My 5 Favorite Formative Assessment Strategies

This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust.  To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :)  If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!

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Toward the end of the 2017-18 school year, I received an email from one of our secondary curriculum coordinators asking if I would be willing to lead a breakout session in August for our new teachers.  When I received that email in May, I readily agreed because I'm often in my room working in August anyway.  Of course, as the date drew closer, I had a few moments of regret of giving up morning patio time, but it worked out in the end! :)

As I was finalizing my presentation, I sent out the following tweet:

And I got a TON of great responses!  (Thank you!)

I had a few people ask if I would share my presentation, so you will find it below.  Best part is that I could feel the power of the MTBoS as I presented (plus I was able to put in a plug for Twitter as a PLN as I shared @kklaster's tweet and bonus pictures from Julie and Pam's classrooms! :) 

Feedback is useless.... Unless

All day today I had this feeling that I needed to blog and when I got home, I found out that Jennifer (@HHSmath) had started a new MTBoS blog initiative called #MTBoSblog18 where you blog *something* on the 18th of the month, every single month of 2018.  Now that's a blogging challenge that I think I might actually be able to do! :)

Over the past few weeks, @pamjwilson and I have been reading Embedding Formative Assessment by Wiliam and Leahy.  If you know me at all, you know I love a good #EduRead, but we've been taking this one pretty slow, with a chapter every 2 weeks or so to give us time to research and implement the strategies.  This past weekend was a long weekend for both of us, so we had arranged to read and chat over Chapter 5 - "Feedback that Moves Learning Forward"

Feedback is one of those difficult topics for me.  I know I need to give feedback, but the key is how to give *effective* feedback.  In the chapter, the authors actually share that a lot of the research on feedback isn't very valid due to issues such as a lack of a control group, varying experimental conditions, etc, but there were still some really good nuggets of information, such as this one...

The only thing that matters with feedback is the reaction of the recipient.  No matter how well designed, if the student doesn't act on it, then the feedback was a waste of time.

Wowzers!!!

In other words, feedback is useless UNLESS the student reacts to it and uses it to improve their learning.  I'll admit, that kind of hurts.  I mean, I spend time writing thoughtful comments and hints on their papers, but they aren't taking the same time to read and process those comments. 

But then the sucker punch came....

Don't give feedback unless you allocate class time for students to respond.  If it's worth your time to generate the feedback, it's worth taking instruction time to ensure students respond.

Bingo!!

Do I have systems in place for students to read and process my comments?  Have I set aside class time to model how to interpret and respond to my comments?  And key question - have I taught my students HOW to use the feedback as a tool to improve their learning?

Those were the thoughts rumbling about in my head while I was lesson planning on Monday.  Because of the holiday, this was a short week and I knew my students had a lab report due in Forensics on Tuesday.  Could I figure out a way to implement some of these feedback strategies to help my students write better lab reports?  I knew I wouldn't have time to read and give feedback in a timely manner on 30+ lab reports, so Plan B was born - we could do Peer Reviews! 

In most of our science classes, we use a CER format, which stands for Claims, Evidence, Reasoning.  In general, for Forensics, we use this format more when we have "Casefile" lab where the students have to make a Claim about who did (or didn't) commit the crime, and then back it up by citing their Evidence and then explaining their Reasoning on how they logically came to that conclusion and how they eliminated the other suspects.

We gave them a few minutes at the beginning of class to finish up their CER and refresh on the Casefile from the previous Friday.  Then, we asked them to exchange with another student that was NOT in their lab group.  The student reviewer was to read the CER and provide feedback in terms of a "stars and wishes" - what the original author had done well and what could be improved.  During this time, they were not to talk at all, just read and write.  Then, they returned the paper to the original owner and talked over the feedback and asking clarifying questions.  Finally, we gave the students time to use the peer feedback to revise their CER before turning it in. 

While I have some other strategies from this chapter that I want to try, my biggest take-away is that I need to have a systemic approach to feedback.  I need to spend some time thinking about how to teach my students to read the feedback, but more importantly, how to USE the feedback.  I have to build time into my classes for students to receive feedback and actually implement that feedback to improve their learning.

