Another PD post?

Yep.  It turns out that this upcoming Friday I will be involved in presentation during a PD session for the first time in my career.  I've been thinking about it for about a week now and I've got a rough idea of how I'd like my section to go.  Basically, I want to get teachers to help me present individual strategies that have worked for them regarding effective use of feedback.  Bottom up or grass roots stuff that teachers in the school are already using that can motivate and encourage other teachers to try it out.

Feedback is a practice that I have been working on improving in for a few years.  There are a few things that I do to ensure that students benefit from feedback and see assessments as yet another way to learn.  I recently tried something I hadn't done before and while I'll admit it needs some tweaking, I did like how it went.  Instead of having students just correct their answers, I had them write out on a separate piece of paper the reason(s) why they didn't get full marks for the question (ie 'my explanation didn't have an example like the question asked for', or 'I defined/listed the terms instead of explaining their connection' or a big one 'I only did the first part of the question and not the second part').  Mostly, their comments were based upon the feedback I'd left them on the test.  I held individual interviews with the students and we went over their reasons, modified them if they were wrong, and made sure they understood everything before moving on.  In addition to the learning benefits to the students, this was a good way for me to see if my feedback truly let them know what was lacking from their response, and students appreciated the one-on-one time.  The only problem I have with it is that it was FAR too time consuming.

Last night I had an idea.  I belong to a wonderful group of teachers (a PLN if you will) on twitter and I posed a question to them: 'Looking for the most effective strategies for giving feedback to students. Ideas?'

Within moments, I had three responses.  That started a chat involving about 8 people.  I've received 5 good ideas that I hadn't thought to try on my own, and 1 unique way to accomplish something that others have tried that works for them.  Many people show a sample of responses from each level so kids have an idea of what they need to do in order to move up to the next level.  Some post it on their wall, others do it via overhead and discuss each.  @fnoschese suggests posting them on the internet.  I already have a website that I refer kids to daily, and I think this will be a great way for me to share content with the kids.  Few ever hang back or come after class to check the posted solutions or study the responses at various levels, but perhaps, from the privacy of their homes, students will be more inclined to check them out.  Others have suggested using individualized googledocs or wikis to track when students access the material (and more importantly, who does not access it).  While I can see that this is a great thing, I'm not confident enough in that technology to be able to do it.  I can see this working for me in the future when I have a bit more time to fool around with it though.

If you have any suggestions or would like to share ideas that work for you, you can leave a comment here or email me with them.  Better yet, get on twitter and join a PLN.  Don't forget to let me know you are there.  Just send a tweet to @glevack.