" tests that have short answers. In that case, insert those correct answers (for example, "5 ft.," "4 sq. yds.") in the "correct answer" column.

Introduce the lesson by telling students that they are going to review their marked tests to see what they knew and did not know, according to the test, and to plan strategies for increasing their knowledge in the topic area. Ask students to brainstorm different reasons why someone might get an answer marked wrong. The students' reasons will probably include the following:

Typographical error (student knew the answer but for some reason didn't mark it correctly)

Careless mistake (student should have known the answer but read the question so quickly an important word was skipped, or some similar error related to work habits)

Misconception (student thought he or she knew the answer but was mistaken in his or her understanding)

Lack of knowledge (student truly did not know: sometimes phrased as "I had no clue")

Most students can identify when they made a marking error or a careless mistake and can distinguish that from a true error in understanding. Distinguishing a misconception from a lack of understanding is harder: after all, to recognize a misconception almost always means having already learned the proper conception. To use this form, tell students to simply distinguish between wrong answers that don't indicate a learning problem (typos and careless mistakes) and wrong answers that do.

Pass out marked tests and the review form and give students time to review their own work. Some students will need coaching to figure out what they might do. Students should be able to see that for careless errors, helpful strategies would include being more careful and checking work before turning it in. For misconceptions, helpful strategies would include different types of studying. Encourage students to look for patterns in their errors. Are all the "don't understand" items about one or two concepts or skills? Encourage students to be specific with their plans. "Study more" is too vague to be helpful. Students should be able to specify what they should study based on the kinds of questions they got wrong. Ideally they should be able to say whether they need to study a strategy (for example, how to do a particular type of math problem) or a concept (for example, the functions of the various parts of the leaf during photosynthesis), because the approaches to studying each are somewhat different. Students should be able to tell you what they are going to do during this studying.

Once students have reviewed their tests, decided why their wrong answers were wrong, and indicated what they might do about it, have a brief wrap-up session with the class to discuss the strategies they have come up with. Students will be interested in what you plan to do with the test grades. It is best if you can arrange for their feedback to do them some good. If another form of the test is available, you might follow this self-assessment session and some study time with a second version of the test and then record the better of the two grades.

As part of this lesson or as part of the original unit, have available strategies students can use that are appropriate for the unit material. Point students to helpful strategies as needed. Problem-solving strategies, for example, can be useful for certain kinds of math lessons or for other subjects. Study strategies range from the very specific, such as a mnemonic device to remember a particular set of facts or concepts, to more general study strategies like note taking, outlining, and the like. These strategies are more powerful than you might think. In elementary school I learned that "ROY G. BIV" spells the colors of the rainbow, and not only can I still recite "red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet," but I also remember "Roy" to this day. I also remember how to outline and take notes, long after some of what I outlined has passed out of my memory. Every discipline has strategies that students can use to help with learning. Knowing what these are and how to teach them is part of pedagogical content knowledge in that discipline.

Looking Forward

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.

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Feedback: The Long View-Does Feedback Improve Learning?

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by 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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What is the difference between formative and interim assessments? This chart provides a guide for distinguishing different kinds of student assessments.

Full Report: Understanding Formative Assessment: A Special Report
Formative Learning Assessment
Formative Diagnostic Assessment

Benchmark/Interim Assessment

Reporting by: Sarah D. Sparks | Design by: Lovey Cooper

Published in Print: November 11, 2015, as Comparing Assessments

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Types of Assessments: A Head-to-Head Comparison

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What is the difference between formative and interim assessments? This chart provides a guide for distinguishing different kinds of student assessments. Full Report: Understanding Formative Assessment: A Special Report Formative Learning Assessment Formative Diagnostic Assessment Benchmark/Interim Assessment Reporting by: Sarah D.

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9th Grade GPA May Be the Most Important Predictor of High School Success. Here's How.

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9th Grade GPA May Be the Most Important Predictor of High School Success. Here's How.

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Freshman year of high school, as nearly anyone can attest, is a lot to digest, from new locker combinations to lunchroom politics to catching the right bus and avoiding rowdy juniors.

Aside from those social concerns, there's increasing evidence that it is one of the most important academic years in students' lives. Freshman year grade point average is a powerful signal of how students will do in later years-and even whether they will enroll in college, a new research study says.

Or to put it in a more urgent way: When students experience a rough freshman year of high school, they usually don't recover from it.

The research, from the University of Chicago's Consortium on School Research, analyzed eight data cohorts of Chicago high school freshmen, from the entering classes of 2006 to 2013-more than 187,000 students in all. They looked at data including the students' school grades, test scores, and background information like race and the poverty status of the neighborhoods where they lived. Researchers John Q. Easton, Esperanza Johnson, and Lauren Sartain tracked the students' progress through high school and, where applicable, their college enrollment and retention rates.

They found clear achievement patterns based on freshman GPA. It was highly predictive of GPA in the 11th grade. It was also predictive of whether students would actually graduate, whether they would enroll in college, and whether they would remain in college after one year, with A- and B-level students generally doing better than students with lower GPAs.

GPAs were also a better predictor of outcomes than supposedly more objective test scores-in Chicago, on the ACT Inc.'s EXPLORE and PLAN, which are taken in 9th and 10th grades, respectively. The report found that freshman GPA was nearly twice as predictive of high school graduation as performance on those two tests.

There were some important variations based on gender and race in the data. Girls, on average, had many more GPAs in the A and B range than boys, as did white and Asian students compared to their black and Hispanic peers. Taking honors classes correlated with higher grades. Depressingly, the report also shows that inequitable access to schools takes its toll on GPAs, too. Chicago's controversial selective high schools tend to have the highest number of students with GPAs in the A range, and chronically low-performing neighborhood high schools have the fewest.

In Chicago, GPAs have risen over the past decade, which has raised fears that the increases are due to grade inflation rather than genuine improvement. The report doesn't attempt to answer that question, but it notes that those rises have been coupled with other positive trends, such as higher 8th grade scores, ACT scores, improved student attendance, and a decline in suspensions. That would suggest that some of the improvement is due to better academic performance, though it's not conclusive evidence.

Closing the 'GPA Gap'

The report's takeaway is that Chicago's focus on freshman grades is probably a good idea. And although teachers don't use standardized criteria when they give out their A's, B's, and C's, they seem to be picking up both academic performance and social factors, such as effort and attitude, that contribute to success.

What gets trickier is that, while these patterns exist, there's less data to explain exactly why freshman GPA is predictive of important outcomes for students. The researchers plan to look at things like attendance and discipline records to try to tease out more information on this. Perhaps, the report proffers, doing well as freshmen gives kids entry to more advanced courses later on in high school and college. Or perhaps teachers have higher expectations for students because of their high freshmen GPAs. Or maybe students develop greater confidence after experiencing initial success.

"We don't know which of these paths are true, but it seems likely that there are elements of 'success breeding success' at play," the researchers said.

For now, the reports' authors conclude, it may well be worth focusing on efforts to reduce the "GPA gap," in addition to the "achievement gap," which is more commonly measured by test scores.

More districts, like Chicago, are looking at "early warning" systems in that year, which seems a good place to start. And probably not coincidentally, Illinois' plan under the federal education law known as ESSA (or the Every Student Succeeds Act) would use a measure of whether 9th graders are on track to graduate as a school quality indicator.
Image: Getty For news on standards, curriculum, and testing, And sign up here to get alerts in your email inbox when stories are published on Curriculum Matters. Follow @Stephen_Sawchuk

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9th Grade GPA May Be the Most Important Predictor of High School Success. Here's How.

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Freshman year of high school, as nearly anyone can attest, is a lot to digest, from new locker combinations to lunchroom politics to catching the right bus and avoiding rowdy juniors. Aside from those social concerns, there's increasing evidence that it is one of the most important academic years in students' lives.

