The MyGrade GPA Exercise encourages classroom teachers to take a moment to reflect on their classroom practices by reviewing a statement and then using an A to F grade to rate their performance. This week the MyGrade GPA Exercise addresses our ability to create opportunities in the classroom to offer students continuous and specific feedback to help them improve.

Remember from Exercise 10 that when we receive feedback about our performance from others, it is both an educational and emotional experience. Likewise, when students receive information from a teacher about their performance, their self-worth is enhanced or challenged.

Participate in this week’s Exercise:

 

Learning makes more sense to students when they experience learning tasks that specifically connect to learning targets communicated by teachers. Likewise, feedback strategies coexist alongside student assignments and function as part of the instructional process. We naturally give students feedback as they complete learning tasks. Feedback strategies allow us to create formal ways to give students timely feedback. Also, students gain feedback from themselves and other students. What does it mean for planning lessons? Information we gather from the feedback strategies determines if we need to modify our instruction for the next day’s lesson or continue on.

We informally assess student progress each day. We look at body language and expressions, listen to the types of questions students ask, and analyze their frustration levels. These informal formative assessment/feedback strategies are important. However, they do not directly involve students in reflecting about their own performance, making learning connections, and taking ownership of their learning. Below are 6 ways for teachers to do just that.

• Provide feedback to recognize good performance.
• Very specifically describe how students can improve their performance.
• Focus on how well rather than how rapidly students accomplished the learning target.
• Focus on quality rather than quantity of student work accomplished.
• Focus on providing feedback about the learning task, not personalizing it to the student.
• Provide opportunities for students to express that they understand the feedback and what they need to do to improve.

As teachers we must constantly create ways to collect and analyze information to share with students. Feedback can be applied by the teacher, by student peers, or through assessment. We must choose feedback strategies that specifically create ways for students to receive descriptive feedback about their performance.

Participate with us in the MyGrade GPA Exercise through each Monday through the remainder of July. At the end of the summer, you can calculate your overall GPA; we will do the same using all anonymous poll responses.

 

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Participate in Part 1’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 2′s Exercise here

Participate in Part 3’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 4’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 5’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 6’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 7’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 8’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 9’s Exercise here

Participate in Part 10’s Exercise here

Our mission at Studer Education is to provide students with a great place to learn, teachers with a great place to teach, and parents with confidence that their children are getting a great education. To do this we teach teachers and leaders how to get the best student learning results and create results-oriented school cultures. Visit us online at http://studereducation.com to learn more about Studer Education Teacher Development Institutes (TDIs), Leader Development Institutes (LDIs), and Evidence-Based Leadership. Studer Education is a division of Studer Group, the recipient of a 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.