 

How do you know what they know?

All day today, I kept thinking "I'm totally going to blog tonight... here's idea A, idea B, idea C, etc", but then 4pm came and the thoughts just disappeared or my after-school brain thought "That was a dumb idea... why did I think that would be a good blog post??"  It's so frustrating, but one of my goals this year is to #PushSend, even when I'm struggling.

Over the past few weeks, Pam and I have been slowly reading and discussing Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy. (Abbreviated EFA2) While there are parts of the book that have been fairly difficult to read, I've also been able to walk away with several usable strategies - and we're only on Chapter 4! :)

This year's theme of "What did you teach? What did they learn?" was inspired by this book and I have really tried to focus on this question each day.  A similar statement from the book was a reminder to stop worrying about the label of "formative assessment" and start thinking about whether your classroom activities will help your students learn more.  As a result of this book, I've really tried to focus on being intentional on "how do I know what they know?"  

In Chapter 3, the authors focus on learning intentions (aka objectives) and success criteria (aka rubrics) and it was this chapter that I've really focused on this week.  

Exit Tickets:  I've renamed my exit tickets as "Daily Reflections".  This week, when students arrived to class on Monday, I had a half sheet in their folder with space for this week's Daily Reflections.  Each day, I have really focused on my theme question of "What did you teach? What did they learn?" to guide me as I write that day's question.  I've tried to be intentional with the Reflection prompt as I think about the day's objective and what I hoped they would be able to do/understand at the end of the lesson.  Today, I tried a suggestion from EFA2 where students generate their own test/quiz questions, hoping to trigger what the authors call the "generation effect", where students remember responses they generate better than responses given to them.  

Success Criteria:  One of the other strategies I tried from Chapter 3 was one about analyzing student work.  The authors spent quite a bit of time in Chapter 3 referencing "success criteria" or rubrics for student work.  In general, I use rubrics for quizzes and tests that mimic the AP Exam style grading, but I remember trying to use an online rubric maker several years ago and I really struggled to understand the difference between "few / some / many" or other descriptors that are often used in those rubrics.  The authors instead suggest  that we should communicate quality work to our students by providing student work samples, not rubrics because rubrics rarely have the same meaning for students as they do for us.  The authors suggested showing examples of various quality to students and having the students give feedback.  For their justification, the authors said there were two main reasons to do this:  (1) students are better about spotting mistakes in the work of others than they are in their own work and (2) when students notice mistakes in the work of others, they are less likely to make the same mistakes in their own work.

I tried this strategy yesterday and today in my Stat class.  I like to start the 2nd semester with simulations because it's kind of fun and eases them back into our course; however, students often struggle with the written portion of a simulation.  I modified a previous AP problem and created two student samples of vastly different quality, and thanks to hubby's help, vastly different handwriting as well!  I asked students to pretend they were the teacher and read the two samples, writing feedback to Student A and Student B regarding what each student did well and what each student needs to improve.  After time to individually assess the student work, I had them share out in their table groups, and then finally as a class share-out of Star and Wish.  Finally, I had them close their eyes and use their fingers to show me what they felt each sample would have scored on the AP Exam on the 0-4 scale.  While I was pleased with the level of engagement each student showed and the quality of their discussions / critiques, the real power of this strategy showed up later in the hour when they had time to work on a problem set.  Many of them referenced the success criteria from the student samples, really putting effort into mimicking the work of the "good" paper and providing each other feedback regarding the quality of their written descriptions.  This was definitely a strategy that I will use again!!

2018 Classroom Focus

In previous years, I have posted my "mantra" for the year, usually in August.  This year, I didn't post one because honestly I didn't know what my classroom focus would be.  I had plenty of ideas for my personal life, but very little for my professional life.