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Formative Assessment Efficiency, Summative Assessment Proficiency 

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Formative Assessment Efficiency, Summative Assessment Proficiency 

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David Ginsburg

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Education Week - Coach G's Teaching Tips

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I'm often surprised when teachers are surprised when their students perform poorly on tests. Sure there are kids whose scores belie their skills, such as those who have test anxiety or had a bad day or took the test on an empty stomach. For the most part, though, students' performance on tests is predictable based on their day to day performance in class. And that's the problem: teachers who are surprised by students' performance on tests often aren't assessing students' understanding in class as routinely or effectively as they need to be.

Routine, effective assessment means knowing what students know or don't know now. No waiting for the chapter test, much less a year-end standardized test. In fact, no waiting until you grade students' papers after class, since the time for timely formative assessment is during class when you can identify ASAP what students don't get and why they don't get it, and clear up their confusion right away.

One key to such in-the-moment assessment is circulating to see how students are doing as they're working on something in class--whether it's a five-minute "Do Now" or a 45-minute discovery activity. Just be sure when you do this to assess all students before you assist any students.

Another key to immediate, reliable assessment is effective questioning techniques. I've written before about one such technique, cold calling, and here are a few more:

Ask, Don't Tell. Ask questions through which you can pull information from students rather than provide it to them. Examples: give students diagrams of insects and arachnids (or, better yet, have them create their own), and ask them to identify similarities and differences rather than doing so for them; draw a few figures with lines of symmetry inserted and ask students what they think a line of symmetry is rather than define it for them up front. Same goes for discussing readings or interpreting graphs, where you'll get a better sense for students' understanding if you solicit their opinions and analysis before sharing yours.

Avoid Yes-No Questions. Ask questions that require students to say or show what they do or don't understand rather than if they understand. In other words, lots of what, why, and how questions rather than knee-jerk yes-no questions like "Does everyone understand?" or "Is everyone ready to move on?" or "Does this make sense?" I've noticed even when facilitating workshops that participants are more responsive when I ask, "What questions do you have?" than when I ask, "Any questions?" Similarly, it's better to ask, "What do you remember about...? " rather than "Do you remember...?"

Target Conceptual Understanding. Ask questions that assess and facilitate conceptual understanding before asking those aimed at procedural understanding. (Example: "What is perimeter?" rather than "What is the formula for perimeter?")

In my experience, teachers who assess students' understanding using these practices are rarely if ever surprised by their students' performance on tests. And more important, they're pleased with their students' performance on tests, since formative assessment efficiency on the part of teachers is a key to summative assessment proficiency on the part of students.

What questions do you have?

Image provided by Phillip Martin with permission
Join my mailing list for announcements about webinars and the work I do to improve teaching and learning.

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I'm often surprised when teachers are surprised when their students perform poorly on tests. Sure there are kids whose scores belie their skills, such as those who have test anxiety or had a bad day or took the test on an empty stomach.

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Andrew Miller

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With all the education action around Standards-Based Instruction, Understanding By Design, Assessment for Learning, Grading for Learning, Project-Based Learning, Competency-Based Instruction and more, we need to have a frank conversation about formative assessment and grading. This may be a difficult conversation to have.

Educators may end up mourning the loss of past practices and frameworks. It is a paradigm shift, and consequently, we need to have empathy for all stakeholders as transitions occur.

Grades for Everything?

Let me start off by making a clear distinction between two ideas, assessment and grading. They are not the same; they are related. We grade assessments, and assessments reflect learning that has occurred. However, the concept of grading and assessment is complicated, and has further been complicated by the many ways that education reform has manifested itself in the classroom.

Secondly, I want to be honest with all of you about my journey with this concept. When I first started teaching, I utilized both what I learned from my experience in the classroom as a student and from my student teaching. Everything was graded -- and I mean everything. Why did I do this? Well for one, that was my leverage to make students do the work I know they needed to do in order to be successful. The intention was good. In addition, this practice was normal for students, and they understood the routine. We know that routines provide stability, so I thought I was doing them a service by continuing to grade everything. I developed an elaborate system of weights to create what I thought was a clear system for parents, students and other stakeholders. Parents understood it, because it was the same system most them had experienced.

So what was the problem? Where do I start? I had no time. I was grading everything. I had so much paperwork because I was trying to give great feedback on everything in addition to grading and inputting the grades. Perhaps even worse, I wasn't focused on the larger problem. My students cared more about the points than they did about the class. They weren't engaged, and whose fault was that? It was mine. I was "cattle-prodding" them into doing work. It was punitive. "Don't do the work and your grade will suffer." I should have been focusing on my instruction and creating engagement lessons and projects for students to do.

Instead, I was clouding the issue of instruction with grading. I was putting the blame on students rather than on myself. That is a key reflective moment that every teacher should engage in when students are doing the work: What did I instructionally do, or not do, to engage all learners? Not, how can I make them do the work?

Changing the Conversation

What has changed? I don't grade formative assessments. Yes, you read that correctly. What do I do with them? I document them in the grade book, because I need evidence of progress for students, parents and myself. I give specific, focused feedback on the assignments I collect. I have students reflect on their formative assessments and set goals. I have conversations with students after completing a summative assessment; we reflect on the grade of the summative and how the formative relates to the grade they received on the summative. I facilitate moments where students and I connect a seemingly irrelevant assignment, like a comma worksheet, to a more authentic, relevant and engaging summative assessment. These are all things you need to be doing instead of grading.

Why don't I grade formative assessment? For one, a grade is supposed to answer the question: "Did the student learn and achieve the learning targets or standards?" If this is the case, then the summative assessment primarily represents achievement. Formative assessment is practice. It is part of the journey. I would feel evil if I punished a kid during practice and then, literally and figuratively, brought that punishment to his or her "A-Game" in the final match (summative assessment). We've all seen that happen. A student achieves on the summative assessment, but because of a mediocre performance on the formative assessments, they get a lower grade. Ethically, that is just plain wrong. If a student ended up achieving in the end, he or she should be rewarded for that achievement, not penalized for a failure during practice.

The Payoff

A couple of important notes: I do use formative assessment in two ways. If students don't do well or complete the summative, I use the formative to create a "progress" grade to input. It is good evidence, and can be used this way. In addition, if I am assessing the 21st century skill of Work Ethic, formative assessment can be utilized as part of that grade. If one of the quality indicators, for example, is "turning in work on time," then I can leverage formative assessment as part of that grade. You will notice, however, that the intent is different. The learning target is different.

I'm not saying this is an easy transition; it is a paradigm shift for everyone. Parents need to be educated, stakeholders need to be educated, students need to be educated, and teachers need to be educated -- and provided the space to wrestle with these ideas. I took a while to get to this place. However, the payoff feels better, both from an instructional and ethics standpoint, and also from a student achievement standpoint. My students often asked, "Wait, so you are only going to reward us at our best, not necessarily when we tried and failed?!?" Then they'd say, "Hmmm, I guess that makes sense" as the idea sunk in.

Is it time your grading practices made a little more sense? Formative assessment is about ensuring equity for all students. Thank you readers for being open to this conversation. Cognitive dissonance is healthy. As I like to joke in my workshops, "If I have made you a little uncomfortable, I've done my job."

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Courageous Conversation: Formative Assessment and Grading | Edutopia

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With all the education action around Standards-Based Instruction, Understanding By Design, Assessment for Learning, Grading for Learning, Project-Based Learning, Competency-Based Instruction and more, we need to have a frank conversation about formative assessment and grading. This may be a difficult conversation to have. Educators may end up mourning the loss of past practices and frameworks.

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Are Our Kids Ready for Computerized Testing?

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Are Our Kids Ready for Computerized Testing?

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Kristine Gullen

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6
Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 68-71

Kristine Gullen

Recently, my 21-year-old son faced a real-life task that made me think about the assessments connected to the Common Core standards that U.S. students will soon complete in elementary, middle, and high school. I had accompanied Nickolas to the airport to catch his flight for a semester abroad. At the ticket counter, the attendant told Nick, "Your flight to London has been cancelled. After getting through security, you can try to bump yourself onto a flight to get over to Europe, and then connect to a boat, train, or bus to get the rest of the way."

