Making Feedback Meaningful Notes
Personalized and Customized Learning
Goal: To move toward more personalized and customized learning.
Method: Giving targeted and differentiated feedback based on demonstrated needs.
Preparing students to be more independent learners.
Inquiry Project
Students are revising blogs based on an inquiry project into social justice.
Receiving different feedback based on blog drafts.
Mini lesson around opening sentence techniques for all students.
Opening Sentence Techniques
Students' openings have been repetitive.
Techniques presented to see different techniques and try to integrate that.
Revision and Improvement
Students with similar ways to grow or improve their work are grouped together.
The rest of the students can use each other's resources.
Teacher will check back in with students to monitor progress.
Three-Part Source Integration
Strategy: Introduce the quote (who said it, where they said it, what they said).
Make it clear to the reader why it matters.
Connecting the citation to the more general issue.
Managing Student Progress
Highlighting in their work to think about where they might need to get some attention.
Traffic light system: red, yellow, and green.
Providing Feedback
Google Docs: voice notes using Google Read and Write.
Word Online: highlight and integrate comments.
Paper form: colored highlighters.
Balance in Feedback
Balance between handing students the answer and helping them own their learning.
Bread crumbs to lead them down the path to better writing.
Helping Students Become More Independent
Focus on making sure students are aware of and use their resources with direction to improve their work.
Asking students if they've asked peers or used available resources.
Posing questions instead of handing over answers.
Leading questions to give students space and time to arrive at their own learning.
Conferencing with Students
Opportunity for students to advocate for themselves and express when they're stuck.
Identifying and addressing misconceptions about assignments.
Having a flexible structure that allows students to make their needs known and address them in short cycles.
Student Reflections
Students reflect in their workshop blog.
Students give information about what went well and where they made progress, and their challenges.
Teacher's Work/Life Balance
Search for life balance as a high school English teacher.
Making expectations clearer and giving more exemplars.
Dedicating the same amount of time but providing more feedback on more work.