Engagement, Objectives & Feedback

Student engagement with routines:  View the first few minutes of this video.  A student leads the class through the daily learning target and learning focus-- notice the purposeful use of vocabulary.  How would your routine look if you use a focus wall daily to support student knowledge?

• Faculty Meeting (10/17/2017): Ms. Jones will provide information regarding test administration.  This training is mandatory for all instructional staff.

• Please review the living calendar for upcoming events and due dates.

• Please update your bulletin boards to show student work (include the learning standard).  

• Joe Leffert, our assistant superintendent, is visiting our school Wednesday.  We will walk through the building and visit classrooms.  

• Weekly SRT data is now linked live on the right, click to view.

Strategy Focus:  Classroom Instruction that Works:  Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001)

Setting objectives and providing feedback-- Setting instructional objectives and targets provide information as to what the student will learn.  Marzano et. al., (2001) suggest setting general goals and have students set sub goals/targets that will forward their individual learning.  This example came from the above text (p. 95).

The students in Ms. Gershwin's 4th grade class have been setting their own personal goals for each unit since the beginning of the year.  She always provides the general targets, but then students personalize the goals.  For the unit on the human body, she explains that her goal is for them to understand how each of the main organs work individually, as well as,how the organs work together as a system.  Based on those broad goals, Josh writes his personal learning goals.

• I want to know more about the kidneys and how they work.  My grandpa is having a kidney replaced soon.
• I know that the heart pumps blood through the body, but I want to know how a heart attack happens
• I want to know if the intestines are really four miles long.

Ms. Gershwin found that if she provided the sentence stems (e.g. "I want to know..." and "I want to know more..."), the students were able to create more interesting goals.

Feedback

• Feedback should be corrective - Provide students an explanation of what they are doing that is correct and what they are doing that is not correct
• Feedback should be timely-- Immediate feedback following a task is best.  The more you delay giving feedback, the less improvement there is to achievement.
• Feedback should be specific to a criterion -- For feedback to be most useful, it should reference a specific level of skill or knowledge -- Use of rubrics specific to tasks.
• Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback-- Use of student self-assessment, learning chart, reflection (weekly in student agenda), student goal setting.