and Revision

• “What will happen when the branch breaks off?” (Answer: The tree branch will eventually grow back.) • “Can the tree continue to reach toward the sun?” (Answer: Yes, there are still four more branches the tree can use to continue to stretch upward.) • “When you experience a setback, what can you do?” (Answer: When students experience frustration or when the first thing they try does not work, they can try another strategy to continue reaching toward their values or goals.)

Strategies for Evaluating Learning Through Feedback, Reflection, and Revision

The metacognitive process thrives on feedback from peers and teachers. Students should have the chance to reflect and revise after receiving constructive critique. Feedback is integral to learning, and to succeed, students must learn to accept, analyze, and even seek it out. As a first step, have students do the following. • Think about places other than the classroom where they receive feedback, such as sports, music lessons, or dance class. • Tell a story about a time when they were receptive to feedback and a time they were not. • Think about what happens when they choose to use feedback and when they choose to discard it.

Feedback from the teacher can increase learning and motivation, and promote self-regulation (Sparks, 2018). The way teachers typically learn to give feedback focuses on the transmission of information. When educators teach students to become more self-regulated in their learning, they emphasize developing strategies or processes. Teachers serve students best by giving feedback not just on the product but also on the process the students used to produce it. During active learning, teachers should aim to give feedback that focuses on learning goals as well as the tasks the students are performing (van den Bergh, Ros, & Beijaard, 2013). If teachers approach feedback as a learning opportunity, they help create an atmosphere where students value mistakes for their ability to produce subsequent opportunities for learning.

Research demonstrates that although teachers believe they are giving a lot of feedback, students report receiving very little teacher feedback. In observational data, researchers see very little teacher feedback in the classroom (Hattie & Yates, 2014). This is because many times teachers provide feedback in a group context, when students tune out, or because teachers mistake praise for feedback. Education researcher John Hattie explains that teacher feedback should help students understand “what they don’t know, what they do know, and where they go [from here]” (as cited in Sparks, 2018). Feedback should answer the following questions (Hattie & Yates, 2014). • Where am I going, and what are my goals? • How am I doing, and what progress have I made? • What should I do next?

Feedback should be goal-focused and address where the student is now in the process of working toward a specific objective. Constructive critique is more effective when it focuses on specific learned skills rather than grades. According to cognitive psychologists, John Hattie and Greg Yates (2014), teachers should be giving different feedback based on where a student is in the learning process. The three types of feedback are as follows. 1. Corrective feedback: For beginners, feedback should focus on skills and whether what they are doing is correct or incorrect. Give this feedback to students as soon as possible. 2. Process feedback: Learners with some experience need feedback on the strategies they are using and how they are applying what they learned. Give this feedback after students have a chance to monitor, evaluate, and revise their own work. 3. Self-regulated learner feedback: When they become more advanced, learners need to know how they can use the strategies they learned in other contexts to apply, extend, analyze, and create. Give this feedback after the student has learned and practiced a strategy.

Although valuable in building relationships, educators should approach praise as separate from feedback. When you are talking about a student’s work, you should stick to describing their work and avoid talking about the student as a person and their qualities. It should be positive, direct, specific, and target only skills where students have received adequate instruction. For example, with a student who is a beginner at a skill and got nine out of ten mathematics problems correct, a teacher would not say, “You are so smart! You got a 90 percent, and that is an A.” Instead, they can try something like, “Your goal for this lesson was to learn to add fractions with like denominators. You went from being unfamiliar with this skill on the pretest to getting nine of ten problems correct! What great progress! Let’s look at your process for solving number three, and why you were tripped up by that problem.”

“Personal theories regarding why things happen” in students’ lives are called attributional beliefs (Rowell & Hong, 2013, p. 160). Students can attribute the outcomes they experience to internal, changeable, and controllable factors, like their level of effort or how much they studied. Students can also attribute outcomes to external, stable, and uncontrollable factors, like an especially easy or hard test, their general ability, or luck. Where students attribute their successes and failures determines the motivational potential of that attributional belief. It is easier to stay motivated when students attribute their successes or failures to causes that are internal, changeable, and controllable (Rowell & Hong, 2013).