"What!" The mom in me exclaimed. Nick, however, had a huge grin on his face at the excitement of this unforeseen journey. He hugged me and said, "Mom, I'll call you when I get to the university." I stood there stunned, struggling to think of the steps to take in creating a new plan. But Nick was already walking toward the gate. He was up to the challenge of finding his destination. When Nick turned to wave, I had to smile: His shirt said, "Not all who wander are lost."

Needed: Knowledge, Synthesis, and Tech Skills

To get himself to London, Nick needed basic knowledge about airports, air and train travel, and the locations of European cities. He also needed to interpret and synthesize disparate bits of information and choose the best of several options-quickly. Students facing the performance tasks and questions being created by the consortia connected to the Common Core standards, Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), will also need to retrieve knowledge and synthesize it under pressure. Imagine how much harder Nick's task would have been if he had scant experience using the technology involved in modern travel, such as flight monitors, electronic check-in kiosks, or even escalators.

Inexperience with technology might frustrate many students taking the computerized Common Core assessments. As I recently realized after debriefing with hundreds of students who had participated in pilots of computerized assessment items, even many digital natives aren't versed in the skills needed to take online tests, such as moving a cursor, dragging text, or even keyboarding.

As teachers face the reality that students will need to demonstrate mastery of Common Core-aligned content and skills through computerized tests as early as fall 2014, we may feel stunned-just as I did when Nick's flight was cancelled. Although we've lived through many changes in curriculum and the tools used to facilitate learning, and we've often repeated, "This too will pass," this time feels different. Something is really changing.

So let's consider what that change means and how to get kids ready for the technical skills involved with these new assessments, using insights from those who've actually tried them.

In spring 2013, Michigan piloted some of the online assessment items from Smarter Balanced. As an education consultant, I support teachers and students in preparing for this new testing genre. I reasoned that the firsthand perspectives of students and educators who participated in the pilot would help me see what each group needs, so I arranged debriefing sessions in schools. I talked with more than 500 students who had just taken the pilot items-and with teachers who'd just administered them. Responding to a set of prepared questions, participants in grades 3, 6, 7, and 11 shared their take on the technology skills students will need to successfully demonstrate learning in this new format.

3rd Graders: "The Bubble in the Straw"

These post-pilot debriefing sessions revealed many technology skills that younger students, especially, will need to build before they can demonstrate proficiency through computerized tests. One debrief began with the question, "Suppose a student has never taken an online test: What computer skills would be important for that student to have before taking this test?"

Hands quickly shot up. Nine-year-old Ethan said, "The bubble in the straw was really important to learn about; my fingers wouldn't work." Looking around the room, I saw his classmates nodding their heads in agreement.

Puzzled, I asked, "What exactly did this bubble do?"

With much animation, Ethan pointed up, down, and side-to-side, "There are straws with a bubble on the side, on the bottom, and sometimes in the middle. You can move them this way and that. I had to use the arrow to move the bubble."

It became clear that these 3rd graders, many of whom were well versed in touchscreen devices, had just realized that putting a finger on the computer screen couldn't get the words to move. "Oh," I exclaimed, awareness dawning, "that's called a scroll bar, and, yes it's very important."

Brittney chimed in with an additional suggestion for needed learning: "The blinky line has to be in the box where you want your words to go. ... You can press the letters all you want, but nothing happens if the blinky line isn't in the box!" A show of hands revealed that more than half of these 3rd graders had struggled with how to use the cursor.

This exchange was a reminder that, even for tech-savvy students, a high level of competency on one device doesn't always transfer to another device or task. Using technology for demonstrating content knowledge is different from using it for entertainment.

Computerized and online assessments, educators are discovering, will require kids to have certain digital skills: using a mouse, highlighting text, dropping and dragging text, drawing lines and creating graphs on a screen, operating an online calculator, using scroll bars (the "bubble in the straw"), and keyboarding, to name a few. If we want an online assessment to capture a student's level of learning, rather than that student's ability to navigate technology, teachers must integrate these skills into their instruction, giving students practice before administering high-stakes exams on a computer.

Secondary Students: "Mighty Confusing"

I began my conversations with secondary students by asking, "When it comes to using technology, is there anything your teachers should know that would help other students be successful on this test?"

There was a consensus that negotiating the large amount of text and questions on the screen was a challenge, especially on small screens. Janal shared that several multistep problems

went on and on and combined stuff from all sorts of classes. ... it was mighty confusing at first. ... We had this split screen. I was scrolling on the left to look at information, then over to the screen on the right, scrolling to answer the questions ... back and forth, back and forth.

Students who had increased the font size (an accommodation option) found that this intensified the amount of scroll bar usage. Some realized-after the fact, unfortunately-that they needed to use the scroll bar on each question to check whether there was information beyond that shown on the initial screen.

Previewing the test format and directions regarding answer selection for each section would help test takers. Some students, relying on past experiences with standardized assessments in which each question had only one correct response, missed directions that changed this expectation. Ben, who hadn't read the directions carefully, shared, "It was confusing that the computer let you click on more than one answer. You had to be careful to unclick when you changed your mind or you could put in two or three answers to one question." "You have to pay attention," Kyle warned. "Many questions had more than one right answer. It was different from other tests where you search for the right answer and move on to the next question."

Students at all grade levels disclosed frustration with responses that required extended keyboarding skills. "There was more I could have said," Jacob noted. "There was plenty of time, and the box wasn't full. I just didn't want to type anymore." Many students reported choosing to shorten responses on constructed-response items because they lacked fluency with the keyboard.

Overall, however, students commented positively on computerized assessment, saying things like, "So much better than a paper test" and "I liked all the different questions; it wasn't the same boring thing over and over again."

Insights from Educators

Debriefing with teachers brought forth different perspectives. The self-sufficiency these items required was a main theme. One teacher reflected,

When it comes to the performance tasks, my apprehension isn't the rigor of the content; it's the independence and perseverance students need. I teach in chunks, with lots of feedback and support. These assessments expect kids to be very self-directed with large pieces of content and many complex tasks. ... I'm not sure they're ready.

Teachers also expressed concern about the length of items and kids' lack of keyboarding skills. They imagined the awkwardness test takers might feel using a new or different computer. Keys and spacing often feel different from one device to the next, and upgrading to a new device or operating system can be frustrating.

When I talked with educators at the district level, I found that logistics were a challenge for some. A few pilot sites reported difficulty obtaining enough devices to give the assessments or having to take over computer labs (and interrupt their use for instruction). Others had problems with the amount of bandwidth needed. Many thought they had sufficient Internet capacity-until 120 students logged on to take the assessment at once.

How to Get Students There

The new online assessments will challenge educators to ensure that students not only have learned certain things, but also can demonstrate their knowledge using technology and apply their learning to a variety of tasks-all without the direction of the teacher.

So, how do we get there? Here are five suggestions:

1. Enhance digital skills. Integrate technology into instruction to help strengthen students' computer skills and transfer those skills to academic tasks. For instance, you might teach students to summarize something they're reading by creating a word cloud (using www.wordle.net or www.tagul.com); or as they discuss common texts, have students share their comments and links to further content in a protected online space (like www.voicethread.com); or assign your kids to create a class website.

2. Assign cross-curriculum tasks. Create projects that connect multiple subjects so students get accustomed to using their knowledge flexibly across disciplines.

3. Promote self-sufficiency. Assign multidimensional tasks that scaffold a student's ability to persevere over an extended period while demonstrating learning independently. Teachers often require students to research a topic, write a report, and then present their findings. When I taught, I would break such a report into many steps and check students' work as many as 10 times along the way: several checks during the research process, a few more as learners create an outline, and a check after each of three drafts. All this support was great, but an educator giving a similar assignment now should have students complete bigger chunks of work before checking in and giving support-doing only five or so check-ins for the project and decreasing this to two or three for subsequent projects, working toward as much independent work as possible.

4. Provide practice and try out your technology. Give students opportunities to build a level of comfort with the actual keyboards, screens, external mouse or touch pads, and so on that they'll use during the assessment. Seek out opportunities to pilot upcoming web-based assessments from the Common Core consortia, or have all students take a different online test simultaneously to determine, firsthand, your system's capacity, strengths, and challenges.