But, as always, it was @pamjwilson to the rescue.  (If you don't read Pam's blog or follow her on twitter - go do that now.. She's *amazing*)

Over Winter Break, I happened to catch a twitter discussion between Pam and Elissa regarding goals for the new year.  Over the next few days, Pam and I chatted a few times about formative assessment and some of our previous #EduRead books.  One of the books we discussed was Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam, a book that I had started a few years ago, but only read through Chapter 3 before life bogged me down.  :)

Reading this book was already on my to-do list, but after seeing the twitter discussion and Pam's goals, I moved the book to the top of my pile.  

I'm so glad I did, because I finally found my classroom focus for 2018! :)

Such a simple, yet powerful, set of questions to help guide my semester.

What is your classroom focus for 2018?

Feedback and Formative Assessment #MTBoS12Days

Yesterday's post about effective feedback definitely started my wheels going...

Feedback & Exit Tickets

After reading the Educational Leadership article yesterday regarding effective feedback, I started Googling various things to see what I could find that might help me solidify my thinking and I found a couple of articles that really made me pause...

One of the first links I found was this article on Deep vs Impression Feedback and a few things really hit me in the first few paragraphs... learners rarely take the time to read comments, teachers rarely give time to read the comments (or act on them), and the same comments tend to show up time after time, indicating that the feedback isn't doing a good job of moving learning forward. These are not earth-shattering and most teachers can attest to the truth in these statements, but for some reason it hit me pretty hard, especially my role in giving time to read and act on the feedback.  I obviously feel that the feedback is worthwhile or I wouldn't spend time writing on each student paper, but do I demonstrate to the students that I feel that feedback is worth *THEIR* time as well?

One of my goals with effective feedback needs to be developing *descriptive and actionable* feedback for students.  In order for increased learning to take place, time should be provided for students to take action.  In my classroom, my students do quick checks several times a week, which I have regarded as a positive thing because I can get a snapshot of how well the students understand the concept.  However, once I write feedback on their QC, I don't ask them to *do* anything with it.  What if I asked them to turn over the QC and do something actionable on the back?  Either reflect on their errors or rework the problem or make up a similar problem and solve it?  This has the potential to be really annoying on my part, handling the same papers over and over, but it's still a thought worth pondering.  How could I develop an actionable process that isn't time consuming?  I've worked really hard this year to find a good balance, so I don't want to disrupt that too much, and I know from experience that if something is too unwieldy, I won't follow through, so how can I manage this process well?

Further in the article are some specific strategies for Deep Feedback vs Impression Feedback.  I really liked the "Met / Not Yet / I noticed" strategy and the "Traffic Lights" strategy for feedback.  I've used Traffic Lights for students to self-assess, but I've never given feedback or assessed students using this strategy.  With Traffic Lights, I like that the suggestion was for students to work together to determine why something was rated as Red, Yellow, Green, which brings up the "detective work" that Wiliam mentioned in the EL article.  I need to dig into these strategies a bit more and see how it might work in my classroom.

Continuing on my Google search led me to Mathy McMatherson's blog post on Why I Switched to Exit Tickets.  This blog post is probably the thing that made me ponder and reflect the most over the past 24 hours.  I haven't been really pleased with how homework (or lack thereof) is working in Geometry.  I try to give a lot of practice throughout the class period, but one struggle there is that a lot of practice time in class is collaborative and not individual.  I need to figure out a better way to really dig into what my students know after a lesson individually.  I have gotten away from exit tickets this year and I'm not happy with that either, but it seems like I often run out of time to do all that I want to do. 

From Mathy's post:

I realized that these few homework problems were really the only thing I valued about the day-to-day implementation of homework in my classroom – so why wasn’t I doing it every day and why was I letting it be optional? This was one of my motivations for switching to exit tickets – take those first few problems from a homework assignment, make it an exit ticket, and make every student do it in class in front of me. Then, if students struggle with it, put problems like this on the bellwork tomorrow. Either way, I’m forcing every student to try these problems and learn how to do them.

