How Lost Are Your Students?

I heard from a college student who happened to read parts of my next manuscript (Formative Assessment Improves Writing) after his mother told him that she was reviewing the book. He mentioned that the smart kids “get it” but the other kids often struggle. They get lost in one part and then they get more lost  in the next and more lost in the next until they cannot find their way out. Unfortunately, their teachers usually do not help them.

He was interested in how I made sure no student could get lost since I assess each student on each minor part of his/her writing  journey.

I wonder how often teachers assess their students and then give formative feedback immediately?  How many minutes go by before the students are assessed and formative feedback is used to help students get back on the learning path if they have wondered off? How many days? How many weeks? The more time between formative assessments, they more time to get lost, to get so lost that there is almost no hope of ever finding the path again.

How lost are your students? How do you know? What do you do to help them when they get lost?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Responding to students: Our Real Emotional Message

In a previous post, I emphasized that students need an abundance of positive comments before they really believe that what they have done is good.

Likewise, when we examine our comments to students in the margins and at the end of their papers, we may discover that  the messages that we think are positive or neutral appear to the students as negative ones.     For example, in “Good topic sentence. Follow it up with more evidence”   the message seems to us to be a positive; however, the second sentence deflats the praise. The previous examples strikes students as a “set up and slap down” comment.

Students may see our statements or questions as direct commands rather than suggestions. “Can you think of other possibilities?” can easily be translated as “You dummy, why can’t you get a good answer?”

When we write on students’ papers, we have to promote a positive tone since many students will read any non-positive statement as a negative one.

If you are interested in implementing  formative assessment in the classroom, my book,
Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

10 Standards-Based Formative Feedback Techniques for Your Class

Part of the handout for the conference session

1. Verify the purpose.

2. Be specific in the feedback.

3. Limit it.

4. Use an exemplar.

5. Use a formative rubric.

6. Have peer feedback.

7. Have students develop their own feedback.

8. Inform the class of progress and ask for strategies

9. Put the resources on YouTube.

10. Build in multiple checkpoints.

11. Provide graphic scaffolding.
    

12. Your ideas?
    

For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book,
Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

Student Response Metaphors

For the past few days, I have been reflecting on how important student classroom responses are to the teaching/learning process. I’ve created some metaphors to help us realize how important it is for us to elicit their responses and for us to dig deeply into their thinking about the standard. Here are some ideas:

What other metaphors can you think of?

Student Response Through Technology for Our Formative Feedback

Unless students respond in some way, we can not assess what they are thinking or learning.

A question is “How do we get students to respond  to a standards-based prompt with technology?”

Some possible ways:
Responding to completing an analogy such as  with Personal Response systems or clickers
Reacting to “How is today’s immigration similar or different to previous immigration” through a blog.
Creating a multimedia documentary about lost of animal habitats in your area
Selecting  visuals  such as “Which are pictures of the summer season?” which depict  science standards-based learning
Creating a class wiki “textbook” about the topic of art and its  influence on  history

What other ways do you to explore your students standards-based thinking?

Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA): Giving Student Response Opportunities

TESA has been around since 1973. Many school have it as a key professional development tool since it is classroom based. Its research base states that teachers expect less of certain students (low income and minority), treat them differently in class and therefore those students achieve less.

In TESA other teachers observe you for certain teaching traits that center around equity.

You can do your own self-assessing (or you can audio/video tape yourself):

Under Response Opportunities (Strand A):

Latency – Do you wait five seconds after asking each question and before calling on any student? Do you use wait time for all students equally?

Equitable Distribution – Do you call on all students equally?

Individual Help – Do you provide help to all students equally?

Paraphrasing/Prompting – Do you paraphrase and prompt the question to help student get the correct answer equally?

Higher Level Questions- Do you ask higher level questions equally to all students?

You could create a spreadsheet of the number of times you positively do each of the above in your class and then try to increase the number each week. If you increased by 20% each week, you would soon have high scores in each area. Graph your results and be proud of your students’ increased learning because of your new high expectations for every student.

If you have had experience with TESA, please share them.

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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