Poor Students, Rich Teaching. Eric Jensen

a strong 0.65 effect size (Hattie, 2009), meaning more than one year’s worth of academic gains. Give more positives than negatives (3:1 ratio) and be specific enough to focus on key things students can change. Finally, the kinds of high-quality feedback that you’ll learn in this chapter have the greatest effect on the weakest learners (Black & Wiliam, 1998). We start this chapter with a look at the value of providing students with ongoing formative assessment and then detail four specific forms of feedback: (1) qualitative feedback, (2) quantitative feedback, (3) micro–index card (MIC) feedback, and (4) student feedback. Unfortunately, these types are often those teachers least use. But you can change that path.

       Ongoing Formative Assessment

      Formative feedback measures progress over the long haul. Formative evaluation for both students and teachers has a very high effect size of 0.90 (Hattie, 2009). This factor is effective across many variables, including student ages, duration, frequency, and special needs.

      The term formative assessment means you are using the evidence of learning (or lack of it) to adjust instruction toward a goal during the process, not just at the end. (See figure 5.1 for the feedback loop.) Researchers conclude in one meta-study that regular use of classroom formative assessment raises student achievement by a substantial level—from at least 0.40 to 0.70 standard deviations (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 2018).

Figure 5.1: Feedback loop.

      One of the dangers of teaching without ongoing formative assessment is that you might go a week or two and still be unsure if your students are really “getting it.” But if you set up your class for daily multiple checks for understanding, you’ll learn fast and adjust fast too. Higher-performing teachers notice quickly what is not working and adjust rapidly, revise, and redo a lesson.

      No matter what kind of feedback you use in your class, quality formative assessment needs the following five benchmarks to work well.

      1. Having clear, shared goals: Teachers should share with learners specific goals for learning and the criteria for success.

      2. Establishing progress: Students need to know where they are successful and where you need help.

      3. Providing actionable feedback that moves learning forward: Students need a way to find out how to get better at what they’re doing.

       4. Activating students as owners of their own learning: Teachers should empower students to engage with the learning alone or collaboratively to grow (learn it, own it, and share it).

      5. Tracking: Students should see the big-picture trends and the details available.

      These feedback benchmarks will lead to far more effective strategies than saying “Nice work” or “Good job.” Referring to this list often and posting it near your desk might be the single best way to boost achievement. The rest of this chapter has four more high-performing feedback strategies that draw on the five benchmarks.

       SEA for Qualitative Feedback

      We begin our feedback strategies with SEA (strategy, effort, and attitude) because it reinforces critical qualitative attributes that we want to foster in our students over the long haul. Students have no control over their DNA, their parents, or their neighborhood. However, students do have a huge amount of influence over the choices they make (strategy), how hard they work (effort), and the mindset (attitude) they bring to learning. The SEA strategy is a way to reinforce these in the classroom and ask “How am I doing?”

      You will find that although SEA is specific, the real reason it is effective is that you don’t want to have to think in the moment, “How can I give specific feedback?” It has to become automatic and fast. That’s what SEA does; it gives you three quick ideas you can use without having to rack your brain. Each of the SEA qualities is a clear and potent replacement for using delayed tests (effect size of 0.31; Hattie, 2009) or saying “Well done” or “Good job” (effect size of 0.09; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Instead, using SEA, teachers give specific feedback in regard to strategy, effort, and attitude.

      • Strategy: “I loved how you kept trying so many strategies on that problem until you got it.”

      • Effort: “I like that you refused to give up. That extra effort will help you succeed again and reach your goal.”

      • Attitude: “Before you began, you thought you could succeed. Your positive attitude helped you come through.”

      Use the SEA feedback to build drive and long-term effort by changing who, when, and how often you give feedback. The who means you should never be the only source of student feedback. The majority should come from the student him- or herself, peers, computers, the physical results of actions, a rubric, or a standard set as a model or a checklist. The when means that sooner is better than later. The how often might be the most important question of all. Because feedback’s contribution to motivation, learning, and achievement is so high, ensure that your students get some kind of feedback (by their peers, the activity itself, reflection, or you) at least once every thirty minutes, every school day of the year. By using specific high-scoring, self-awareness feedback strategies with an effect size of a huge 0.74, you give students the gift of affirmation and light a fire (Marzano, 1998).

       3M for Quantitative Feedback

      The 3M (milestone, mission, and method) feedback process focuses on orienting students to learning in an empirical way. The beauty of it is its simplicity. This feedback answers the three most essential questions students have about how they are doing: (1) “Where am I?” (milestone), (2) “Where am I going?” (mission), and (3) “How do I get there?” (method). The effect size is a whopping 1.13, which tells you it is highly effective (Wiliam & Thompson, 2007).

      The 3M process involves using feedback with students and training them to use the process, which includes three steps: (1) teach students the 3M process, (2) ask students to track their progress, and (3) guide students to improvement. Let’s look deeper at each of these.

       Teach Students the 3M Process

      Before students can use the 3M process on their own, you need to first teach them its critical pieces.

      • Milestone (Where am I?): “Here’s where you are at right now. You got eight out of fifteen vocabulary words correct.”

      • Mission (What’s my goal?): “Your mission is always to get a 100 percent on the end-of-the-month quiz.”

      • Method (How do I get there?): “You’ll need a new strategy and plan to get where you’re going. I’ve posted some ideas you can choose from. Now, let’s set some fresh micro goals.”

      Once you begin to use the 3M process with students, they will see its value. Over time, students will learn to self-assess.

       Ask Students to Track Their Progress

      For students to self-assess, they need data to track how they are doing. The data are simply their scores, which can come from self-assessments, a returned assignment, a student-graded quiz, or any other form of a written, numerical score. So, quality data could be as simple as sixteen out of twenty points on a quiz.

      When tracking their data, students should be aware of their mission during this step. The mission is always simple; it is 100 percent. You may have students with special needs who start at a much lower score than the rest of the class. In their case, the mission focus is on 100 percent improvement (from three correct to six correct is a 100 percent improvement). These high expectations are a critical part of the achievement mindset. Keep them high, and focus on the micro goals (the method) necessary to make them happen. (If you need a refresher on goal setting and micro goals,