In a prior blog, I wrote about three key learning points. In this blog, we'll focus on the second of those...
Key learning point 2: Don't go through the whole paper. Focus on key questions.
This learning was in response to going through all of a paper, and whilst there's probably some merit to going through the whole thing I think you'll get more out of giving feedback in moderation.
Exercise is good for the body, until you push the body too far and cause injury (as I type this, I can feel my knees creaking), and the same can be said for feedback. Too much feedback can overwhelm our learners, but can also dilute the important messages that we're sending. We can be more impactful by focusing our feedback on the things that we need pupils to take away.
In response to key learning point 1, I stated that I find three areas of need for each pupil and try to maximise my gains by getting as much as possible out of each question I choose. In an ideal world, I'll be able to only revisit three questions, but it's more likely that we'll look at ten or so due to gaps in pupils' learning.
Only looking at three key skills would be great, but looking at ten or so questions rather than the 20 from the test still prevents pupils from becoming overwhelmed during our 'assessment feedback lesson', and we know that our feedback will garner more attention from pupils as we narrow our focus.
In the lesson, pupils will see the correct solution to the question from the assessment and be presented with a question with both a similar surface structure and a similar deep structure to complete, to develop near transfer. Follow-up questions could go on to alter either of these structures, but the likelihood is that we want pupils to develop confidence with these ideas without alteration as they've recently struggled with this idea in the assessment. We'll repeat this for the ideas that we're asking pupils to re-do.
They'll then work on three of these ideas identified from their assessment, independently, in order to give further attention to ideas that they've recently shown a lack of understanding over (in the 'test') and had success with (in our example-problem pairs).
This is how this is done:
I always mark tests and then enter the scores in a QLA spreadsheet. A template is here, and I recommend downloading it as .xlsx rather than using it within Google Sheets.
On the first tab, enter pupil names, and enter their scores. You can see the percentage score for the class across the bottom, and this is great for identifying needs. It has to be said that this data must be used in context, and specific issues should have been picked up during marking.
The second tab has a list of scores, and only scores, and for graded exams normally looks up grades and assigns these rather than having to type them individually.
The third tab is labelled 'Next Steps', and this requires further use of the first sheet. These are the needs identified for each pupil. I do this by highlighting cells, highlighting the question number at the top and then typing the question number in the 'NS' boxes at the end. This assigns individual questions for pupils to work on, and highlighting keeps track of the questions I need to go through in full as well as reminding me to write a new question in this third tab. Writing questions on this tab will mean that individualised questions are automatically assigned to pupils on their printouts when I go on to the fourth tab.
The fourth tab brings this all together. The mark for each question for each pupil is RAG'd when their surname is entered, and the identified questions for them to work on are on the same sheet, ready to be printed and given to them for completion independently of each other, to check that we've fed back has landed for each learner.
It's then incredibly important that pupils are given further retrieval opportunities, so they'll be written into my medium-term plans for starters/settlers/Do-Nows/homework as retrieval practice. They couldn't do it to begin with - revisiting the idea once in a feedback lesson when emotions are running high isn't going to solve the problem. This brings me back to Josh's tweet from the last instalment:
Yeah absolutely. I think when identifying the questions to go through we should ask ourselves ‘do they fundamentally not understand this? Or are they close to getting there?’
— Jshm (@jshmtn) January 8, 2023
The latter are for review lessons, the former are for your medium term plans.
I write my medium-term plans in the 'Intended Learning' column and update this based on how well the lesson has gone.
In 'Completed Learning' I type a few words to describe the content covered. This is then mapped forward by one day, seven days, 31 days and 90 days.
This then forms my list of topics that need to be dropped in for retrieval opportunities. The dates don't always line up, so I keep track by shading 'covered' topics and adding them to the 'Completed Learning' column where there isn't a lesson in the event that I want it to come up in the rotation again.
No comments:
Post a Comment