Where to Next?

As a new school year begins, the Elementary Program team's professional learning theme for 2018 - 2019 is Feedback: "Where to Next?".  This will be the foundation of our work this year to support students.  It is, quite simply and powerfully, “Where to Next?”  Providing clear feedback to students about ‘Where to Next?” is essential to their learning.

Why Feedback?
Feedback has been identified by John Hattie (2008) as one of the most useful and productive strategies that promote learning.  Feedback has an effect size of 0.75 on student learning (Hattie, Fisher & Frey, 2017), and that is really good!

Feedback: A Model
Hattie defined feedback within the context of a feedback system, process and questions.

Let's zoom in on a section of this...

There are 3 key components that are part of the teacher role for the feedback itself.  The first segment is to 'assist students to reach goals'.  The feedback is based on the clear goals and how the student is reading them.

The middle part of the components is my favourite.  Feedback is "timely, understandable, practical, and caring".

• Timely - is it happening in real time or at a time when the feedback matters?  
• Understandable - is the feedback able to be understood by the student?
• Practical - is the feedback able to be used by the student?
• Caring - isn't it true, students are open to feedback more when presented in a caring context.

And ultimately, the focus is forward.  "Where to next?"

The final component explains what the feedback actually is, in Hattie's work: suggestions, scaffolding or examples.  Of note, it is interesting what it isn't.  It isn't solely, 2 stars and a wish.  It isn't solely written.

To support students we need to move beyond our initial learning about feedback.  What format would the feedback take if it was suggestions, scaffolding or examples?

It is exciting to think of the ways that we can provide support to students as we provide caring feedback that clearly shows "Where to next?"

Additional Resources:

1 - Brief clip of Hattie talking about feedback:

2 - Website devoted to Hattie's work: https://visible-learning.org/
3- John Hattie's key book: Visible Learning (2008)
4 - Hattie's most recent book about feedback (2018)