In the ever-evolving world of high school mathematics, feedback is your secret weapon for success! In this blog post, we will dive into the art of giving timely and effective feedback for students.
We will explore the various feedback strategies and techniques that educators can use to empower their students to not only understand math but to excel in it.
Feedback is the most important part of the learning process and it is often viewed negatively by students, especially in math class. The stress of receiving a “grade” on a test often causes students more anxiety than taking the actual test itself.
Let's talk about why this happens.
Society has relied so heavily on grading systems for motivating students and using these grades to rank our students’ success. This system quickly turned into doing whatever you could to get the grade, rather than actually understanding and learning the material.
In an ideal world, every student would be able to have a completely individualized curriculum based solely on their interests and learning styles. Obviously, that is not possible with the funding, resources, and community support that the U.S. school system currently has.
This just means we need to do the best that we can with the resources we’ve been given. It’s time to change the way our students feel about feedback and how teachers can encourage them to use it to their advantage.
What is the purpose of feedback?
We give our students feedback for numerous reasons. The first reason being we want our students to know what they do and don’t understand about a topic.
The worst case scenario is having a whole class of students complete pages upon pages of practice problems for an entire week just to find out on the quiz that they actually have no idea what’s going on.
By giving students timely and effective feedback, this scenario can be nipped in the bud on Tuesday, rather than waiting until Friday. Assessing students multiple times a week will help you determine if you can move on to new content or if you need to go back and reteach some concepts.
I know what you’re thinking…how can I assess my students and give them feedback that frequently? I barely have any time already.
The good news is you are probably already giving students feedback that often it just isn’t in the form of a quiz or test.
When can you give your students effective feedback?
Conversational
Any time that you are working with a student one-on-one or in small groups, you are giving your students individualized feedback about their strengths and areas of improvement.
Homework and Classwork
I have mixed feelings about assigning homework in math class. It can be very beneficial if done in the right way, but if we are assigning homework just because, then what’s the point?
I don’t believe in busy work and I want to make sure that everything I assign to my students is purposeful and helpful. With that being said, if I am going to give students homework, I want to give them feedback on it so they actually get something out of it.
Checking homework for completion isn’t enough for me.
Quizzes/Tests
Quizzes and tests are the perfect opportunity to give more detailed feedback to students. Always make sure that you are giving an explanation for where the student went wrong rather than just marking a problem correct or incorrect.
Rubrics
Rubrics are one of the most robust ways to give your students effective feedback. The students are given the expectations beforehand, so they know exactly what skills are being assessed. Rubrics will also give you the most information about what a student understands.
4 Steps to Giving Effective Feedback for Students
1. Focus on one thing
Don’t overwhelm your students with giving them too much information at once. Choose one or two main ideas to focus on and have them master those specific skills before moving on to something new.
This can be challenging if a student doesn’t understand how to solve an entire problem or concept. If that is the case, it may be time to pivot and reteach the idea in a new way.
2. Some positive and some constructive
Don’t make all feedback negative. Remember to highlight what they did well to break the negative feedback cycle!
Giving your students some positive affirmations or showing them that they are on the right track can be extremely motivating for high school students.
3. Give details rather than just right or wrong
If the goal is to help our students learn and grow, they need to have tangible information to reflect on for future assessments.
4. Immediate feedback with self-checking activities
Save some time with self-checking activities. There are lots of great digital activities that show student progress along with printable activities that use QR codes to allow students to check their work.
With this immediate feedback, you can encourage students to work together to figure out the correct answer. This will easily take the weight off of your shoulders to reduce the number of students that are asking you to check their work.
You will finally be able to work one-on-one or in small groups with students who truly need extra support.
When you’re giving students feedback, be sure to have an end goal in mind. Think about the skills that you want your students to show they understand and how they can do that effectively.
Once you have these skills chosen, it is much easier to give your students specific feedback on how they can meet your expectations.
Remember: Effective feedback for students focuses on positive aspects of the work, effort put in by the student, and suggestions to improve for the future rather than criticism of what should have been done better.
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