Visible Learnings Meets BTC - Ch. 6: Feedback

Feedback!

Totally necessary when reflecting on learning.

Both for the student.

And for the teacher.

For a couple years now, on quizzes I will ask about the impact of the learning activities used

To gauge which the students deemed the most helpful. 

I have also found that with VWBs

I can give more individual feedback for what I'm seeing on each board,

Differentiating instruction instead of lumping it all under one umbrella with a whole group discussion.

This chapter had a lot to think about.

And new ways to look at feedback.

After a first read, I feel like I just partially understand it.

Will definitely need a deeper dive.

The main message:

"Teachers cannot answer the question of whether learning and teaching is successful on their own. They need to ask the learners what they think."

Yes.

YES.

YES!

Just seeing the lesson in action and moving along nicely is not enough feedback 

To truly assess the learning activities used.

When using the BTC methods, these are ways to incorporate more feedback back to the teacher.

1) When learning is at the VWBs, student explanations of how they solved the problem(s) is priceless feedback for the teacher to identify strengths, weaknesses, and misconceptions.

2) Entries in Notes-For-My-Future-Forgetful-Self offers a mirror into student understanding and if learning goals were met.

3) Simply asking students their thoughts on a particular learning activity.

4) Exit Tickets

Where Am I Going?  By going through this lesson/unit, what will I be learning?

How am I Going? What are going to be the instructional/learning strategies to help me understand the content?

Where to Next? Where will this content be seen again?  Why am I learning this?

Try to give feedback without praise.

This requires creating a culture where mistakes are valued, thoughts are encouraged, and input is sought out by those struggling.

This feedback gets even more diverse when you think about them in terms of task, process, or self-regulation.  And also, feed"back", feed"up", and feed"forward".  Using the matrices in this chapter, I attempted to think through one lesson in these terms.  

I also LOVED the coordinate system feedback grid (pg. 95) to assess group work at the VWBs for each day.  Place the grid with "Knowledge Gained" on the x-axis and "Group Work" on the y-axis and have students mark where they ended up after the lesson.