I definitely agree with this!  Why not pick out a couple of problems for students to work RIGHT AWAY for quick feedback?  It would help inform my teaching on a regular basis, allow for student feedback, and utilize that time at the end of class in a better manner.  This is similar to how my quick checks currently work, but QCs are normally the following day and that's a whole other frustration because absent students don't have a clue what to do.   The key element to this plan is that it is actionable.  When I respond to the exit ticket, then students can immediately use that feedback on the next day's warmup, which also ties in to the 'Curve of Forgetting'.

I'm not quite where I want to be yet, but I am starting to formulate a plan for this upcoming semester :)

What are your thoughts?

 

Giving Students Effective Feedback - #MTBoS12Days

I honestly had no idea what to write today, but I'm so close to my 12 post goal that I couldn't just give up!  Originally I was going to write about my plan for teaching proofs, but that plan isn't fully fleshed out yet, so it will be later in the break, so I decided to look at ASCD Educational Leadership for some ideas and here I am... :)

Feedback - Friend or Foe?

If you know me at all, you know that Formative Assessment is a reoccurring theme in my reading and in my blog posts.  The educational guru for formative assessment is Dylan Wiliam and when I ran across his article on The Secret to Effective Feedback a while back, I filed it away in my "to be pondered" folder and then, as is often the case, other priorities took over and I am just now getting back to the article, 20 months later :)

In my classroom, I try to give quite a bit of feedback.  I really don't want the first time a student receives feedback from me to be on an assessment, nor do I want the assessment to be the first time I see the student's individual work.  As a result, I often use "quick checks" as a warmup or exit ticket with just a couple short problems on it that I can see how a student is progressing with the skill/concept.  However, this definitely takes time and ultimately the real question is this...

Source: The Secret to Effective Feedback by Dylan Wiliam

We've probably all read articles about the researcher who decided to see how students would react to various forms of feedback.  Some papers received a score or grade, some papers received written comments only, and some papers received both a score and comments.  Due to some of these articles, I've tried to move toward more comment based feedback, especially when grading AP Free Response problems or Quick Checks.  In general, these formative assessments are purely for students to know how they are doing and for me to know how they are doing.

BUT...

The key to the quote I pasted above is what the students are doing with that feedback.

Earlier this week, I posted a reflection on my yearly goals and how they were progressing.  I am using SBG for the 7th or 8th year, but as I continue down the SBG path, I am struggling more with the details.  The grade-grubbing that originally led me to SBG is back in full force and the remediation process, the student self-assessment and metacognitive successes I had in the early years seems to be waning.

So, how do I improve?

I want the feedback to be used by students.  I want it to be *useful* to students.  I want the feedback not only to improve the current student work by letting them see the concepts they still need to work on, but also to help them get to the point of realizing what study methods work for them and what methods don't.  I want to help them grow as learners, both today and in the future.  I spend a lot of time writing comments, giving feedback, and I really don't want that time to be wasted for me or for my students.

In the article, Wiliam talks about assigning tasks that illuminate student thinking.  I need to work on this.  One of the things I got away from this fall was exit tickets and it's a goal for me this spring to bring them back.  I struggle with exit tickets a lot because how do you move past the surface and really illuminate their thinking?  How do you get to the point of really having students articulate their thinking in a way that helps you process the deeper thoughts?  

One of my struggles with exit tickets is how they often feel less than useful.  You ask a question and students, in their rush to pack up their belongings, just write down things without a second thought.  How do you build that metacognitive process?  How do you help students understand that you really want them to dig deep and give a serious answer so that you can be a better teacher for them?

Source: The Secret to Effective Feedback by Dylan Wiliam

#EFAMath Challenge

So I kind of failed at writing my #EFAMath Challenge post by Thanksgiving... sorry about that! :) This year hasn't been my best one blogging wise. I need to get back into the habit! I think I have to agree with Megan that writing a #180blog has really taken its toll on this blog. I am going to *try* to be better. I know I do better when I have challenges, so if anyone wants to post a blog challenge for me to try... (#mathmeme, Tina??)

Here's one of the strategies I tried as part of this challenge...