5. Debrief. After piloting assessment items, hold dialogues like those described here to capture test takers' thoughts and recommendations for the skills and support students will need.

As the Common Core assessments approach, let's challenge ourselves to provide opportunities for students to independently apply the knowledge they'll need to meet the new standards-and indeed, to succeed in life. If students can't demonstrate mastery of content independently, what have they really learned?

Endnote

The schools connected to a secure browser for students to take the online items. The Bureau of Assessment and Accountability within the Michigan Department of Education supported this student-voice, post-pilot debriefing project.

Kristine Gullen is an education consultant in the School Quality and Learning Services Department at Oakland Schools in Waterford, Michigan.

KEYWORDS

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Are Our Kids Ready for Computerized Tests?

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6 Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 68-71 Kristine Gullen Recently, my 21-year-old son faced a real-life task that made me think about the assessments connected to the Common Core standards that U.S. students will soon complete in elementary, middle, and high school.

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High School

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Reading Strategies for Struggling Middle School

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4th Grade

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Powerful Method for Teaching Reading to Classroom of Students

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Conference with Bella (from Patrick Allen: What Are You Thinking? Conferring in Reader's Workshop)

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www.stenhouse.com/0880.asp Have you ever wanted to sit down beside a master teacher and see how he or she confers? In this DVD, join Patrick Allen, author of Conferring: The Keystone to Reader's Workshop, as he confers with nine different students over the course of two days.

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Reading & Writing Project - Lucy Callkins

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A Writing Conference: Teaching a Student to Write for Audience (3-5)

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This is "A Writing Conference: Teaching a Student to Write for Audience (3-5)" by tcrwp on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love...

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1st Grade

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Teaching Gradual Release of Responsibility

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The Joy of Conferring lets us focus in with Debbie Miller to see what happens at the individual level as she conducts reading conferences with her students.

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Reading & Writing Project - Lucy Calkins

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Peer Conferring: Students Teach Each Other to Revise in Order to Orient their Readers (3-5)

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This is "Peer Conferring: Students Teach Each Other to Revise in Order to Orient their Readers (3-5)" by tcrwp on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos...

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Conferring: Interview with Partick Allen (text & podcast)

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Conferring: Interview with Partick Allen (text & podcast)

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Choice Literacy

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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The time that I put into developing a structure that my conferences follow -- which I call the RIP format in the book -- I think that just having a structure to conferences really helped me realize that it was more than just sitting down and having a conversation.

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The Difference Between Conferring and Touching Base

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The Difference Between Conferring and Touching Base

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Debbie Miller

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Touching base is a good thing. That "little something in between" might be encouraging a child to keep at it, reminding a child to get back on track or asking a child if she's remembered what she learned in our conference yesterday to help her with her work today.

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The Art of Listening in Writing Conferences with English Language Learners

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The Art of Listening in Writing Conferences with English Language Learners

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Andie CunninghamandRuth Shagoury

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Listening to individual children in active writers' workshops is especially challenging, and understanding the words of students who speak a different first language than yours can be downright daunting. Here are some tips for mastering the art of listening in conferences with English language learners:

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The Characteristics of Formative Assessment in Science Education

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The Characteristics of Formative Assessment in Science Education

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Observing Formative Assessment in Mathematics (notice 4 additional  video links)

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Observing Formative Assessment in Mathematics (notice 4 additional  video links)

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Mathematics Assessment Project

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Formative Assessment Strategies in Mathematics

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Formative Assessment Strategies in Mathematics

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NCTM

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Observing Formative Assessment in Mathematics (notice 4 additional  video links)

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Observing Formative Assessment in Mathematics (notice 4 additional  video links)

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Mathematics Assessment Project

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Showcasing overall performance and progress, e-portfolios can serve many purposes. As a learning tool, a portfolio promotes student self-assessment and critical thinking about learning goals, and encourages sharing of work and feedback from others. For assessment purposes, a portfolio gives evidence of competency as defined by established performance standards.

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Can students learn more by assessing their progress?

Fifth grader Tacyana Thomas had put the finishing touches on a short paragraph. Now, she held her paper next to a model essay and compared her writing with her teacher's. Had she used evidence to back up her argument? Had she restated the thesis?

This was among the first of many times this school year that Tacyana will be asked to determine how her own work stacks up to a model. But she wasn't left to do so on her own. Tacyana and the rest of Maggie Martin's literacy class here at Gust Elementary School had just spent an entire lesson learning how to assess their own work using a rubric, a scoring guide that lays out what is expected of students.

Gust is one of a growing number of schools across the country where student self-assessment is one type of formative assessment that is woven into the school day. The idea is that just as teachers can teach more effectively if they check students' progress along the way, students can learn more effectively if they understand what they're working toward and where they are.

"You've heard lots about wanting student learning to rise," said Susan Brookhart, a Montana-based consultant and the coordinator of assessment and evaluation for the school of education at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania. "At some point, people said, 'Hey, wait a minute, kids have to be involved, too.'"

"Students aren't just empty heads to fill," Brookhart said. "They need to be aiming to learn something, not just aiming to comply with teachers' directions. Learning is much deeper if the student is thinking, 'I am doing this because it will help me learn this.' "

At its core, student self-assessment is driven by three basic questions, she said. Students are taught to ask themselves, "Where am I going, where am I now, and where to next?"

But equipping students with the tools to accurately answer those questions, and providing teachers with the tools to teach students how to answer them, is a more complex task.

Advocates of student self-assessment are careful to say what it is not. Students are not filling out their own report cards. Nor are they passively reflecting on their work. Ideally, they are in between; actively judging their work and progress toward a goal, and determining what steps to take to reach it.

Many of the tools of self-assessment are by now familiar to most teachers: Rubrics that clarify what level of work will earn which score, and objectives at the start of lessons that remind students what they're aiming to learn.

Making Assessment Goals Student-Friendly

But there is an art to creating just the right goals and models. Content standards are written for teachers, not students, so teachers must translate the content goals of a course into student-friendly language.

Perfecting that translation has been a focus of EL, formerly known as Expeditionary Learning, a school-design network that partners with 120 district and charter schools around the country, including Gust. The network refers to the goals as learning targets.

For instance, a standard that requires students to "understand the monetary value of coinage" might be translated into a learning target that says, "I can make change for a dollar using nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies." That target is in more kid-friendly language and contains within it the content laid out in the standard.

Ron Berger, the chief academic officer of EL, said that those targets must be accompanied by models of high-quality work. He gives the example of a ballet dancer. A student studying ballet has, ideally, seen excellent ballet dancers perform. As the student is working on skills and routines, the excellent dancer is a model and inspiration.

Berger said that in this way, a model doesn't have to stifle creative or innovative work.

"The most important assessment that happens in any building is not the state assessment," Berger said. "It's the assessment that's going on in a student's head every day, before she turns in work, when she thinks: Is this good enough?"

Heidi Andrade, an associate education dean at the University of Albany in New York, said that student self-assessment can help improve academic achievement.

"When you ask students to monitor the quality of their work on standards and criteria, not surprisingly, they do better," Andrade said.

There is some debate about whether students' self-assessments need to be accurate. Some believe it's critical for students to be able to accurately mark their progress, while others believe the process of reflecting, thinking carefully, and revising is more important, said Andrade, who is in the latter camp. The idea is that students are being taught how to be metacognitive-to reflect on their own thinking-and to approach learning with the attitude that they can grow.

Andrade, who helped develop and popularize the use of the rubric in K-12 schools, said that she is concerned that some rubrics are either too vague or too hard to understand. She said it is also crucial that self-assessment is followed up with a chance for students to revise and improve their work. "Otherwise," she added, "what's the point?"

Incorporating Data

Student self-assessment has gained traction at the same time that new technology and new assessments have provided teachers and schools with access to previously unimaginable amounts of data about students' performance, attendance, behavior, and more.

At many schools, students are given access to much of the same data as their teachers.

