Kids Can Give GREAT Feedback!

Melissa has been working with her Grade 3 / 4 class on giving and receiving good descriptive feedback.  She decided to use the consolidation of her lesson as a way to help the students not only reflect on the posted success criteria, but also to have them work on giving their peers feedback. 

Here is how the first two parts of Melissa's lesson went:

She had the learning goals and success criteria displayed (they had co-created the success criteria together)

They then worked on the minds-on with their elbow partner (they did a think pair share and then "voted" on which on they thought it was.  Then they discussed why they didn't think that some of the choices were viable options)

In pairs they went to work on their action:

The consolidation is where things got creative.  Here was the set of instructions Melissa gave to her class:

The students decided that the "star" feedback (or positive feedback) would be given on a yellow sheet, and the "wish" feedback (or things to improve upon) would be on a blue sheet.  As a whole group they gave feedback to one group's work.  They then branched out and followed the instructions they were given.  Below are all of their work samples with the feedback attached to it.  You can notice the different colours to show what was original and how they acted upon the feedback given to them:

These students are really aware of not only what makes a good answer, but how to improve to get an even better answer. 

More Than Just Time

Michelle teaches a combined Grade 3/4 class.  She is nearing the end of her measurement unit and wanted to spend a few days working with her students on noticing the relationships between days, weeks, months and years.  She used a previous EQAO multiple choice question as the base for her lesson.  However, instead of it being a multiple choice question she opened it up to an open problem.  For her Grade 4 students, Michelle wanted to review what they knew about this concept and see what other strategies they were able to apply to help them solve the problem.  This concept is one that is really based in application.  Are the students able to apply what they know about the passage of time and the relationships between days to weeks and weeks to months?  And are they able to apply a strategy to help them show their understanding (e.g., adding, skip counting, fractions)?

Her lesson started off with the learning goal and success criteria clearly posted.

The students then were given this problem as their minds on:

They did a think-pair-share with their elbow partner to share what their thinking was.  Michelle then filtered in some accountable talk by having the students share the answer that their partner said.  This was recorded in blue on the chart to help illustrate the thinking on paper.

For their action the students did a similar problem as in the minds on: 

The students were reminded to use the success criteria to help them with their answer.  They also were reminded to show their work clearly and to explain their final answer.

When the students were done Michelle did a Bansho of the strategies that they used.  She had the students talk about what was similar in all of their answers, and had them name the strategy that they used.  In total the students were able to come up with 7 different strategies.  They were:

Michelle then had the students give each other some descriptive feedback on what they did well, and what they could do to improve. A great lesson with a lot of learning!