Providing Meaningful Student Feedback in a Timely Manner

(3credits/45hours) In-service credit only ON-LINE

Instructor: Allison Elfreth

Email: AElfrethliips@gmail.com

Course Description: The number of responsibilities a teacher has in a given day can be extensive, from writing up engaging lesson plans, putting in grades and attendance, responding to parent emails, attending CSE meetings, organizing after school club activities, developing effective assessments, and more.  In addition to all of these responsibilities, we need to find some time to teach!  But as any of us know, teaching does not just entail delivering a lesson for 40 minutes.  We need to ensure our lessons are engaging all students, differentiated to meet the needs of all, and effectively preparing students to understand and apply the content they are learning.  Part of that needs to include providing students with meaningful feedback.  Feedback is “information provided by an agent regarding aspects of one’s performance and understanding” and is an essential part of the learning process.  Feedback provides students with a clear understanding of the subject of interest; and if employed appropriately it not only gives students clear guidance for improving learning, but it also provides them with confidence.  Of course, in order for feedback to be effective it must also be given in a timely manner; and therefore, we as teachers need to plan for providing feedback.  We cannot expect that it is something we will just squeeze into our day.  Instead, we need to be intentional about our feedback and carve out time for implementing feedback into our grading and into our lessons.  Yet it is possible to make feedback a seamless part of everyday learning.  John Hattie and Helen Timperley from the University of Auckland famously wrote The Power of Feedback in which they classify the purpose of feedback as “reducing the discrepancies between current understandings/performance and a desired goal.”  We will use this reading, John Hattie’s principles of Visible Learning, and the online tool of GrokSpot as we delve into