At Gust, Julia Padilla, a 5th grade math teacher, said she has seen a shift in the school's approach over her eight years there. "Students haven't always been aware of their progress," she said. "But now, they aren't surprised by the end result, and they feel they're more in control of it."

"The expectation is that not only are teachers using data, students are owning data," said Padilla. In her class, she said, students track their progress as they learn the multiplication tables and see their scores on standardized tests. She said students can even use behavior-tracking programs like Class Dojo to assess their own behaviors.

In Ms. Martin's class, Tacyana said the rubric "helps us understand more about what we're learning."

Principal Jamie Roybal said the idea of encouraging students to assess their own learning has become part of the school's culture. Self-assessment goes hand in hand with the idea that students can learn and grow, she said.

"It gives ownership and control of learning and growth back to students," Roybal said. At a staff meeting, Gust recently self-assessed its own performance in making time for student self-assessment, she said. "That's how much we're focusing on it."

That's not by chance. One component of the Denver district's framework for evaluating teachers is whether their students have the opportunity to self-assess.

Padilla said it takes time to teach students how to read rubrics or use systems to track their progress. But, she said, the shift is worth it. "I think students tracking their own data is key to getting students invested in their education," she said. "If they don't see the direct results in that moment, it's hard for them to know where to go."

Vol. 35, Issue 12, Page s12

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Students 'Self-Assess' Their Way to Learning

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Fifth grader Tacyana Thomas had put the finishing touches on a short paragraph. Now, she held her paper next to a model essay and compared her writing with her teacher's. Had she used evidence to back up her argument? Had she restated the thesis?

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Art and Science of Teaching / Using Polling Technologies to Close Feedback Gaps

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Art and Science of Teaching / Using Polling Technologies to Close Feedback Gaps

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Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6
Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 82-83

Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano

Despite the research on the positive effects of efficient and timely feedback, a significant time gap often exists between student responses to questions on an assessment and teacher feedback on those responses. Because teachers often take the assessments home to score by hand, the "feedback gap" can be at least a day and, in some cases, several days, a week, or more.

This lag time greatly diminishes the opportunity for students to think about their thinking, reflect on their errors, and revise their knowledge. The more time that elapses between a student response and teacher feedback, the less metacognitive reflection that takes place. In some situations, students never even get the opportunity to review their incorrectly answered questions so they can revise their knowledge.

The Benefits of Polling Technologies

The recent emergence of polling technologies-such as clickers, student response systems, and free online resources like Poll Everywhere or Socrative -can potentially diminish or even eradicate the feedback gap. Armed with almost instantaneous feedback on their responses, students are more able to reflect on their thinking and, often with teacher guidance, revise their knowledge on the spot.

Polling technologies are helpful to teachers, too. Teachers can administer more frequent assessments because these technologies are easy to use, and when teachers predetermine the correct answers, the assessments literally grade themselves. Instead of grading tests by hand, teachers can spend more time studying student progress, making informed inferences about student learning needs, and providing timely interventions.

Polling technologies also enable all students in a class to respond to teacher-posed questions simultaneously, increasing student response rates to 100 percent. In addition, teachers can pose questions and get instant student responses throughout a class period, making assessment a seamless part of the flow of instruction.

Of course, polling technology is not required for real-time formative assessment. Teachers often ask students to use hand signals to respond to a question. However, if a teacher asks students to raise their hands if they don't understand, typically few students will raise their hands. Alternatively, if the teacher asks students to publicly vote on a question using thumbs up or thumbs down, some students might first look around the room to determine how others have voted.

In contrast, when students respond in the relatively anonymous mode afforded by polling technologies-only the student and teacher know how that student responded-the students' answers will more accurately reflect their thinking. This will obviously increase the accuracy of their responses.

Learning from the Data

Let's say a teacher has used polling devices to collect student responses to six multiple-choice questions he or she asked in the course of a class period. Each device has its own number and is assigned to a particular student; student responses are listed for each voting device and student name. As soon as a student enters a response, it's automatically scored, with a checkmark indicating a correct answer. Of course, this immediate scoring requires that the teacher use selected-response items, such as multiple choice, matching, true or false, and the like.

The display of student responses shows how all students in the class answered these six problems. It clarifies for teachers which students struggle with which information as well as which students seem to have mastered the material. It also shows how the class did globally: Only one-half of the class might have answered Question 4 correctly; Question 6 might have stumped almost everyone.

Teachers can display these data to the class with the column listing student names hidden. As long as students know the number of their polling device, they can see how their answers compared with those of other students, while still maintaining their anonymity. Teachers can easily initiate discussions about why several students might have answered a question or questions incorrectly.

Polling technologies need not require new hardware. In classrooms in which all students own or have access to a smartphone, students can take assessments using free polling software services, such as those noted above, or services that charge a nominal fee.

Testing at Three Levels

Polling technologies also offer an opportunity for teachers to use proficiency scoring when creating tests. Proficiency scoring begins by writing items (or selecting them from an item bank) that reflect three levels of proficiency. These three levels are communicated to students as learning goals.

For example, consider the following three levels of learning goals for the topic of democracies:

Basic: Students will be able to recognize correct definitions of basic terms and phrases that relate to democracies.

Proficient: Students will be able to recognize accurate statements about the defining characteristics of democracies.

Advanced: Students will be able to differentiate democracies from other forms of governance.

To return to the six-question, multiple-choice assessment, the first three questions might focus on content at the basic level, the next two questions on content at the proficient level, and the last question on content at the advanced level. A display of student responses would give the teacher an immediate picture of each student's performance at each of the three levels, as well as how the class did as a whole.

It's important to note that patterns of student responses to short classroom assessments will not necessarily provide accurate profiles. A student might guess at an answer or miss an item because he or she didn't read it correctly. However, if students answer items at all three levels of difficulty several times during a week, accurate patterns should surface for each student.

Make the Leap

Polling technologies offer a new type of assessment that benefits both students and teachers as it closes the feedback gap. It's time to try them.

Endnotes

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

Marzano, R. J. (2012). An easier way to score tests. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 82-83.

Sonny Magaña is associate vice president of Marzano Research Laboratory and director of the Educational Technology Division. Robert J. Marzano is cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, and executive director of the Learning Sciences Marzano Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He is coauthor, with Michael Toth, of Teacher Evaluation That Makes a Difference: A New Model for Teacher Growth and Student Achievement (ASCD, 2013).

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Using Polling Technologies to Close Feedback Gaps - Educational Leadership

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6 Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 82-83 Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano Despite the research on the positive effects of efficient and timely feedback, a significant time gap often exists between student responses to questions on an assessment and teacher feedback on those responses.

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The Bride Between Today's Lesson and Tomorrow's 

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The Bride Between Today's Lesson and Tomorrow's 

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Carol Ann Tomlinson

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6
Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 10-14

Carol Ann Tomlinson

There's talk aplenty in schools these days about formative assessment. That's encouraging, because formative assessment has great potential to improve both teaching and learning. Listening to the conversations sometimes, however, reminds me that it's easier to subscribe to a word than to live out its fundamental tenets.

I see formative assessment as an ongoing exchange between a teacher and his or her students designed to help students grow as vigorously as possible and to help teachers contribute to that growth as fully as possible. When I hear formative assessment reduced to a mechanism for raising end-of-year-test scores, it makes me fear that we might reduce teaching and learning to that same level.

Formative assessment is-or should be-the bridge or causeway between today's lesson and tomorrow's. Both its alignment with current content goals and its immediacy in providing insight about student understanding are crucial to helping teacher and student see how to make near-term adjustments so the progression of learning can proceed as it should. I worry when I hear educators say they have purchased formative assessments to give once a quarter or once a month to keep tabs on student achievement. These assessments are not likely to be well aligned with tomorrow's lesson, nor are they able to provide feedback rapidly enough to influence daily instruction.

The best teachers work persistently to benefit the learners in their charge. Because teaching is too complex to invite perfection, even the best teachers will miss the mark on some days, but in general, teachers who use sound formative assessment aspire to the following 10 principles.

