Blog #9

Provide timely and constructive feedback to students to help them identify areas for improvement and celebrate their progress.  Last week, I wrote about providing ample opportunities for formative assessment in your math classes so that students have the chance to understand and practice what meeting the standard looks like.  A key component to formative assessment is the feedback provided to students so that they know what needs to improve in order to be successful on the summative assessment.  This week I would like to take a deeper dive into providing feedback and offer some tips for making it as effective as possible.

Be Specific and Actionable

As the teacher, your feedback needs to focus on specific aspects of the student’s work.  Instead of saying, “Not quite” or “Try this again” when a student makes a mistake, try something more specific like, “Remember, you cannot just square each term when squaring a binomial.  You must use the FOIL method to get all necessary terms.”  Similarly, instead of just saying, “Good job!”, try to pick out something specific they did well, especially if it is something commonly missed.  Something like, “Nice job remembering to use ± when taking the square root of both sides of the equation,” will be much more meaningful and will let students know that you spent time looking at their work.

Encourage Growth Mindset

Be aware of not only what you say, but also how you say it.  Whether the feedback is written or verbal, always approach mistakes as an opportunity to learn and improve.  This promotes a growth mindset that encourages students to say, “my learning is still progressing,” rather than a fixed mindset that says, “I just can’t get this.”  Using phrases like, “The first two steps look great, but be careful here (circle mistake) where you need to divide ALL terms on both sides of the equation.”  Even better, in my opinion, if you are providing verbal feedback, is to ask the student questions that leads them to the correct step or procedure.  Guiding them to arrive at the answer themselves helps them to believe that they can understand the concept and make the appropriate adjustments.  Then encourage students to practice a bit more or make corrections on those problems they got wrong to help solidify the process in their minds.  Always help students to approach challenges as opportunities for improvement and growth.

Balance Positive and Constructive Feedback

Highlight both strengths and areas for improvement.  If teachers only point out what needs to be fixed, students begin to feel that they cannot do things correctly.  Even if the majority of problems are correct, students will fixate on what was wrong because that is what the feedback focused on.  Whenever possible, mention something positive in the feedback as well as something that can be made better.  For example, “You did a great job calculating all of the slopes for the equations of your lines.  Now, let’s revisit how to calculate the y-intercept so that you can get more consistent with those.”

Use Peer Feedback

As I mentioned last week, not all feedback needs to come from the teacher.  Peer to peer feedback can be very helpful.  I have particularly found this useful when I feel that a student and I are not “speaking the same language”, both figuratively and literally.  Figuratively, my “old-person” way of explaining a concept may not be clicking with my student’s teenage brain.  Sometimes a peer with a teenage brain can explain a concept in a way that makes more sense to the struggling student.  Literally, I have spent many years teaching overseas and I have often had students in my classes whose academic English is not very strong.  Having a classmate who can explain a math problem in the student’s native language until their English improves can help the student feel like less of an outsider and can help them to flourish.  I have found this to be especially true in math because once a student understands what I am asking them to do, they are usually pretty good at doing it.  Math symbols and processes are generally universal and transcend language barriers in many ways.  So enlist the students in your class to help “translate” whenever necessary to help struggling students to improve.

Additionally, using peer feedback encourages collaboration and exposes students to different perspectives and approaches to problem-solving.  The “receiving” student gets to see a new idea for solving the problem, and the “sharing” student gets to reinforce his/her understanding by explaining what they did and why it works.  This is a win-win for all students in the classroom.

Provide Opportunities for Revision

Telling students how to fix their work is one thing.  Providing students with time and space to rework and revise based on what you told them will make the fix “stick”.  Therefore, it is not only important to give students feedback, but to also give them the opportunity to rework missed problems in light of your feedback.  This will reinforce the learning and demonstrate to students that mistakes are part of the learning process.  Using the 5 in 5 bellringer that I spoke about in the last blog works well for this because those previous problems will show up again and it is important that students have correct work and answers to submit.

By incorporating these strategies, teachers can create a more supportive and effective learning environment that helps students improve their mathematical skills.  Students will receive feedback that lets them know where they currently are on the progression of learning, and specifically what they need to do to meet the expectations of the summative assessment.  The goal is the keep students learning, growing and moving forward to reach the greatest possible success in your class.  What could be better???

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to email me.  I would be happy to help or discuss ideas with you.  Have a great week!!