Formative Assessments & Feedback
Feedback to Students
When thinking about how to give effective feedback to your students, you should always remember the basics. Feedback involves telling students how they are done, and how they could improve.
However, while the basics of how to give effective feedback always remain the same, there are different forms of feedback you can use.
There are four ways that you can use feedback to help your students. These are:
- Affirming what they did well.
- Correcting and directing.
- Pointing out the process.
- Coaching students to critique their own efforts.
TIps for Giving Effective Feedback
Don’t go overboard
When a student has repeatedly struggled, it is tempting – and natural – to want to heap lots of praise on them when they achieve some level of success, no matter how small it is. Be sincere and intentional with these praises.
Correct quietly
One way to overcome this is what author Doug Lemov calls private individual correction. This limits the attention drawn to the feedback while getting the message across clearly. This is similar to the technique he calls the whisper correction – the feedback technically takes place in public, but the pitch and tone of voice is designed to be heard only by the individual receiving it.
Don’t compare
It is far better to focus your feedback on a student’s individual development and improvement rather than comparing them to their classmates.
Be specific
The more detailed and specific your feedback is, the better, to remove any confusion. Rather than “good work”, say “The way you did X was really good.”
Focus on process, not natural ability
Praising effort instead of intelligence increases intrinsic motivation and provides a template for students to follow next time.
End with clear action points
This is one of the key points from the What Makes Great Teaching report. Any feedback that doesn’t lead to a change in behaviour change is redundant – there must be a point to it. What do you want them to do differently? What are they going to do after the conversation to improve? The more detailed and specific the action points, the better.
Peer Feedback
Why Peer Feedback?
-Faster Feedback: Students are usually asked to review work during class time using a teacher-provided rubric.
-Students learn best by teaching. They must understand the topic deeply and know how to dig into the details, even those that came easily for them.
- Peer feedback motivates the learner. When a student knows that a peer will be reviewing their work, they may be motivated to try harder.
Read the whole article here:
Kahoot!
Kahoot! is a game-based website that allows teachers to create games with multiple choice questions for the students to answer. The session is played as a quiz with game show music and points awarded to students based on speed and accuracy. After each question is answered, a graph displays how the group did as a whole. The top five places are also shown after each question.
Are you ready to have some fun?
- On your device or laptop, open kahoot.it.
- Enter the Pin number projected on the screen and click Enter.
- Type in your name and click Join Game.
- Wait for the teacher to begin the game.
Good Luck!
Click here to download a Kahoot! tutorial.
The Team Mode is another great feature of Kahoot! Learn more about this new feature here.
Use Answer Streak Bonus with any Kahoot! Game to reward accuracy! This should help alleviate students quickly guessing an answer just to get more points.
Kahoot! has released a new mobile app (IOS and Android) that allows the students to view the questions and answer choices on their device.
The first item to note in the mobile app is that your students will now see the questions and answer choices on the same screen. This provides the ability to give your students a “play at home” option. This new option is called Challenge
Quizlet Live
Let's give it try!
- Open quizlet.live.
- Type in the code the teacher has given you.
- Type in your name.
- Quizlet Live will assign you a team. Find your teammates and get together.
- Wait for the teacher to begin the game.
Spiral
Quickfire - Use Quickfire as a formative assessment tool to see what the whole class is thinking.
Discuss - Allows the teacher to create interactive presentations to spark creativity in class.
Team Up - Teams of students can create and share collaborative presentations from linked devices.
Clip - Turn any public video into a live chat with questions and quizzes
Let's try Quickfire!
- Open Gospiral.ac
- The code is RXHWY
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a video response tool that is used to create discussions among all students within your classroom. Teachers post a topic or question via text or video and the students respond to the prompt. Flipgrid also gives students the ability to comment on their classmates' responses.
Key Features:
- All of your videos are located in one location.
- You can Freeze a Topic to continue sharing the videos but prevent new recordings.
- Student comments can be turned on or off.
Ideas/Tutorials/Blog Posts:
- Have students draw pictures of characters in a book or story then create a talking picture of their character in ChatterPix. Upload the ChatterPix file to Flipgrid.
- Use the filters in Snapchat to create a video to upload into Flipgrid.
- Explain a Science experiment.
- Tell how to solve a math equation step-by-step.
- Have teachers create a video introducing themselves and their class to new students.
- Have students welcome new students to their school.
- Exit Tickets
- Book Talks
- Padlet of Flipgrid ideas
- 15+ Ways to Use Flipgrid in Your Class
- Tony Vincent's Review of Flipgrid - with helpful tips
- Flipgrid Unplugged #2: AppSmashing with Jornea Erwin
- Using @Flipgrid in Online #APCalculus to Allow Students to Verbalize Their Thinking Process
- Teacher and Student Guides
- Searchable Help Center
- Flipgrid Blog
- Flipgrid on Twitter
- Flipgrid on Facebook
- Flipgrid help for Students & Parents
- Flipgrid YouTube Channel
- Flipgrid Response Cheat Sheet
Nearpod
Nearpod is an engaging presentation tool that allows students to be actively involved in the lesson. Nearpod also gives teachers the ability to assess learners’ understanding throughout the lesson using multiple types of activities.
- Open www.nearpod.com.
- Click on the Enter CODE button.
- Type in the Code the teacher gives you.
- Wait for the teacher to begin.
Nearpod also has an App for most devices!
Socrative
Socrative is an online student assessment tool that works on any Internet-connected device. The site includes the ability to administer a quiz, play a game or give an Exit Ticket.
- Go to socrative.com.
- The room number is football.
- Wait for the teacher to start the quiz!
Socrative also has an App for most devices
EdPuzzle
EdPuzzle allows teachers to choose or upload a video and customize it by and add questions to create an engaging interactive lesson.
- Open EdPuzzle.com.
- Click Login and select I’m a New Student.
- If you do not have an account, select Sign Up at the bottom of the screen. (no email required). You can fill in the info or sign up with your Google Account.
- Click Join.
- Type in the Code the teacher gives you.
- Click Join the Class.
That Quiz
For directions on how to effectively use That Quiz, check out Mathy Cathy's Blog post.
Google Forms
Google Forms are easy for teachers to create and they allow timely feedback from the students. What a great way to show student growth!
Plickers
Flippity
Click here for easy directions on how to create a Flippity Game Show Quiz. You can post a picture in the game board by copying the image URL and pasting it in the appropriate cell.
Click here to take a Flippity Quiz.
Flippity also has a flashcard module that uses Google Spreadsheets to build the cards.
More Information
The following blogs and articles include more formative assessment tools and strategies that can be used in classrooms.
- Make Formative Assessment More Student-Centered
- Know Students Better: A Visual Guide to Formative Assessment Tools
- Take Three! 55 Digital Tools and Apps for Formative Assessment Success
- Fantastic, Fast Formative Assessment Tools
- Top Tech Tools for Formative Assessment
- 10 Ways to Use Backchannels in Your Classroom
- 5 Tools For Giving Students Narrative Feedback
- Formative Assessments are Easier Than You Think
- Digital Tools for Implementing Formative Assessment
- 11 Fresh Formative Assessment Strategies
- Creating a Quiz or Taking a Poll on the iPad
- 35 Digital Tools to Create Simple Quizzes
- 7 Good Student Response Systems
Know Students Better: A Visual Guide to Formative Assessment Tools