Red, Yellow, Green
Over the summer, I had posted about purchasing red, yellow, and green cups from a local party store and then posted again about putting them into my group buckets, but I had never actually TRIED the strategy until recently. As AVID Coordinator for my school, one of my weekly duties is to write an email to share best practices with my district and so near mid-October I shared the Red/Yellow/Green strategy the teachers in my district. The email mentioned several ways that you could use RGY, including the cup idea that I had yet to try. The next day I received an email from an entry-year teacher (that I happened to have taught about 10 years ago) and she was gushing about how much she loved the strategy and that she had used it during her observation lesson and the principal also loved it. Okay, that's it, time for me to put my thoughts into action and try it as well. A few days later came an opportunity to try the cups...

OMG - I LOVED IT!!!

Now I understand why the entry-year teacher gushed about it! The use of the cups let me immediately gauge how groups were doing without a need for me to be constantly eavesdropping and swoooping in to save the day! One student even said "Teacher, we need the cups to be a permanent part of group work!!" Even when the students don't have cups on their desks, they will raise their hand and say "Red Cup Alert!!!" LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

For more on the Red/Yellow/Green strategy, read the entry on my #180blog - Day 64

#EFAMath Challenge

One of my favorite parts of the #MTBoS is reading a book and discussing it with other math teachers. This past summer, we read Embedded Formative Assessment and I can honestly say that it was one of my favorite books of all time. If you would like to see our archive of chats, look HERE

With that said, it's time for an #EFAMath Accountability Challenge! Sometimes it is easy to be gung-ho about an idea over the summer, but once the year starts, things fall by the wayside. It's time to fix that!

The Challenge
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to select at least once Formative Assessment strategy, try it out in your classroom, and blog about it before Thanksgiving. Then, tweet the link with the hashtag #efamath and/or post your link in the comments here.

If this Challenge goes well, let's continue with a monthly (or twice monthly) challenge. By the end, we'll have a great source of strategies to try!

Challenge Accepted.... Are you with me??

Comparing Distributions in AP

One of the toughest topics for AP Stat students is the idea of comparing distributions. I know this is a tough topic for them because it consistently shows up on the AP exam and students consistently make the same error... they don't COMPARE the distributions! Most of the students have been taught to describe a distribution using Shape, Outliers, Center, and Spread (SOCS in my classroom), but the *compare* part is a struggle for them. This year, my partner teacher and I decided to try something new to help students with this topic...

The Setup
We had already taught this topic, but from previous years, I knew that students would forget. We had worked problems in class, they had a homework problem the night before on comparing distributions, and we had talked over and over about how important comparative language was. We had done "notice/wonder" but decided to reinforce it differently this year....

The Stations
Since this topic has appeared on several AP exams, I pulled 4 of them to use as questions in class. I intentionally chose problems with different kinds of graphs (dotplot, boxplot, stemplot, and histogram) and asked students to compare the distributions. I set 6 minutes on the timer and away they went...

(I love these plastic frames! I have them in portrait and landscape. They are on my "must-have" classroom list)

After the timer buzzed, we traded problems and they repeated the process.

Time to Grade!
We graded the problems one at a time. Each time, I projected an "ideal" student response from the AP Central website and conducted a whole class discussion on why that response was scored "Essentially Correct." Each student was given a Peer Grading paper that Partner Teacher created and asked to grade their partner's paper and give them feedback. Honestly, if I had a bit more time, I would have created some "less than ideal" papers and walked them through how I wanted them to grade the paper in more detail. Maybe next time! Overall, it was a good experience on writing legibly and checking for the required elements.

The "Real" Assessment
When I graded the quizzes for that chapter, I actually left this question for the last because in the past, it has been a real weakness of my students. I am so pleased to report that of the 95 students, only a few students forgot to write using comparative language (higher/lower/wider/narrower/etc). This is such a change from previous years that I truly feel this activity was a huge part of the difference.

Overall, I was very pleased with this activity and need to figure out how to use it more often. Thanks to my #efamath friends for encouraging me this summer to use more strategies like this! :)