We know that giving quality feedback is one of the core practices of our teaching profession...but it takes so long. For each conversation or essay we spend countless hours writing comments. And if you're anything like me, you come to realize you're just writing the same thing over and over again. A few years ago I switched to pre-writing all of my comments ahead of time to save myself some time. Take a look So how does it work?
It's quite simple. For each assessment I go through the list of comments and I pick and choose the ones that match with my students' proficiency level and the particular assessment I'm giving. I would never give all of those comments all at once. Instead, I'd choose ones that I anticipate writing or using based on what kids will write or say. For example, if I'm planning an interpersonal conversation as an assessment with my intermediate students, I'll likely get rid of comments related to single words/short phrases in the text type because I don't anticipate needing to give that kind of feedback. Instead, I'll focus on the connected sentences and the connecting words. When it's time to grade it comes down to John Hattie's idea of "dollops of feedback". It has to be just the right amount in order for learners to process it. Here's my rule of thumb: Glow- anywhere from 2-5 pieces of feedback (check boxes). No one ever gets tired of hearing how great they are Grow- no more than 2-3 pieces of feedback (check boxes). A student can only process so much feedback in order for it to actually become actionable. If they're given a laundry-list of things they need to work on, then there's a good chance they won't know where to start and, consequently, not work on any of them. Instead, if you tell them 2 things they need to focus on before the next assessment, they can make a clear goal and plan to take that feedback and put it into action. This is the second version of these comments that I've written. After reading Zaretta Hammond's book Culturally Responsive Teaching And The Brain I rethought the way I was writing my comments. Instead of having comments that were just observations or pieces of advice I changed them to be actionable and specific to my students. Feel free to use these in your classes and let me know if there are any comments you think I should add!
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I've been working on a new take on an assessment and am in need of some feedback. Please comment, DM me on Twitter or send me an email at [email protected]. If for some reason my pictures aren't visible here's a link to the assessment I'm talking about. A few weeks ago I was proctoring the AAPPL test for our school's Seal of Biliteracy and was able to overhear some of the speaking sections of the test. As I expected there were parts where they had to narrate in the past/present/future, compare and describe and answer questions. However, I noticed there was one section that stood out as unique and interested me the most. On the AAPPL they prompt students to ask questions about a given topic. All they have to do is ask questions for the minute or however long they have. Sounds simple right...as you may know from teaching intermediates that is not as easy as it sounds. Intermediates are expected to create with the language, handle simple interactions as well as ask and answer simple questions. That last one is key to me because I know kids can answer questions but asking them sometimes turns out to be a much tougher task. Combining this observation with what I learned during my MOPI training I began thinking of a new kind of assessment in class (well an activity that would lead to an assessment). What if I gave students a role/situation and asked them to ask as many questions as possible in a minute and a half to two minutes? What would this look like? Here's what I drafted. Essentially, students would be asking questions related to a topic we are studying in class. In this situation we will be studying healthy living so I wanted them to ask questions about healthy living and healthy habits. My goal is to do this as many times as possible this year and use it completely next year when teaching this course. I then started to think about the rubric and the kind of feedback that kids needed to improve. I thought of two categories for my rubric including content and accuracy. Content would be looking at the kinds of questions that students asked while accuracy was looking at how well the questions were constructed. I would not be looking for a specific grammar point because they are intermediate mids and despite working with different tenses in class, I wouldn't expect that to show up on this kind of assessment (although it would be welcomed for sure!) Here's the rubric and Glow and Grow feedback I thought of. This is such a rough draft and I'd love to hear any feedback you have on how I can improve it. Thanks in advance!
This year was the first time in my teaching career that I didn't have to spend a week "reviewing" or have half days so that i could "correct exams". That's right...we didn't have final exams and it was just as amazing as it sounds. Thanks to an extremely supportive principal and department head, our department voted not to give any kind of final exam and instead opted to end the year with a non-graded reflection.