1. Help students understand the role of formative assessment.

Students often feel that assessment equals test equals grade equals judgment. That association leads many discouraged students to give up rather than to risk another failure. It causes many high-achieving students to focus on grades rather than learning, and on safe answers rather than thoughtful ones.

It's important, then, for teachers to help students understand that assessments help them learn and that immediate perfection should not be their goal. Teachers can communicate this message by telling students,

When we're mastering new things, it's important to feel safe making mistakes. Mistakes are how we figure out how to get better at what we are doing. They help us understand our thinking. Therefore, many assessments in this class will not be graded. We'll analyze the assessments so we can make improvements in our work, but they won't go into the grade book. When you've had time to practice, then we'll talk about tests and grades.

It's essential for teachers to help learners both understand and experience the reality that sustained effort and mindful attention to progress feed success. That belief needs to be a cornerstone ethic in the classroom.

2. Begin with clear KUDs.

The first step in creating a worthy formative assessment occurs well before the teacher develops the assessment. It happens when the teacher begins to map out curriculum. At that point, the teacher asks the pivotal question, "What is most important for students to Know, Understand, and be able to Do as a result of this segment of learning?" Absent clarity on the essential knowledge, understanding, and skills for a unit or lesson, the curriculum wanders. But with clarity about KUDs, the teacher is able to focus curricular decisions squarely on what matters most for student success.

KUDs also lay the groundwork for pre-assessment and ongoing assessment. A pre-assessment provides a "dipstick check" of student status as a unit begins. It need not be wholly comprehensive, but rather should sample student standing in relation to the material so the teacher has a reasonable approximation of who may experience difficulty, who may show early mastery, and who may bring misunderstandings to the unit of study. Other formative assessments will follow regularly and often, and together they will form an image of a student's emergent development.

Alignment between KUDs and formative assessments-and later, between formative assessment results and instructional plans-is imperative if formative assessment is to fulfill its promise.

3. Make room for student differences.

The most useful formative assessments make it possible for students to show what they know, understand, and can do; therefore, it's useful for teachers to build some flexibility into formative assessments. For example, a student who is learning English may be able to draw and label a diagram of the relationship between density and buoyancy but not write a paragraph explaining it. The prompt, "Use an example from your experience to illustrate the idea that a person's culture shapes his or her perspective," is more likely to draw a meaningful response from a broader range of students than the prompt, "Explain the relationship between culture and perspective." Likewise, asking students to illustrate how fractions are used in sports, music, cooking, shopping, building something, or another area they are interested in is more likely to be revealing than asking them simply to explain uses of fractions.

In formative assessments (as in summative ones), it's acceptable-and often wise-to allow students some latitude in how they express what they know, understand, and can do. Assessment formats and conditions can vary as long as all forms of the assessment measure the same KUDs.

4. Provide instructive feedback.

Although formative assessments should rarely be graded, students do need useful feedback. Comments like, "Nice job," "I enjoyed this," or "Not quite" don't help learners understand what they did well or how they missed the mark. Feedback needs to help the student know what to do to improve the next time around. For example, it's helpful for a teacher to say, "The flow of your logic in this section is clear, but you need additional detail to support your thinking." It offers a student little guidance if the teacher simply says, "Not quite there yet," or "Weak effort."

When feedback serves its instructional purpose, students are clear about the learning targets at which they are aiming, and they understand that assessments show how they are doing in reaching those targets. They trust that teachers will use the assessments to help them achieve, and they know that there will soon be follow-up opportunities for them to use the feedback in improving their performance.

5. Make feedback user-friendly.

Feedback should be clear, focused, and appropriately challenging for the learner. As teachers, we sometimes feel our job is to mark every error on a paper. Not only is that practice time-consuming, robbing us of time we could more potently use for instructional planning, but a sea of "edits" without clarity about which comments matter most, how they connect, or what to do next is likely to evoke a negative response from a student.

To realize its power, feedback must result in a student thinking about how to improve-the ideal is to elicit a cognitive response from the learner, not an emotional one (Wiliam, 2011). It's seldom useful to send students a message that their work is stellar or that their work is dreadful. Praise and shame shut down learning far more often than they catalyze it. It's more fruitful to straightforwardly share with students their particular next steps in the learning process, based on goals that are clear to teacher and student alike. The teacher sees where a student is in a learning progression and points the way ahead for that student. In other words, feedback is differentiated, pointing each learner toward actions that are challenging but achievable for that learner.

For example, a teacher who is working with students on using sources to support an opinion provides criteria for the effective use of resources for this purpose. In writing an opinion piece, some students may have difficulty synthesizing ideas from multiple resources. A second group of students may synthesize proficiently but rely solely on obvious interpretations of text. To move ahead, the first group of students needs specific guidance on how to synthesize ideas from resources. The second group needs direction in plumbing ideas more deeply. Both groups will receive feedback in the area of using resources to support an opinion, but their feedback will focus on aspects of the skill set that move them to their next step in development.

6. Assess persistently.

Formative assessment should permeate a class period. A great teacher is a habitual student of his or her students. A keen observer, the teacher is constantly watching what students do, looking for clues about their learning progress, and asking for input from students about their status.

These teachers walk among their students as they work, listening for clues about their understanding, asking questions that probe their thinking, taking notes on what they see and hear. They ask students to signal their level of confidence with the task they are doing with thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-sideways, for example, to gain a sense of how the class as a whole is faring. They ask students to write answers to questions on whiteboards or to respond with clickers so they can get an in-process sense of how individual students are coming along.

They use start-up prompts to see what students learned from last night's homework. They use exit cards to assess student understanding as a class ends. They spot-check student work with an eye to seeing how students are progressing with a particular skill. They talk with students as they enter and leave the classroom, at lunch, or while waiting for the school buses to leave. They solicit and are alert to parent input about their students' strengths, attitudes, work habits, and goals.

It isn't really so much that these teachers use formative assessments often. It's that they do so continually -formally and informally, with individuals and with the group, to understand academic progress and to understand the human beings that they teach. For these teachers, formative assessment is not ancillary to effective teaching. It is the core of their professional work.

7. Engage students with formative assessment.

Time was when doctors examined patients, made diagnoses, and provided treatment plans with limited conversation about their observations or alternative courses of treatment. More recently, physicians have learned that outcomes improve when patients and doctors exchange information and examine treatment options together.

It's easy for teachers to stick with the traditional classroom paradigm that casts them in the role of giver and grader of tests, diagnoser of student needs, and prescriber of regimens. Things go much better, however, when students are fully engaged in the assessment process.

Students benefit from examining their own work in light of rubrics that align tightly with content goals and point toward quality of content, process, and product-or in comparison to models of high-quality work that are just a bit above the student's current level of performance. They benefit from providing feedback on peers' work, as long as the feedback is guided by clear criteria and a process that enables them to provide useful suggestions.

Students also need to be involved in thoughtfully examining teacher feedback, asking questions when the feedback is not clear, and developing plans that specify how they will use that feedback to benefit their own academic growth. Students who are consistent participants in the formative assessment process should be able to say something like this:

Here are four goals I'm working on right now. In this piece of work, here's evidence that I'm competent with the first and third goals. If we look at my work from a month ago and then at this most recent piece, I can show you evidence of my progress with the second goal. I can also tell you two things I'm going to work on this week to make sure I become more confident and more skilled in working with the fourth goal.

8. Look for patterns.

The goal of reviewing formative assessment is not to be able to say, "Six students made As, seven made Bs, ten made C s, and so on." Neither is the goal to create 32 lesson plans for 32 students. Rather, it is to find patterns in the students' work that point the way to planning classroom instruction that both moves students along a learning continuum and is manageable.

Patterns will vary widely with the focus of the assessment. In one instance, a teacher may see some students who have already mastered the content, others who are fine with computations but not word problems, still others who know how to tackle the word problems but are making careless errors, and another group that is struggling with prerequisite knowledge or skills.

In another instance, a teacher may find that one group of students can provide causes of an event but no evidence for their reasoning, while other students are able to provide both causes and evidence. In still another case, a teacher may see students who understand the general idea being assessed but lack academic vocabulary to write with precision, while other students are using appropriate academic vocabulary. The possibilities are many, but the goal is to look for clusters of student need and plan ways to help each group of students move ahead.