While confident students who do well in school tend to attribute their academic successes to effort and ability, students who struggle in school and who may have low self-concept tend not to give themselves credit for academic success. A student with low self-concept’s confidence does not increase when they do well because they do not take credit for it; instead, they attribute the success to an easy test or luck (Rowell & Hong, 2013). Teachers can help these students by pointing out the connection between their efforts and their results.

When students analyze their graded work as well as their strategy use, they are able to link their efforts to the results they receive. The following strategy for analyzing graded assignments and revisiting and organizing the strategies notebook can help students to make this connection.

Analyzing Graded Assignments (Grades K–12)

Critically reviewing graded assignments is an effective way to prompt students with questions that help them analyze and reflect on their test performance to see how effective their current study strategies are for them.

Use this activity to identify strengths and weaknesses and decide how students should focus their future study or practice time, and to analyze strategies students used to prepare and determine how effective those strategies were. Also use it to look at mistakes and ask students why they missed those questions. Is there a pattern or a certain concept they do not understand?

INSTRUCTIONS

Students should complete this activity after receiving a graded assignment, test, or quiz. See the following sections to learn how to adapt this activity to different grade ranges.

EARLY ELEMENTARY (GRADES K—2)

Teachers meet with students to find out why they are struggling with a graded assignment. Watch students work or have them explain their thought process if possible to find out about the strategies they are using. The teacher should emphasize an attitude of curiosity and reflection about why they missed a question and what strategies led to correct answers and accurate information. Students should use their deduction skills to look for clues. They can work with the teacher or in a small group to learn the process they need to arrive at the answer. Then the students correct their missed items.

UPPER ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE SCHOOL, AND HIGH SCHOOL (GRADES 3—12)

Teachers use the template in figure 2.7 to have students practice analyzing their graded work more carefully for helpful information and feedback. Teachers should also consider creating their own graded-work analysis customized to their class based on figure 2.7. By carefully reviewing how they performed on the graded assignment, students can decide what they need to do next time.

When students reflect, they pause and consider what they learned from a particular activity. Having time to think about their learning allows students to make meaning from their learning experiences. Students should reflect on the following. • What they learned: “What have I learned in this lesson?” • What they planned to do and what happened: “Did my plan work?” • The strategies they used: “Were my strategies effective? Why or why not?” • What they will do next time: “Would I use the same strategies next time?”

Reflection emphasizes that students can learn from errors and there are no real mistakes if students learn something they can apply next time. Reflection can be external and gathered from others’ comments and feedback, or internal and based on your own thoughts and self-evaluation.

Before completing this graded assignment, I practiced or studied by: F Reading over my notes F Doing practice problems F Making my own practice test or practice questions F Using flashcards F Playing a game F Rereading the textbook or teacher-provided articles F Trying to recall as much as I can and then checking what I remember with my notes F Making my notes into a map, diagram, or timeline F Teaching the material to someone else F Having someone quiz me or studying with a group F Creating a mnemonic or way to help myself remember F Other

I missed questions due to the following reasons (make a tally):

I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t understand the question.

I learned it but I couldn’t remember. I misread the question.

List the questions you missed, correct your answers, and share why you missed each question in the following space (attach a separate piece of paper if needed).

Do you see any patterns or connections between the questions you missed?

FIGURE 2.7: Analyzing graded assignments.

continued

Before doing this graded assignment: F I did not prepare, or I have not seen this concept before the graded assignment. F I worked on this concept or studied the day or night before. F I worked on this concept or studied two or three days before. F I worked on this concept or studied four or five days. F I worked on this concept or studied at least a week in advance of this graded assignment.

Were you prepared for this graded assignment? If not, what would you do differently in the future?

Based on the questions you missed, what do you still need to work on?

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/studentengagement for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Organizing the Strategies Notebook

From this chapter, students should have the following to add to their strategies binder (introduced in chapter 1, page 9). Make sure that they have taken the time to reflect on their use of each strategy and evaluate how it is working for them. • Graphic notes or pictures from the “Exercise Your Brain and Help It Grow” activity • Growth mindset statements and fixed-mindset characterizations • Vision board for the cover or front pocket of the binder or notebook • Determining school and classroom values pictures and examples