Office of School Improvement Differentiated Webinar Series Formative Assessment – Feedback February 22,2012 Dr. Yvonne A. Holloman, Thomasyne Beverly 1

The ultimate goal in school improvement is for the people attached to the school to drive its continuous improvement for the sake of their own children and students. Dr. Sam Redding 2

Today’s Agenda 1.Welcome (2 minutes) 2.Team reports – Checking for Understanding Strategies (10 minutes) 3.Research regarding the Feedback (20 minutes) 4.Activity/Discussion for participants related to Descriptive Feedback ( 20 minutes) 5.Reflections/Assignment for the subsequent webinar (8 minutes) 3

Purpose Participants will be able to differentiate between descriptive and summative feedback Participants will be able to identify the four essential elements of descriptive feedback 4

Team Reporting (10 minutes)  What strategies are teachers using on a daily basis to check for student understanding.  What steps are teachers taking when it is obvious that some or all of the students are not “getting it?” 5

What is Feedback?  “Feedback is information about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way.” (Ramaprasad, 1983, p.4)  Sadler (1989) simplified the aforementioned definition by establishing three conditions for effective feedback to take place. The learner has to: Possess a concept of the standard (or goal, or reference level) being aimed for; Compare the actual (or current) level of performance with the standard; and Engage in appropriate action which leads to some closure of the gap. Information is only considered feedback when it is “used to alter the gap.” 6

Indistar® Feedback Indicators VC01: Teachers use evidence of student learning as feedback to adapt and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of different students. 7 Jane Doe taught a lesson regarding the process for sequencing events in a story. During the guided practice, she noticed that Bobby and Sue were unable to properly sequence events using transitional words as clues. As a result, she taught a small group lesson to Bobby and Sue using sentence strips to emphasize transitional words.

Indistar® Feedback Indicators VC02: Teachers use feedback to respond quickly to students’ learning needs. This includes on the spot changes during a lesson (when it is obvious students are not understanding), as well as anticipating where students might struggle and planning ahead to address those needs. 8 Tammy Smith taught a lesson about subtraction with renaming. During the lesson, she noticed that the majority of students experienced difficulty remembering to rename when there was a zero in the ones place. During planning, Ms. Smith anticipated that this may become an issue with her students so she executed an alternate lesson which involved modeling the procedure for writing the sequence of steps for solving a subtraction problem. She used this process in tandem with place value materials.

Indistar® Feedback Indicators VC03: Teachers provide students with feedback that clearly communicates where they are going, where they are not (relative to the learning goal or target), and what they can do to close the gap. 9 Tommy Tune reviewed the results of a recent test administered to students regarding the use of a map scale. He noticed that several students were unable to use the map scale correctly to measure distances between symbols. On the next day, Mr. Tune met with individual students to discuss their errors and to re-teach the procedure for using a map scale.

Indistar® Feedback Indicators VC04: Teachers help students own their learning by giving them second and third tries to correct their mistakes. 10 Johnny Jones is a third grade student in Jane Doe’s class. After a recent science test, his teacher met with him to discuss his difficulty with analyzing data included in a table. During the discussion, Ms. Doe modeled the procedure for extracting information from a table. Afterwards, Johnny completed an independent practice activity and discussed the results with his teacher. The next week, he was given an opportunity to re-take the science test for a better grade.

Indistar® Feedback Indicators VC05: Teachers plan ways to increase and support the student’s role in their learning – metacognition, self-regulation, peer feedback and students as instructional resources for one another. 11 Polly Pan is a fourth grade teacher. She planned a reading lesson regarding main idea and details. During the lesson, students were given an opportunity to engage in reciprocal learning by working in pairs to read a passage and complete a graphic organizer. During the classroom discussion, pairs of students shared the process they used to identify main idea and details in the reading passage. Their peers were given an opportunity to pose questions to each pair.

What the research says…  “Feedback is information with which a learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that information is domain knowledge, meta- cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or cognitive tactics and strategies” (Winnie and Butler, p.5740). 12

What the research says…  “When feedback is combined with a more correctional review, the feedback and instruction become intertwined until the process itself takes on the form of new instruction, rather than informing the student solely about incorrectness” (Kulhavy, 1977,p.212). 13

What the research says…  “Students receive very little quality feedback during a school day. In fact, the average student receives only seconds per day of descriptive feedback, i.e. feedback that identifies what they are doing well, what they need to improve on, and how to go about improving it.” (Hattie and Jaeger, 1998) 14

Providing Feedback  Feedback should be “corrective” in nature. You need to explain to the students what they are doing that is correct and what they are doing that is incorrect.  The research has found that simply telling students that their answer on a test is right or wrong has a negative effect on achievement. Providing students with the correct answer has a moderate effect on achievement. The best feedback appears to involve an explanation as to what is accurate and what is inaccurate in terms of student responses. In addition, having students continue to work on a task until they succeed appears to enhance achievement. 15

Providing Feedback  Feedback should be timely. The timing of feedback is critical to its effectiveness.  Feedback given immediately after a test- like situation is best. The longer the delay in feedback the less its impact on achievement.  Feedback should be specific to a criterion. Feedback needs to reference a specific level of skill or knowledge. This lets the student know exactly where they are relative to specific knowledge or skills. 16

Providing Feedback  Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback. Have the students keep track of their own learning as it occurs. (For example, keeping charts of their progress towards a specific goal.)  Once students have a clear understanding of learning goals, they can then understand where they stand in relation to those goals and take some ownership of how to close the distance between the two (Dylan & Wiliam, 1998.) 17

Two Types of Feedback 1.Descriptive – is specific information in the form of written comments or conversations that help the learner understand what he or she needs to do to close the gap between actual and desired performance. The feedback should; (1) comment on student’s strengths relative to the learning task, (2) comment on area(s) for student improvement, and, (3) provide suggestions for improvement. 2.Evaluative – is a summary of how well the learner performed on a particular task. It is often given in the form of letter grades, numbers, check marks, symbols and/or general comment such as “excellent” or “needs help”. (Teach First, 2010) 18

Descriptive Feedback Examples  “You have interpreted the bars on this graph correctly, but you need to make sure the marks on the x and y axes are placed at equal intervals.”  “What you have written is a hypothesis because it is a proposed explanation. You can improve it by writing it as an “if … then …” statement.  “The good stories we have been reading have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I see that your story has a beginning and a middle, just like those good stories do. Now you need to add an ending to your story.” 19

Evaluative or Descriptive? You correctly solved the equation, but the written explanation is missing a lot of information. Try explaining step by step how you solved the problem to your math partner and then go back and expand on your response. Descriptive or evaluative? Why? (Teach First, 2010) 20

Evaluative or Descriptive? Just a couple of small errors kept you from proficiency. If you keep this up you will certainly get to a level 3 by the end of the quarter. Descriptive or evaluative? Why? (Teach First, 2010) 21

Effective Feedback 22 Effective feedback must answer 3 questions for the student: Where am I going? (What are the goals?) How am I going? (What progress is being made toward the goal?) Where to next? (What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?) Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1),

What was one idea I learned during today’s webinar that I plan to share with teachers at my school? 23

Team Assignments for Webinar Session 6  Be prepared to share various strategies that teachers are using on a daily basis to provide students with descriptive feedback.  Continue working through the Editure formative assessment modules and continue using the instructional conversations. 24

Questions  Next web session March 27, a.m. 25