|
|
|
The views expressed on this page are
solely
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
|
Flickr: Alan Levine
Education Dive
For many students, teacher feedback is the new grading system
Educators say responding to students’ work is important for keeping
them motivated, but what used to take moments in the classroom can now
take days.
Linda Jacobson
April 30, 2020
Taren Villecco can usually teach a mini-lesson and tell right away "by
reading the classroom" which of her students need more help.
"Within a 15-minute time period, I could reach half my class," says
Villecco, who teaches 5th grade at Ryan Elementary School in Boulder
Valley School District in Colorado. She would know if some students
needed more individual or small group explanation, and "the teaching
and learning cycle would just keep continuing."
Now, she said, she delivers her lessons to a "computer that can't speak
back" and she has to "just wait for students to respond." Providing
feedback on their assignments in this remote environment can take
roughly eight hours, because it's important to get it "just right."
"If I don’t give feedback that is valuable and motivating," she said, "they are not going to keep trying for me."
A 'feedback mindset'
In the absence of grading — which, like BVSD, many districts are not
doing at all or are only doing on a partial basis — feedback on the
work students are completing has become the primary exchange between
teachers and students.
“That ‘feedback’ mindset could positively guide the decisions that
schools need to make regarding end of year reporting and grades,” reads
a recent newsletter from the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, which
works with schools implementing competency- and performance-based
assessments. “Like other rituals of learning this year, we should shift
our practice more toward a student-centered and personalized lens for
reporting and amplify the relationships in the classroom.”
In a video to families earlier this month, Matt Hayes, deputy
superintendent of academics for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools in North
Carolina, emphasized feedback as the primary form of assessment at this
time.
“Teachers will assign work to students and then provide meaningful
feedback on those assignments that are turned in,” he said. “Teachers
will maintain anecdotal records of the assignments that will can be
used at a later date to either assign a grade or determine a pass/fail
status based on further guidance from our state Board of Education.”
Feedback on student work is also one aspect of districts’ distance
learning plans the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the
University of Washington is tracking as part of a periodically updated
database.
According to the data, based on publicly available information from 101
districts and charter management organizations, 13 districts were
providing no feedback on students’ work, 10 were providing partial
feedback — perhaps just at certain levels — and the rest were giving
feedback on all work turned in.
But some districts are just getting started with official remote
learning, so the picture is continually shifting. And in the Fresno
Unified School District in California, for example, expectations for
feedback to students weren’t spelled out as part of an official plan or
agreement with the union.
“That is part of teaching,” said Manuel Bonilla, president of the
Fresno Teachers Association. “It wasn’t something that we felt we had
to put in a [memorandum of understanding].”
|
|
|
|
