4 Ways to Give Feedback to your Class

      There is so much research that supports the effectiveness of giving feedback to improving student performance.  In order to be effective, feedback needs to be both specific and timely.  That makes perfect sense, but that can also be a real challenge.   Here are a few ways that I like to give feedback to my class.

1.  Games--Games are such a great way to get students engaged, but also a great way to give feedback, especially when answers are wrong.  There are so many fun games to play.  One simple game I played last week I called, "Get 5".  I  decided to do this in the middle of class when my planned lesson was NOT going as planned.  Anyway, it was pretty simple.  I challenged my class to get 5 questions in a a row correct. I put a problem on the board and gave everyone a chance to work with their partners to answer the question.  Then I rolled a 30-sided die to randomly call on a student to give me the answer as well as how they got it.  If the class could get 5 in a row correct, I gave them a stamp for our school-wide PBIS program.  It worked great....lots of conversations, and students knew that everyone at their table needed to understand.  Kids were giving each other feedback, and I could give feedback based on conversations I heard or answers given.

2.  Partner activities--I love to do self-checking partner activities, and it allows students to give each other feedback.  Since students are checking each other's work, it frees me up to listen to student conversations and intervene as needed (or to have small group instruction).  They are fairly easy to create....the idea is that you assign each student to either be partner A or partner B.  Each student has a different set of problems.  I usually like to have about 6-8 problems, depending on what the topic is.  The key is that although the students have different problems, the answers are the same.  For example, student A might have the problem -13 + 8 and student B might have the problem -4 + -1.  Each student gets practice, and students know if they don't get the same answer that they need to check over their work.  I like to take my partner activities to the next level by creating a "second part" for each activity.  So after the partners have completed the problems and agree on the answers, then they have to use their answers together to complete another task.  For example, I might have the students from above show each of their problems on a number line, or create a story problem to represent each problem.  This is a great way to handle students working at a different pace, or just to extend the learning opportunities for the partner activity.  I have several sets of partner activities available in my store if you're interested.

•  Proportional Relationships and Unit Rate Partner Activities
• Integer and Rational Numbers Partner Activities
• Measures of Central Tendency and Variability Partner Activities

3.  Dry erase---This is certainly nothing new, but having kids work problems on dry erase boards is certainly a quick, easy way to gather information about my class thinking.  It's easy to address common misconceptions using a simple feedback tool.  To do this, I'll think about the common errors that I know may happen, and I create a comment with a symbol for each, to guide students toward their error.  For example, if I was teaching adding integers, I might put the following information on the board.

Then with each problem, I could call out different answers, and tell them which feedback was appropriate for each answer.

4.  Use technology to give feedback--Technology truly can help us understand what everyone in our class is thinking, and give productive feedback to them.  One technology tool that I love (and so do my kids!) is Kahoot.  Kahoot keeps my students engaged, and I get all kinds of information about how many in my class understand.  Additionally, if you plan the incorrect answers carefully, you can sometimes customize your feedback to students, such as "If you picked green, you might have forgotten to line up your decimals.  If you picked red, you may have forgotten to carry."

          Another tool that I love to use to give feedback to my students is the website quia. I LOVE using this to give short, formative assessments to my students.  My absolute favorite thing about quia is that you can customize the feedback that students get for correct or incorrect answers.  In addition, you can change the settings so that students get feedback after each answer, instead of having to wait until the end.  I love this feature!  I know in Google Forms, you can give students feedback, but I don't think they get the feedback until they are done.  I much prefer to have them get the feedback as they work, so they can be learning as they go.  Quia does have a subscription cost of $49 per year, but for me it's worth every penny.

Beginning of Class Routine Revamp: Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my new beginning of class routine:  Wonder Monday, Two Way Tuesday, What's the Question Wednesday, Number Talk Thursday and Quick Draw Friday.  This routine has gotten me through the first quarter of the year, and I have really enjoyed each of these days.  I have enjoyed the different aspects of math that they encourage.....from geometry with Quick Draw to number sense with Number Talks and Two Way Tuesday.  I've enjoyed seeing the power of What's the Question Wednesday both as a formative assessment tool, and to encourage creativity.  Wonder Monday has sparked many great discussions, and even led a student to actually find the cost of filling a pool with jello....which was over $800 by the way!