9. Plan instruction around content requirements and student needs.

There is little point in spending time on formative assessment unless it leads to modification of teaching and learning plans. In other words, formative assessment is a means to design instruction that's a better fit for student needs, not an end in itself.

On rare occasions, formative assessment will indicate that everyone in the class needs more practice with a certain skill or more engagement with a particular understanding. Much more frequently, however, formative assessment points to a need for differentiated instruction during at least some of an upcoming class period, in homework, or in both. John Hattie (2012) says that

teachers must know where students are and aim to move them "+1" beyond that point; thus the idea of teaching the class as a whole is unlikely to pitch the lesson correctly for all students. This is where the skill of teachers in knowing the similarities across students and allowing for the differences becomes so important. (p. 97)

An assessment is really only a formative assessment when teachers glean evidence about student performance, interpret that evidence, and use it to provide teaching that is more likely to benefit student learning than the instruction those teachers would have delivered if they had continued forward without using what they learned through the assessment (Wiliam, 2011).

10. Repeat the process.

Formative assessment is more habitual than occasional in classrooms where maximizing each student's growth is a central goal. In such classes, it simply makes no sense to teach without a clear understanding of each student's development along a learning trajectory. It is wasteful of time, resources, and learner potential not to make instructional plans based on that understanding. Assessment of each learning experience informs plans for the next learning experience. Such an assessment process never ends.

A classroom is a system with interdependent parts-each affecting the other for better or worse. The learning environment, quality of curriculum, use of formative assessment, instructional planning, and implementation of classroom routines work together to enhance student learning-or, if any of the elements does not function effectively, to impede it. Fruitful use of formative assessment is an essential component in the mix.

References

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York: Routledge.

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

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The Bridge Between Today's Lesson and Tomorrow's

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March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6 Using Assessments Thoughtfully Pages 10-14 Carol Ann Tomlinson There's talk aplenty in schools these days about formative assessment. That's encouraging, because formative assessment has great potential to improve both teaching and learning.

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7 Characteristics of Better Learning Feedback

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7 Characteristics of Better Learning Feedback

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Grant Wiggins

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by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education
On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought's approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts.
Whether or not the feedback is just "there" to be grasped or offered by another person, all the examples highlight seven key characteristics of helpful feedback.

Helpful feedback is -

Though some of these traits have been noted by various researchers [for example, Marzano, Pickering & Pollock (2001) identify some of #3, #5, #1 and #4 in describing feedback as corrective, timely, specific to a criterion], it is only when we clearly distinguish the two meanings of "corrective" (i.e. feedback vs. advice) and use all seven that we get the most robust improvements and sort out Hattie's puzzle as to why some "feedback" works and other "feedback" doesn't. Let's look at each criterion in turn.

1. Goal-referenced. There is only feedback if a person has a goal, takes actions to achieve the goal, and gets goal-related information fed back. To talk of feedback, in other words, is to refer to some notable consequence of one's actions, in light of an intent. I told a joke - why? To make people laugh; I wrote the story - why? To paint vivid pictures and capture revealing feelings and dialogue for the reader to feel and see; I went up to bat - why? To get a hit. Any and all feedback refers to a purpose I am presumed to have. (Alas, too often, I am not clear on or attentive to my own goals - and I accordingly often get feedback on that disconnect.)

Given a desired outcome, feedback is what tells me if I should continue on or change course. If some joke or aspect of the writing isn't working - a revealing, non-judgmental phrase - I need to know. To that end, a former colleague of mine when I was a young teacher asked students every Friday to fill out a big index card with "what worked for you and didn't work for you this week." I once heard an exasperated NFL coach say in a post-game interview on the radio: "What do you think we do out here, wind a playbook up and pray all season? Coaching is about quick and effective adjustment in light of results!"

Note that goals (and the criteria for them) are often implicit in everyday situations. I don't typically announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh or that I wrote that short story as an exercise in irony. In adult professional and personal life, alas, goals and criteria for which we are accountable are sometimes unstated or unclear as well - leading to needlessly sub-par performance and confusing feedback. It can be extra challenging for students: many teachers do not routinely make the long-term goals of lessons and activities sufficiently clear. Better student achievement may thus depend not on more "teaching" or feedback only but constant reminders by teachers of the goal against which feedback is given: e.g. "Guys, the point here is to show, not tell in your writing: make the characters come alive in great detail! That's the key thing we'll be looking for in peer review and my feedback to you." (That's arguably the value of rubrics, but far too many rubrics are too vague to be of help.)

2. Transparent and tangible, value-neutral information about what happened. Therefore, any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but transparent and tangible results related to the goal. Feedback to students (and teachers!) needs to be as concrete and obvious as the laughter or its absence is to the comedian and the hit or miss is to the Little League batter. If your goal as a teacher is to "engage" learners as a teacher, then you must look for the most obvious signs of attention or inattention; if your goal as a student is to figure out the conditions under which plants best grow, then you must look closely at the results of a controlled experiment. We need to know the tangible consequences of our attempts, in the most concrete detail possible - goal-related facts from which we can learn. That's why samples or models of work are so useful to both students and teachers - more so than the (somewhat abstract) rubrics by themselves.

Even as little pre-school children, we learn from such results and models without adult intervention. That's how we learned to walk; that's how we finally learned to hold a spoon effectively; that's how we learned that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. Thus, the best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it. Video games are the purest example of such tangible feedback systems: for every action we take there is a tangible effect. We use that information to either stay on the same course or adjust course. The more information "fed back" to us, the more we can self-regulate, and self-adjust as needed. No "teaching" and no "advice" - just feedback! That's what the best concrete feedback does: it permits optimal self-regulation in a system with clear goals.

Far too much educational feedback is opaque, alas, as revealed in a true story told to me years ago by a young teacher. A student came up to her at year's end and said, "Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don't know what it means." "What's the word?" she asked. "Vag-oo," he said. (The word was "vague"!). Sad to say, too much teacher feedback is 'vagoo' - think of the English teacher code written in margins (AWK, Sent. Frag, etc.) Rarely does the student get information as tangible about how they are currently doing in light of a future goal as they get in video games. The notable exceptions: art, music, athletics, mock trial - in short, areas outside of core academics!

This transparency of feedback becomes notably paradoxical under a key circumstance: when the information is available to be obtained, but the performers do not obtain it - either because they don't look for it or because they are too busy performing to see it. We have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on "teaching" that they fail to notice that few students are attending or learning. Similarly in sports: the tennis player or batter is taking their "eye off the ball" (i.e. pulling their head out instead of keeping your head still as you swing), yet few novice players "see" that they are not really "seeing the ball." They often protest, in fact, when the feedback is given. The same thing happens with some domineering students in class discussion: they are so busy "discussing" that they fail to see their unhelpful effects on the discussion and on others who give up trying to participate.

That's why it is vital, at even the highest levels of performance, to get feedback from coaches (or other able observers) and/or video to help us perceive what we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, to learn to look for what is difficult but vital to perceive. That's why I would recommend that all teachers video their own classes at least once per month and do some walk-throughs and learning walks, to more fully appreciate how we sometimes have blind spots about what is and isn't happening as we teach.

It was a transformative experience for me when I did it 40 years ago (using a big Sony reel-to-reel deck before there were VHS cassettes!). What was clear to me as the teacher of the lesson in real time seemed downright confusing on tape - visible also in some quizzical looks of my students that I had missed in the moment. And, in terms of improving discussion or Socratic Seminar, video can be transformative: when students see snippets of tape of their prior discussions they are fascinated to study it and surprised by how much gets missed in the fast flow of conversation. (Coaches of all sports have done this for decades; why is it still so rare in classrooms?)

