Effective Goal Setting & Feedback Strategies for Teachers

1. SETTING OBJECTIVES & PROVIDING FEEDBACK ESU 10 Summer 2010

2. Participant Outcomes Participants will: • Understand the purpose and importance of setting objectives • Identify ways to implement goal setting in the classroom • Understand the purpose and importance of providing feedback to students about their learning • Review examples of providing corrective, timely and specific feedback

3. Personal Learning Goalsfor the Workshop Record your answers to the following questions in Google docs: • What are YOUR goals for this workshop? • What do you need to do to reach YOUR goals?

4. SETTING OBJECTIVES Provide students a direction for learning.

5. Generalizations from the Research on Setting Objectives • Setting instructional goals narrowswhat students focus on. • Teachers should encourage students to personalize the learning goals the teacher has identified for them. • Instructional goals should not be too specific.

6. Behavioral Objectives Given 5 practice sessions, students will be able to make an organized list of 10 items of information with 80% mastery.

7. Recommendations for Classroom Practice: Setting Objectives 1.Set learning objectives or goals that are specific but flexible.

8. I Wonder... I want to know…

9. Understand how the main organs work individually & as a system. What I Want to Know What I Have Learned How I Plan to Find Out What I Know Organizer

10. Sample Parent Letter

11. Formats for homework that clarify purpose: Assignment Notebook Assignment: Due: Learning Goal: As a result of doing this assignment, I should Know more about…? Understand better…? Be more skilled at…?

12. Contract with students to obtain specific learning objectives or goals. Learning Contract Maker

13. Example of a Learning Contract Understands the ways in which technology influences the human capacity to modify the physical environment. I know ____________________________________ I want to know ______________________________ I will show this by ___________________________ Teacher Signature ________________ Student Signature ________________

14. Planning Questions For Setting Objectives • How will I encourage students to personalize objectives? • How will I communicate my objectives to students and parents? • How will I use contracts with students? • How will I monitor how well students are meeting the learning objectives? • What will I do to help students who are not meeting objectives?

15. Recommendations for Classroom Practice on Goal Setting • Communicate Learning Goals to Students • Provide in writing (i.e. on board, handout) • Provide orally • Help Students Set Learning Goals • Model process for students (i.e. sentence stems) • Provide support along the way • Short term and long term goals • Communicate Learning Goals to Parents • Keep the message simple • Avoid educational jargon

16. A well written goal should… • establish direction and purpose • be specific but flexible • be stated in terms of knowledge rather than learning activities • provide students opportunities to personalize

17. Think, pair, share… • Write an effective classroom goal for your students. • Share with a partner. • “Provide feedback.”

18. PROVIDING FEEDBACK Provide students information about how well they are performing relative to a particular learning goal so that they can improve their performance.

19. Your Turn Think of a time when feedback made a difference in your learning. What did the feedback look like and what difference did it make?

20. Generalizations from the Research on Providing Feedback • Feedback should be corrective in nature. • Feedback should be timely. • Feedback should be specific to a criterion. • Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback.

21. Should be “corrective” in nature. • gives an explanation of what the student is doing correctly • gives an explanation of what the student is doing that is not correct • promotes working on a task until the student is successful

22. Should be timely • this is a critical point! • immediate is best • the longer the delay that occurs in giving feedback, the less improvement there is in achievement

23. Should be specific to a criterion to be the most useful • Referenced to a specific level of skill or knowledge (criterion referenced) • NOT in reference to other students – (norm referenced). • Only giving the percentage of correct or incorrect answers is not usually very helpful in correcting a skill.

24. Can also be effectively provided by the students themselves. • Students keeping track of their own performance • Chart or graph of accuracy • Chart of graph of speed • Or both accuracy and speed • Teach students how to give feedback

25. Recommendations for Classroom Practice: Providing Feedback 1.Usecriterion-referenced feedback.

26. Create Your Own Rubric Rubistarhttp://rubistar.4teachers.org/

27. Recommendations for Classroom Practice: Providing Feedback • Usecriterion-referenced feedback. • Focus feedback on specific types of knowledge.

28. Bulletin Boards for Providing Feedback

29. Games for Immediate Feedback • BBC Skillswise • ExploreLearning • iKnowThat • iPod Touch • iReward • Word Warp • Reading Game

30. Classroom Response Systems(Also Known as “Clickers”) • eInstruction® • Promethean • Poll Everywhere • iPod Touch Apps • eClicker

31. Recommendations for Classroom Practice: Providing Feedback • Usecriterion-referenced feedback. • Focus feedback on specific types of knowledge. • Use student-led feedback.

32. What thoughts, questions, challenges, or ideas do you have?

33. The work of a teacher . . . exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same . . . is at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations, a calling that shepherds a multitude of other callings. Teaching begins in challenge and is never far from mystery.William Ayres