So as we started June, instead of panicking about finishing my curriculum I was able to teach until almost the very last day (which took a lot of creativity to captivate their attention but it was worth it). For our end of year experience, we asked kids to reflect upon the year, think about their growth and set goals for next year. First, I gave them a set of questions in English that asked them to think about their growth from September to June. Students submitted these questions via Google Classroom and I was able to see their goals for next year and I'd like to communicate those to their next year teachers. Then, I asked students to look through their portfolios that they had been keeping all year. In these there were all of our assessments for the entire year with rubrics and comments. I asked them to look at some of their assessments from units 1 and 2 and compare them to what they did near the end of the year. Their reactions were priceless. As kids wrote about their growth I overheard so many of them show their work to their friends and laugh saying "oh my god look at this sentence, what was I even saying?" or "these sentences are so basic thank god I'm so sorry Señor" all of which tells me they can see the difference in their performance. On the second to last day of class I wanted to get a bit more feedback from them about the class so I planned a class long reflection. Activity #1: I asked students three questions in English and had them brainstorm the answers with the people around them •What does it mean to meet expectations in terms of comprehension in this class? •What does it mean to meet expectations in terms of sentences in this class? •What were my 3 overall goals for this class? It was fun to hear them discuss and share out what were essentially their takeaways from the class and most groups had some version of my overall goals in their answers which made me happy. Activity #2: I gave students this handout where I gave the beginning of a sentence and asked them to finish it however they saw fit. I purposely wrote them with a positive tone to avoid any negativity but allowed them to provide constructive feedback on the things we did in class. The information I gained from this activity was invaluable. •I learned that students want less partner conversations and more group conversations •I learned that students were extremely engaged in the cultural content of the year •I learned that students enjoyed not having a vocabulary list •I learned that students want to speak a lot of Spanish Activity #3: To end the class, I put up a fake email from an 8th grader who was nervous about taking Spanish 2 next year and students wrote an email response to them. Through this activity I was hoping to learn more about what helped them stay in 90% Spanish and what advice they would give future students. Again, the advice was invaluable and told me that 90% Spanish is hard at first but eventually becomes a routine for them and that they enjoy that aspect of my class. After these reflection days I learned more about my students' abilities than any final exam could ever show me. Even if I had asked them to write or speak for their final I would have been left with more questions about what got them to that point instead of answers like I got through reflections. Language by nature is cumulative so why do we need to have a final exam to show what they learned this year. My answer is that we don't and that we should ask them to tell us about the year. This year we really started working toward an AP Spanish program in our department which has been a nice challenge. Interpersonal emails and conversations in every unit, cultural comparisons whenever possible and persuasive essays all in an attempt to get them prepared. However, I'm starting to notice a disconnect in the interpretive mode. I feel like the AP exam and ACTFL need to get together to have a quick chat to get some things straight.
Don't get me wrong, authentic resources are definitely the way to go in language instruction. But how are we supposed to assess them? There's the AP way and there's the ACTFL way. The easy way and the more involved way. One that determines if you get college credit and one that helps you realize your proficiency level in the language. As a teacher, the latter seems like the better option but that's not what we're doing. So often this year we've read authentic texts or watched short videos with AP style multiple choice questions to help get them prepared for the all mighty test. More often than not, students' results were not what they had hoped for. But in a follow up conversation with them I've typically found out that they understand the text or the video but found the questions to be too difficult. While I want my kids to be prepared, I decided to AP aside and focus on building proficiency. Ask students to put the main idea in their own words, infer meaning based on context, draw cultural comparisons, find supporting details from the resource and personally react to what they read/heard. This transition was welcomed with open arms by my students and their confidence in the interpretive mode has skyrocketed. I'm still left with this question: Why are we still assessing students' comprehension using multiple choice questions when we know that doesn't measure their linguistic skills? Our kids have been trained to do multiple choice questions since elementary school, so why don't we teach them to be language learners? Despite me (per usual) not "following the rules" and giving the AP practice, I'm taking a stand and doing what has been proven to help them be global citizens instead of good test takers. For so many students, the idea of taking a test or quiz or completing any kind of assessment brings out the worst in them. What happens if I fail? What's going to be on the test? Or my personal favorite, is this test hard?
These secret assessments have given the teacher this overarching power which tells the students that we know what they need to know and we're not telling them. I will admit that for the first two years of my teaching career this is what I did. I'd tell them "alright test next class make sure you study your vocab because there is going to be a speaking part". Super...so are we talking in groups about the effects of the environment? Or are we proposing a change to a town's laws? Or are we doing a role play asking each other personal questions? All they know is that vocab is involved in some way shape or form. So after attending my first MaFLA conference this past fall I returned to school with a new idea. On the first day of my unit I passed out my performance assessment so they were in tune with what they needed to know by the end. At first kids reacted hilariously. One kid yelled "yo you're a G man" which I'm translating to be a good thing. Another announced to the class "so it's impossible not to get an A on this". Both of which indicated to me that kids liked this change because it eliminated this mystery that haunted them until the day of the assessment. Along with seeing the assessment I put my kids to work. I asked them 4 questions to help guide their thinking before starting the unit. One of my amazing colleagues thought of these four questions to really help students think about how to move their proficiency levels along. Students were asked: 1. What vocabulary do I need in order to succeed on this assessment? 2. What structures/grammar do I need in order to succeed on this assessment? 3. What content/information do I need in order to succeed on this assessment? 4. How can I prepare both in class and at home in order to do well? Their answers were fantastic and showed powerful thinking. Students would mention specific words or themes of vocabulary, structures they needed to refresh and activities they could do that mimicked their tasks and we made a list on the board that you can see in the pictures here. From that point on, the unit almost wrote itself based on student input. As we progressed throughout the month I saw a level of engagement from students that was new to me and truly infectious. If we were looking at Tweets about immigration and responding to them students made the connection between that activity and their unit performance assessment (which for Spanish 4 included a reaction to a discriminatory tweet). Each activity was almost like an individual "a-ha moment" for kids where they realized how everything connected and built upon each other to get them to that final point. I can't wait to give these assessments this week and see how this practice affects their overall performance. I guess you could say I'm excited to spend my weekend grading! |