Feedback is an essential tool for teachers with a Hattie effect size of .73 in 2015 (Visual Learning). For feedback to be effective, then the teacher must institute a system where the feedback is prompt, timely, and specific to the student’s writing. When some teachers have a workload of 160 or more students, some of this becomes difficult. Even if I spend 3 minutes per paper, given it is a 4-page paper, and then I will spend 213.3 minutes or 3 hours and 33 minutes. Given this time spent on each paper, how is quality feedback expected. I would be lying if I believed I provided quality feedback to all students given that time frame. In comes the Graide Network. Now, both teacher and student can receive work with detailed sentence and word level feedback within days of submission. With the shortening of time spent on submission-feedback return cycle, I can provide time for students to reflect on the feedback, improve their writing, and complete the process again as needed. The feedback is no longer summative, but rather formative and driving my instruction in the classroom. Isn’t it time to stop grading and start Graiding? Resources Visual Learning. (2016, May 10). Hattie ranking-interactive visualization. Retrieved from http://visible-learning.org/nvd3/visualize/hattie-ranking-interactive-2009-2011-2015.html
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Life does not include simple worksheets and multiple-choice tests as a means of day-to-day life after the last bell rings of schooling. Students must master the basics of become lifelong learners, thinking deeply and questioning everything. As teachers, this places more demand on creating stimulating activities that forces students to engage in creative thinking, such as metaphor or simile composition for complex ideas, and novel thinking, developing new ideas in a long list of traditional ideas. More of the educational needs to promote these activities to engage our students in their education.
This also puts a stress on teachers who are increasingly being asked to document student progress and provide data, data, data, and more data. Unfortunately, most curriculum and textbook resources are not structured for embedded thinking strategies and increasing thinking time of students. These are mainly focused on the transmission of content and skill from teacher or book/website to student. The focus is no longer in the student but on the teacher or the material. Focusing more on the student can be an abstract thought for teachers, but on that can be landed in the concrete world through questioning and cultures of thinking. After reading Ritchhart’s Cultures of Thinking and Rothstein and Santana’s Question Formation Technique, I decided to combine the two to see how my students responded to a culture of thinking. Students began with a 3-2-1 activity in reaction to the statement “Racism in America” (we had just finished To Kill a Mockingbird). Students had 3-4 minutes to list 3 words that came to mind, 2 questions, and 1 simile or metaphor for the topic. Not only did students directly engage with the material even before I finished the directions, but they added more than the required amount. As class, we then completed a group share out and recording of student responses. In some of the longer periods, I was able to embed metacognition and prompt students to add why they think that those thoughts or the connection between their ideas. Students transitioned to a Paper Talk, adapted from the idea of Chalk Talk. 6 large poster-sized sheets of white paper were separated around our room. In reflection, it would have been better to have a larger space for more separation. Students were assigned a starting location at one of the six stations and prompted to react to the statement on the sheet by recording their thoughts as they occur. Students should have some freedom in documenting their thoughts and not forced to write all paragraphs, etc. Students could document ideas, wonderings, or questions to the original topic. After students had a grasp on the activity, I added that if they had reactions, responses, or questions from peer writings on the posters, they could add those. I soon found students returning to multiple areas to add ideas, some were on to their own ideas. Additionally, students were connecting through lines and boxing like topics together. Unfortunately, the period ran short, but if time allotted, I wanted students to openly discuss their thinking process and describe some of the paths they took to adding those questions or conclusions. Some of the guidelines for the activity:
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Mr. Brenton DeFlitchStriving to provide unique and research-based strategies to modernizing the educational experience of students. Archives
February 2017
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