Improving Written Feedback
This week I gave a seminar at TeachMeet Clevedon. I am going to post more fully on my topic of teachers getting better by undertaking ‘deliberate practice‘ sometime soon. One smaller aspect of my presentation was how teachers can improve written feedback, both to improve learning and to marginally reduce the time taken to give written feedback. With the gift of more time we can free ourselves to pursue becoming a better teacher more deliberately: with reflection, planning and deliberate practice.
Getting Better at Feedback
The last few weeks have seen us progress through each of our Cornerstones of Teaching & Learning at The Sheffield College with drop-ins from the Digital and e-Learning team, links to browse via our Twitter feed and a blog each week for staff to reflect on – So in the fourth and final week, our attention turns to feedback. As I spent some time reviewing and gathering links related to feedback, I realised that if I let it, it could easily fill my entire week. This page contains the best of the links I came across- What research/evidence has to sayPractical ideasEncouraging metacognition/student reflection/self-assessmentFood for thoughtBooks If you think I’ve missed any essentials then please comment below or share your links on Twitter @hannahtyreman
Instructions for students
The University of Helsinki grading scale is not a proportionate scale and does not therefore fully correspond to the ECTS grading scale. The difference is: the ECTS system is based on an expectancy of the distribution of different grades, the Finnish system is not. This means that in the Finnish system there is no rule or expectation as to how big a proportion of the participants in any given course can be given what grade; each student is graded on his/her individual performance, not in relation to the performance of others. Study units are typically graded on a scale of 0 to 5.
Assessment in Special Education Series
Introduction to Assessment and Overview An assessment in special education is the process used to determine a child’s specific learning strengths and needs, and to determine whether or not a child is eligible for special education services. Assessment in special education is a process that involves collecting information about a student for the purpose of making decisions. Assessment, also known as evaluation, can be seen as a problem-solving process (Swanson & Watson, 1989) that involves many ways of collecting information about the student. According to Gearheart and Gearheart (1990; cited in Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2006), assessment is “a process that involves the systematic collection and interpretation of a wide variety of information on which to base instructional/intervention decisions and, when appropriate, classification and placement decisions.
Diagnostic Questions
Diagnostic Questions are a quick and accurate way of assessing your students’ knowledge and understanding of a key skill or concept, identifying fundamental misconceptions that they may have. In short, they provide meaningful Assessment for Learning (AfL). Colleagues writing diagnostic questions together can also benefit significantly in developing their understanding of how students learn a particular topic, aiding their planning and delivery of lessons. In addition, students‘ understanding of a topic and their higher order thinking skills can be pushed to the limit by challenging them to create their own Diagnostic Questions. We can best illustrate the key concepts behind Diagnostic Questions with a simple example. One of the answers is correct, and three are incorrect.
Decoupling summative and formative assessment
The following post is my seminar notes from a session I ran with Christine Counsell on why ‘summative’ and ‘formative’ assessment need to be decoupled, particularly in terms of not principally using summative marking criteria to inform teaching. I am particularly grateful to the history teaching community (particularly the so-called ‘History Pizza Assessment Group’ in Cambridge) and Daisy Christodoulou for helping me clear up my thinking on this matter. The current prevailing model in formative assessment is to give pupils a task (an essay, an exam question, a piece of music to play) and then to judge their competence at that task using a series of levels, often based on either task-specific or generic descriptions of competence. Having ascertained how well a pupil performed on that task, we then identify what was absent from the performance: what should have been done that was not, or what could have been done better? And, in some ways, this is fine. But herein lies the problem.
What is Standards-based Grading? - TeacherEase
The Basics of SBG Traditionally teachers focus on teaching, the attempt to deliver knowledge. In SBG they also measure student learning, to understand the effectiveness of instruction. Instead of a single overall grade, SBG breaks down the subject matter into smaller “learning targets.” Each target is a teachable concept that students should master by the end of the course. Throughout the term, student learning on each target is recorded.
Understood - For learning and thinking differences
When LRE comes up, so do the words mainstreaming and inclusion. Many people think these terms mean the same thing, but they’re slightly different. A mainstream classroom is a general education classroom. Mainstreaming means putting kids with an IEP in the general education classroom for some or most of the day. They may also have some instruction in a separate, special education classroom.
Marking and written feedback in science
Feedback sits at the top of Professor John Hattie’s table of effect sizes on education performance. Written feedback is an important part of the overall feedback machine and gives teachers a unique opportunity for a 1-1 with students, allowing feedback to take place in both directions. So, what does effective written feedback look like in science education? Below are some of the dos and don’ts of written feedback. Some ideas have been taken and adapted from Black and Wiliam (1998).
What can we learn from Dylan Wiliam and AfL?
‘The only thing we learn from the past is how little we’ve learned from our mistakes’. Geog Wilhem Friedrich Hegel ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’
How to Help Teenagers Embrace Stress
Happily, studies also find that it’s not hard to convert people to the stress-is-enhancing perspective. To do this in my own work with adolescents, I liken the demands of school to a strength-training program. Everyone understands that lifting weights to the point of discomfort is the only way to build muscle; the process of developing intellectual ability, including the ability to manage the stress that comes with it, works just the same way.
5 Great Apps for Special Education Teachers
Clicker DocsMontessori NumbersThe Social ExpressSymbolSupportTime Timer Education and technology have become intrinsically intertwined, as shared by Forbes. Educational technology platforms, apps, and machines have swept the world, from classrooms in Nigeria and India to learning labs in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Key to Effective Marking in Schools
The Keys to Effective Marking and Feedback in Schools The volume of marking, feedback and data collection is a common grievance amongst teachers. As a Head of Department and a teacher of 11 years, marking was one thing I often dreaded most about my job until I recently adopted a new way of marking effectively that saves myself a lot of time. Having spent time to mark pupils’ work it can be disheartening to see them not taking it on-board.