But, I have also discovered some other cool resources that would also make great warm-ups.  So I'm thinking I may introduce some of these other ideas from time to time.  Here is my next set of ideas for an interesting way to start class.

• Math at Work Monday:  I found this awesome website that has a section called Math at Work Monday.  There are interviews with all kinds of people about how they use math at their jobs.  What a great way to open my kids eyes to the power of what we're learning!  I also found out about this cool Chrome extension called Insert Learning that lets you put questions, videos and other content into a website for students to access.  Tomorrow, I'm planning my warm up to be Math at Work Monday while I use Insert Learning!
• Use a Picture to Prove....:  I was inspired by Jo Boaler's book Mathematical Mindsets for this idea.  One of the ways that she recommends opening up a task to make it richer is to have students make a visual to go with it.  I think this could have some real power to get at the heart of some difficult topics...like fractions!

• Would You Rather?:  The idea is to give a choice like, Would you rather have a 1 foot stack of quarters or a $20 bill?  I got this idea from the Would You Rather Math website, which has lots of great examples.  However it's also really easy to come up with your own!

• What's the Story (version 1):  I was so excited when I found the Graphing Stories website.  This is sooooo cool, and I think the practice graphing would be so helpful and spark tons of great discussion!
• What's the Story (version 2):  Find a graph, and have the students write the action that matches the story.  Seems like this would alternate well with What's the Story version 1....going back and forth between seeing the action and then making the graph, vs. seeing the graph and describing the action.

• What's the Story (version 3):  Find some data, and have students draw the conclusion or decide on the caption from it.  We are in a world with so much data, but how much practice do we give kids at deciding what the data is actually telling us?

If you would like a template for these routines, click here for a simple Google Slides that has a slide for each idea (including the ideas in my Beginning of Class Routine Revamp: Part 1 post!)

4 Reasons to Make You Love Weekly Math Homework

    About three years ago, I completely overhauled my homework system.  I switched to a system of a single weekly review assignment, rather than the short daily assignments I had been accustomed to giving before that.  Here are the four reasons why I'm so glad that I changed to weekly homework.

• #1:   Students have a chance to get help on homework.  When homework is due the next day, students really have no chance to get help if they don't understand something.  Currently, I assign homework on Friday and it is due on Thursday.  I feel comfortable that students have plenty of time to ask questions if they have it....and if something is left blank, I feel totally comfortable telling them that it is their responsibility to make sure they ask for help.   

• #2:  This lightens the load and gives students a chance to practice time management.  As the mother of a student who works VERY slowly, I know what it is like to face a homework assignment every night....and it is not a good feeling.  Weekly homework gives students and families a chance to figure out what works for completing homework and to build in plenty of time instead of knowing you only have one chance to get it done on time.  7th graders are notoriously bad at time management, and I feel like this is a good chance to start learning.  I can still remember the student I had many years ago who always struggled to finish anything that wasn't due the next day.  I remember him saying, "If you would just make it due tomorrow, I would remember to finish it."  I could practically see the light bulb go on for that boy when I told him that he could decide to make it due for himself the next day, even if my deadline was later.    

• #3:  I like having a built-in chance for spiral review.  Since the homework is not just over what we did in class that day, it gives me a great chance to frequently spiral back and review skills.  I really think it helps keep the skills fresh.  

• #4:  I don't lose as much time grading homework since we only have to check it once a week.  This is huge for me.  My class periods are only 46 minutes long, so losing 5 minutes every day is a lot.  But taking 10 minutes one day is much better.

      Now that I have done this for a few years, I have learned some lessons to make it work better in my classroom.  I will talk about those in my next blog post!  But I will say, I have finally figured out a way to do homework that I love and think is good for my students.

Comment below with your best strategies to make homework effective and useful for students.