3. Actionable information. Thus, feedback is actionable information - data or facts that you can use to improve on your own since you likely missed something in the heat of the moment. No praise, no blame, no value judgment - helpful facts. I hear when they laugh and when they don't; I adjust my jokes accordingly. I see now that 8 students are off task as I teach, and take action immediately. I see my classmates roll their eyes as I speak - clearly signaling that they are unhappy with something I said or the way I said it. Feedback is that concrete, specific, useful. That is not to say that I know what the feedback means, i.e. why the effect happened or what I should do next (as in the eye rolling), merely that the feedback is clear and concrete. (That's why great performers aggressively look for and go after the meaning of feedback.)

Thus, "good job!" and "You did that wrong" and "B+" on a paper are not feedback at all. In no case do I know what you saw or what exactly I did or didn't do to warrant the comments. The responses are without any actionable information. Here is a question we can easily imagine learners asking themselves in response, to see this: Huh? What specifically should I do more of and less of next time, based on this information? No idea. The students don't know what was "good" or "wrong" about what they did.

Some readers may object that feedback is not so black and white, i.e. that we may disagree about what is there to be seen and/or that feedback carries with it a value judgment about good and bad performance. But the language in question is usually not about feedback (what happened) but about an (arguable) inference about what happened. Arguments are rarely about the results, in other words; they are typically about what the results mean.

For example, a supervisor of a teacher may make an unfortunate but common mistake of stating that "many students were bored" in class. No, that's a judgment, not a goal-based specific fact. It would have been far more useful and less debated had the supervisor said something like: "I counted inattentive behaviors lasting more than 5-10 seconds in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was well underway. The behaviors included 2 students texting under desks, 2 passing notes, and 7-8 students at any one time making eye contact with other students, etc.

However, when you moved to the small-group exercise using the 'mystery text', I saw such off-task behavior in only 1 student." These are goal-related factual statements, not judgments. Again, it doesn't mean that the supervisor is correct in the facts and it certainly doesn't mean they are anti-lecture; it only means that the supervisor tries to stick to facts and not jump to glib inferences - what is working and what isn't.

Such care in offering neutral goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what was perceived, in reference to shared goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class: Given your goals for the class, what would you like me to look for and perhaps count or code?

In my years of experience as a teacher of teachers, as an athletic coach, and as a teacher of adolescents I have always found such "pure" feedback to be accepted, not debated; and be welcomed (or at least not resisted). Performers are on the whole grateful for a 2 nd pair of eyes and ears, given our blind spots as we perform. But the legacy of so much heavy-handed inferencing and gratuitous advice by past coaches/teachers/supervisors has made many performers - including teachers - naturally wary or defensive.

What effective coaches also know is that actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn't work in complex performance situations. (That's why the phrase "corrective information" is not strictly-speaking accurate in describing all feedback.) Performers need feedback about what they did correctly because they don't always know what they did, particularly as novices. It is not uncommon in coaching, when the coach describes what a performer successfully did (e.g. "THAT time you kept your head still and followed all the way through!"), to hear the performer respond quizzically, "I did??"

Similarly the writer or teacher is sometimes surprised to learn that what she thought was unimportant in her presentation was key to audience understanding. Comedians, teachers, and artists don't often accurately predict which aspects of their work will achieve the best results, but they learn from the ones that do. That's why feedback can be called a reinforcement system: I learn by learning to do more of (and understand) what works and less of what doesn't.

4. User friendly. Feedback is thus not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it, even if it is accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders. Highly-technical feedback to a novice will seem odd, confusing, hard to decipher: describing the swing in baseball in terms of torque and other physics concepts to a 6-year-old will not likely yield a better hitter. On the other hand, generic 'vagoo' feedback is a contradiction in terms: I need to perceive the actionable, tangible details of what I did.

When I have watched expert coaches, they uniformly avoid either error of too much overly-technical information or of unspecific observations: they tell the performers one or two important things they noticed that, if they can be changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement ("I noticed you were moving this way..."), and they don't offer advice until they are convinced the performer sees what they saw (or at least grasps the importance of what they saw).

5. Timely. The sooner I get feedback, then, the better (in most cases). I don't want to wait hours or days to find out which jokes they laughed at or didn't, whether my students were attentive, or which part of my paper works and doesn't. My caveat - "in most cases" - is meant to cover situations such as playing a piano piece in recital: I don't want either my teacher or the audience to be barking out feedback as I perform. That's why it is more precise to say that good feedback is "timely" rather than "immediate."

A great problem in education, however, is the opposite. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance - think of writing and handing in papers and getting back results on standardized tests. If we truly realize how vital feedback is, we should be working overtime as educators to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it in class while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds. (Keep in mind: as we have said, feedback does not need to come from the students' teachers only or even people at all, before you say that this is impossible. This is a high-priority and solvable problem to address locally.)

6. Ongoing. It follows that the more I can get such timely feedback, in real time, before it is too late, the better my ultimate performance will be - especially on complex performance that can never be mastered in a short amount of time and on a few attempts. That's why we talk about powerful feedback "loops" in a sound learning system.

All adjustment en route depends upon feedback and multiple opportunities to use it. This is really what makes any assessment truly "formative" in education. The feedback is "formative" not merely because it precedes "summative" assessments but because the performer has many opportunities - if results are less than optimal - to adjust the performance to better achieve the goal. Many so-called formative assessments do not build in such feedback use.

If we truly understood how feedback works, we would make the student's use of feedback part of the assessment! It is telling that in the adult world I am often judged as a performer on my ability to adjust in light of feedback since no one can be perfect.

This is how all highly-successful computer games work, of course. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris you know that the key to the substantial improvement possible is that the feedback is not only timely but ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over - even, just where you left off - to give you another opportunity to get, receive and learn from the feedback before all is lost to forgetfulness. (Note, then, this additional aspect of user-friendly feedback: it suits our need, pace and ability to process information; games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing ability to assimilate information.

Do you see a vital but counter-intuitive implication from the power of many 'loops' of feedback? We can teach less, provide more feedback, and cause greater learning than if we just teach. Educational research supports this view even if as "teachers" we flinch instinctively at this idea.. That is why the typical lecture-driven course is so ineffective: the more we keep talking, the less we know what is being grasped and attended to. That is why the work of Eric Mazur at Harvard - in which he hardly lectures at all to his 200 students but instead gives them problems to solve and discuss, and then shows their results on screen before and after discussion using LRS 'clickers' - is so noteworthy. His students get "less" lecturing" but outperform their peers not only on typical tests of physics but especially on tests of misconceptions in physics. [Mazur (1998)]

7. Consistent. For feedback to be useful it has to be consistent. Clearly, I can only monitor and adjust successfully if the information fed back to me is stable, unvarying in its accuracy, and trustworthy. In education this has a clear consequence: teachers have to be on the same page about what is quality work and what to say when the work is and is not up to standard. That can only come from teachers constantly looking at student work together, becoming more consistent (i.e. achieving inter-rater reliability) over time, and formalizing their judgments in highly-descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained the same way we train teachers to be consistent, using the same exemplars and rubrics.
References
Bransford et al (2001) How People Learn. National Academy Press.

Clarke, Shirley (2001) Unlocking Formative Assessment: Practical Strategies for Enhancing Pupils' Learning in the Primary Classroom. Hodder Murray.

Dweck, Carol (2007) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Ballantine.

Gilbert, Thomas (1978) Human Competence. McGraw Hill.

Harvard Business School Press, Giving Feedback (2006)

Hattie, John (2008) Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Routledge.

James, William (1899/1958) Talks to Teachers. W W Norton.

Marzano, R ; Pickering, D & Pollock J (2001) Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, ASCD.

Mazur, Eric (1996) Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. Benjamin Cummings.

Nater, Sven & Gallimore R (2005) You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices. Fitness Info Tech.

Pollock, Jane (2012) Feedback: the hinge that joins teaching and learning, Corwin Press.

Wiggins, Grant (2010) "Time to Stop Bashing the Tests," Educational Leadership March 2010 | Volume 67 | Number 6

Wiggins, Grant (1998) Educative Assessment, Jossey-Bass.

[4] James, William (1899/1958), p. 41.

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7 Key Characteristics Of Better Learning Feedback

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by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought's approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts.