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coaching instructional coaching writing comments grading pre-assessments
shared by Jill Bergeron on 26 Apr 16
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“Improvement [in writing] starts with volume. Volume suffers if I have to grade everything. Grading doesn’t make kids better. Volume, choice, and conferring makes kids better.”
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“Give students daily opportunities to leave tracks of their thinking, use those tracks to notice patterns, and adjust instruction on the basis of what kids know and what they need. Repeat cycle.”
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“Pre-assessment without associated action is like eating without digestion.”
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So far, says Sternberg, all the ways we’ve tried to measure raw intelligence haven’t worked.
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No existing IQ or other test can separate past opportunities from test performance.
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“If you understand the child’s knowledge and cognitive skills in a domain that is really meaningful to the child,” says Sternberg, “you will learn what the student is capable of doing in other domains, if only motivated to pursue those other domains.”
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you cannot cleanly separate out measurement of intelligence from measurement of reading (obviously, a verbal skill). The same holds for other content domains.”
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The coach’s role, she says, “is not to fix lessons or teachers but to support teachers’ abilities to meet students’ needs.
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Let the teacher “drive” the process.
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the coach’s job in goal-setting is to search for points of agreement with the teacher and to direct her in ways likely to produce positive results.”
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“The coach also needs to respect the teacher’s autonomy by offering feedback only on agreed-upon goals,” adds Finkelstein. “As tempting as it can be for coaches to identify areas for improvement, unsolicited suggestions can arouse defensiveness.”
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“Improvement starts with volume. Volume suffers if I have to grade everything. Grading doesn’t make kids better. Volume, choice, and conferring makes kids better.” This helped Tovani realize that she didn’t have to assess every piece of student writing, which allowed her to grade less and assess more: “I don’t have to always write the perfect comment or give a grade,” she says. “[W]hat’s most essential to improving the quality of students’ work is collecting feedback for ourselves from that work and noticing patterns in students’ skills (or lack thereof) that we can use to determine our next instructional moves.”
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This view is critical to mitigating teacher resistance to feedback, which most teachers expect will be evaluative.” A smart strategy is to focus on what students have learned rather than the teacher’s skill executing lessons. “Collaboratively examining student performance can provide an effective third space for this kind of non-evaluative feedback,” she says.
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“It is the coach’s responsibility to dispel any perception that her job is easier or more relaxed than the teacher’s.” This means writing lesson plans, citing standards, teaching lessons, collecting books and materials, helping with assessments, doing grading, and helping with other paperwork.
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At the same time, the coach needs to think strategically about the teacher’s growth and development and ultimate independence.
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“Coaches also walk the walk by using their access to authority in schools to advocate for teachers,”
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Communicate clearly and transparently. Right from the start, coaches need to spell out key details of the partnership, including: - The goals and time frame; - When, why, and how the coach will observe in the classroom; - What non-evaluative feedback will look and sound like; - With whom the coach will (and will not) share feedback.
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“Coaches must be particularly sensitive about writing down anything while visiting a classroom,”
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There are plenty of reasons for resistance to being “helped” by an instructional coach, she says, often manifested in shallow acquiescence, avoidance, or overt hostility: - Teachers believing (not without reason) that they’ve been singled out as deficient; - Fear of being judged and exposed as ineffective with students; - Fear that deficiencies unrelated to the presenting issue will be revealed; - A belief that the instructional coach may report on them to the principal; - Worries about being admonished by the principal; - Discomfort examining their own practice; - Anxiety about having to change.
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Spend less time writing comments. - Modify instruction based on what’s learned from students’ work. - Build in time for students to revise their work based on feedback and self-assessment.
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“Students compare my criteria of success with their performance,” she says, “and reflect on how my responses are alike or different from theirs.” If students do poorly on one of her quizzes, she’ll go over items in class, giving students a chance to add points by showing improvement.
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share with the teacher any notes taken during observations.
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Exit tickets – At the end of class, students jot one thing they figured out and one thing they’re wondering about. Tovani spreads these out on a table and draws conclusions about the next day’s lesson. “I don’t waste time writing comments,” she says. “I simply look for patterns, and when I’ve figured out a few, I throw the tickets away.”
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Response journals – In individual composition notebooks, students reflect on their learning for the day. Tovani reads a third of these each day during her planning period, takes a third home, and reads the rest the next morning. “I limit my comments and challenge myself to identify patterns,” she says.
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While commenting, she records her observations in four columns: students’ use of skills and strategies; confusing vocabulary; students’ questions related to the reading; and how skillfully students are dealing with a genre or text structure. She gives feedback or a quick correction to individual students or to the whole class.
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“If pre-assessments simply demonstrate to students how little they know, this exercise may negatively affect their disposition toward the upcoming event,”
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Teachers’ messaging needs to emphasize that a pre-assessment won’t count against students and the purpose is to help make lessons more effective and fun, highlight what’s going to be learned, and allow students to set goals.
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To avoid giving pre-assessments that add little value, teachers should use them only when necessary, keep them short, using multiple-choice questions where possible, and limit questions to areas where the teacher genuinely doesn’t know how students will perform.
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A thorough unit pre-assessment might well reveal four levels of student preparation in a single classroom: students who know the intended outcomes up front; students who have partial knowledge; students who have little or no knowledge; and students who have significant misconceptions. Trying to differentiate for all these students is a classroom management nightmare for even the most creative teacher. Guskey and McTighe suggest a compromise, with some highly engaging whole-class presentations and then significant decentralization and choice with frequent checks for understanding.
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When possible, teachers should gather pre-assessment data with individual student dry-erase boards, clickers, or other methods that allow for rapid student input and teacher analysis and decision-making.
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three guidelines to ensure that pre-assessments are practical, provide useful data, and enhance student learning:
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Teachers should be clear about the purpose, both for themselves and their students. What new and helpful data will be gathered? Do students know why they are doing the pre-assessment?
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Decide how the information will be used.
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Possible follow-ups include reviewing essential knowledge and skills with the whole class, addressing misconceptions, providing targeted instruction, linking content to students’ interests, and differentiating for individuals or groups.
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They’re not necessary for every new unit, say the authors – only when they can really add value and only if they’re short and can produce data that can be assessed quickly.
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Taking three or more related courses in one career area boosted students’ chances of graduating from high school on time by 21 percent.
