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Learn: what…why…how…you and…

Student to Student Feedback

Developing Students’ Ability to Give and Take Effective Feedback  By Katrina Schwartz OCTOBER 15, 2017

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/15/developing-students-ability-to-give-and-take-effective-feedback/

An Excerpt:

“Training kids to give effective critique is one of those teaching strategies that takes some time on the front end, but can save a lot of time once students get good at it. It’s common for students to give unhelpful, general or unkind feedback that doesn’t do much to advance a peer’s goals for the work, but Lukas found when she carefully trained students on some conversational “commandments” and attitudes around peer critique, 12-year-olds could give feedback as well as any adult. Even better, when kids got feedback from peers, she found they internalized it more.”

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Connecting Executive Function (Metacognition) to Learning

In  conversations  with students about their learning, we need to understand what they know about the “topic” of learning.  We need to ask where they acquired their knowledge of the topic of “learning.”  Ideally we hope they will compare their beliefs against their experiences as learners.

I believe that there is an expectation that teachers in their preparation (training) were required to “take” a course on learning.  What do teachers take away from such a course and apply to their teaching?  How does a teacher’s knowledge base about “learning” change over time?  Do teachers and students believe the same things about learning?  Do they talk about those beliefs?

As a starting place, I have researched recent articles on the topic of learning.  Over the next few weeks, I will blog about a few of these.

I start with a series of videos about learning featuring Linda Darling-Hammond and published by the Annenberg Foundation.  Here is the link:

https://www.learner.org/resources/series172.html

This is a series of 13 videos about learning covering a range of topics

The first is “How People Learn – Introduction to Leaning Theory and focuses on a discussion with teachers.

https://www.learner.org/courses/learningclassroom/session_overviews/intro_home1.html

 

 

 

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Feedback and Learning How to Learn

Feedback pp from Fran Toomey
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Many Ways to Look at Feedback and Executive Function

Addressing Executive Function in and Across the subject areas

Example 1: Reading, Reading Comprehension

EXECUTIVE SKILLS AND READING COMPREHENSION

by Joan Sedita | 1 April 12, 2017 | 0 Comments

https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/executive-skills-and-reading-comprehension/

From Joan Sedita, commenting on a book by Kelly Cartwright

“Executive skills involve regulating one’s own thinking to achieve desired goals….  Sedita goes on to quote from the text 9Guilford, 2015)

 “Here is a summary of how these core skills affect reading comprehension (p. 8-9):”

  • Cognitive Flexibility: is the ability to shift attention from one activity to another or to actively switch back and forth between important components of a task….
  • When reading, skilled comprehenders actively shift focus between many things….
  • Working Memory: is the capacity for holding information in mind while working with part of that information
  • Inhibition: is the ability to resist engaging in a habitual response as well as the ability to ignore distracting information – i.e., to think before acting..

Cartwright also addresses additional, more complex executive skills:

  • Planning: involves setting and working toward a goal
  • Organizing: involves ordering and sequencing information or subtasks in ways that support a common goal”

 

I am also attaching a Metacognitive Interview/Questionnaire I designed for middle school students:

 http://explorience.pbworks.com/w/page/19411540/Metacognitive%20Interview

 

 

 

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Growth Mindset (4M’s) that goes beyond “effort”

One of the best Growth Mindset postings I’ve read!

Four Teaching Moves That Promote A Growth Mindset In All Readers

By Katrina SchwartzAPRIL 3, 2017Mind Shift

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/04/03/four-strategies-that-promote-a-growth-mindset-in-struggling-readers/

Some short excerpts:

“Most often teachers spend their time assigning what students should read and how they should show what they read, monitoring to make sure students have done what was asked, and making decisions about what students will do and how they will do it. Those roles make the teacher the main driver of the learning. In order to step back from those traditional roles, teachers have to replace them with new strategies.

“There’s a place for those three, but when that’s our main role there isn’t space for ownership and to develop that growth mindset,” Goldberg said. She coaches teachers to think of themselves in four very different roles, and to step back from constantly stepping in when students struggle. A big part of that is making it clear that struggle is part of reading, not a unique experience to students learning to read. It’s common to start a book and be confused, or to read a passage and miss something, but teachers don’t often make it clear how universal that experience is, no matter one’s reading level. Rather than being assignors, monitors and managers, Goldberg coaches teachers to see themselves as miners, mirrors, models and mentors”

I encourage you to watch the 7 minute video where Goldberg teaches us how to be miners, mirrors, models and mentors.  The article continues with a description of these 4M roles.

 

 

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Recommendation: A Book on Feedback

I don’t usually recommend buying a book, but I think this is worth the investment.

How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students, 2nd Edition

by Susan M. Brookhart

Table of Contents
Select a link to read sample content.

Chapter 6. Feedback: The Long View—Does Feedback Improve Learning?

A Short Excerpt:

“Feedback can lead to learning only if the students have opportunities to use it. One of the best ways you can help students learn to use feedback is to make sure you build in opportunities for students to use it fairly soon after they receive it. The “long view” of feedback, using the metaphor of a telescope lens, helps us remember to focus on the consequences of feedback. Did the feedback improve student learning?”

 

  • Model giving and using feedback yourself.
  • Teach students where feedback comes from.
  • Teach students self- and peer-assessment skills.
  • Increase students’ interest in feedback because they own
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Feedback and Student Voice: Critical to Executive Functioning

Courtesy of D. Bassett…from Mindshift site

 
How Students Critiquing One Another’s Work Raises The Quality Bar

http://dbassett.blogspot.com/2017/03/here-is-great-article-on-learning-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ReflectionsOnMeta-cognition-ForEducatorsByEducators+%28Reflections+on+Meta-cognition+-+For+Educators+by+Educators%29

 
Too often, when students produce schoolwork, they turn it into a teacher for a grade and move on. And after the teacher spends time evaluating the student’s work, many students never look at the feedback, a cycle that frustrates both parties and isn’t the most effective way to learn.

Several schools are trying a different model — one that takes more time but also helps students feel more ownership over the quality of their work. Called peer critique, students follow clear protocols that remind them to “be kind, be specific, and be helpful” in the feedback they give to peers.

Student to student feedback video via sMindShift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8FKJPpvreY  4 minutes

 

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Feedback is Essential to Learning How to Learn

Actionable Feedback Is Essential for Growth

By Starr Sackstein on October 16, 2016 7:08 AM

 

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2016/10/actionable_feedback_is_essenti.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=workinprogress

A short excerpt:

Perhaps it’s just the new buzz word of the moment or maybe it’s the missing piece in how we make feedback more meaningful, but actionable feedback means not only identifying what needs improvement, but also offering a plan of action to make the necessary improvement possible.

It’s easy enough to tell a person what’s wrong with their writing or a math set but it is a whole other thing to help them understand how to tackle the challenge and start to improve it. This is clearly more important than naming the problem.

Too often in education we spend time naming problems rather solving them. We talk about what’s wrong at length instead of living in solutions.

Actionable feedback is where the solutions begin….”

 

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Learning to learn, Feedback and Assessment

Learning, Feedback and Assessment

Do we dare give up grades?  Starr Sackstein thinks so…  What do you think?

A short excerpt from her blog:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2016/08/approaching_the_new_year_with_.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=workinprogress

Approaching the New Year With a No Grades Classroom

By Starr Sackstein on August 18, 2016 5:43 AM

“……it’s a whole philosophical shift that you’re ready to make because you know it will benefit kids.

 

Now it’s time to start a new year fresh without grades or at least some version of a standards based classroom that strays from traditional beliefs about how grades communicate learning and you want to make sure you do it right….”

 

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