Why Meaningful Feedback as my focus practice?What English teacher doesn’t struggle with the grading load? You go through the the calculations regularly: if I spend 10 minutes (scoring and giving feedback) per essay times 100 essays. 16+hrs. Can I even find that time in this week 0r next combined? Okay what if I cut out the feedback part and just score it - 5 minutes an essay: 9 hours of grading and the only feedback my students have is their score. What we so often forget is the Meaningful feedback happens in a variety of ways and the better we are at using feedback outside of the number on an assignment and the more we develop the skills used to create meaningful feedback in all its forms the more sense those scores will make to the students when they receive them. ALL the other PBL practices and strategies, but especially student goal setting, student metacognition and reflection, are essential to building meaningful feedback and successful PBL. Meaningful Feedback as Implemented in the AP Language and Composition American Identity Inquiry ProjectThe beginning of each group work session began with students sharing out new findings and setting goals for the work time. There would be some form of note taking tool for the students to respond and submit. These assignments were completion grades as the process of research is the focus. The objective of the submittable form was having a record for students but also creating a space where students track their own progress toward answering their question. Detaching it from a grade let them set expectations and their own pace. Did their findings advance their understanding? Did they need more research? Were they ready to move to stakeholders and consider the audience? Were they ready to design a take action ? What did they need to get there? By answering these questions and choosing their own next steps (need to know and need to do) students had choices about which paths to take and how to follow up on their own wonderings. During this time I would visit breakout rooms to check in on progress, help guide students who needed direction, clarify goals, and in general have conversations about the group’s research. At the end of each class students would finish their notes with a reflection on whether they met their goals from the beginning of class )or answered the questions they had or simply asked them how the project moved forward that day. I would design my focus for a short mini-lesson based on what groups seemed to be struggling with or needed from me most during these breakout sessions. Thus throughout the project students were getting and creating peer feedback, self-reflection feedback, teacher-student feedback. Their final presentation of their research and take action project is the last step of the feedback and this is most valuable again in its creation progress where students must synthesize their process from inquiry through to action and evaluate that process for take-aways. Student Reflections on the Project and How Feedback and Reflection Functioned to Support ThemMy Plans Moving Forward with PBL and Meaningful FeedbackThe more I focus on the various ways for students to give and receive feedback as a way to promote self-directed learners who are successful in PBL classrooms, the more I recognize how essential this is in all lessons. I will certainly be continuing to improve on timely written feedback to back up my everyday verbal interactions. I hope to develop better systems to make record keeping and tracking of student assessed progress simple. But also to advocate toward more student based self-assessment of mastery. I hope in the future to mentor other teachers in PBL feedback but also encouraging as many as I can to take this training.
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