Time Hacks for Teachers - O - Oral responses give immediate feedback

One of the main reasons we feel overwhelmed by grading is because teachers are good people. Good people want to do good things, and for students, getting quality feedback quickly is a good thing. Alice Keeler, of www.alicekeeler.com says, "Research shows that feedback has a large impact on learning. Grades...not so much." (@alicekeeler) Because we know this, we teachers take home stacks of papers to grade, to give that feedback our students.

When Coach Patterson saw me do something wrong out on the basketball court, he didn't wait to give me a written progress report. He would blow the whistle, stopping the whole practice. We would discuss the problem and then we would try it again. Immediate!

This idea of immediate feedback goes hand-in-hand with constantly assessing, which I talked about in my last post. I began to walk around my classes more and more asking questions - tough questions, and then giving lots and lots of feedback. If a student got the question right, or even part of the question right, I would have them repeat it to the rest of the group. If they got the question wrong, we would talk about it.

Basically, I spent less and less time up in front lecturing, and more time in mini-lecture/discussions. Students seem to be much more motivated to learn when they are in the midst of being assessed. When I was standing beside them asking a tough question, their group was looking at them, and at that one moment in time, they really wanted to know the right answer. What a glorious thing to see in the classroom! Since there were few lecture, that meant no more time spent putting together PowerPoint slides and interactive note sheets - things typically done outside of class time.

One of the best things about the immediate feedback that comes with oral responses is you can ask more questions. How many times have you been grading a students answer, and you just aren't sure if they have it or not. It's like their answer is almost there, and if you could just ask them to clarify something you would know for sure that they truly understand. Unfortunately, since you are grading the paper in your living room at 8:30 pm, there's no way to ask (Actually, it's very fortunate that you can't ask them at 8:30 pm in your living room, but you know what I mean.).

Because our goal is to determine if students have mastery of the standards, I would just turn the standards into questions. Take this standard from a high school environmental science class:

• 5a. Describe factors affecting population growth of all organisms, including humans. Relate these to factors affecting growth rates and carrying capacity of the environment.

I might type up a couple of question from this standard. 

1. What are some of the major factors affecting population growth of all organism. (Do you see how creative I was with that?) Once they tell me what they are, I can ask for an explanation of them. Okay, that one was pretty basic, but it keeps getting harder as you ask more.
2. How might differences in shelter from one ecosystem to another impact the growth rate and carrying capacity of schooling animals? (What???) 

And, since I gave myself permission to go ahead and assign points for mastery, even if it wasn't time for the big test, I was able to reduce my grading. By the time you've asked these kinds of questions to kids over and over, and you've given immediate feedback over and over, many of them will have already shown you they have mastery of the content before the final or summative assessment. So by the time you need to grade the test, you don't have too much to grade (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

For Kaylan, I only have to grade questions dealing with standard 1c and 1d. Jared has shown master on several things as well, so I only have to grade questions dealing with 1b and 1c. Obviously, I'm going to have to craft my test or assessment in such a way as to make this division easier.

I liked to divide questions for each standard into sections. I would put a line between them, so it was easier for me to see where one section ended and the other started (see Figure 2). So for Kaylan, I would know I could skip the first two sections and only grade sections three and four. Then I was finished grading her test. For my own sanity, I just had the students fill in the whole test (Probably that was just lazy on my part, but I figured it was just review for them.).

So, by giving large amounts of oral feedback, I didn't feel the need to grade everything the students were doing (Just FYI, I didn't always tell them I wasn't grading it, and would often take up work. Sometimes I would grade one or two questions that showed mastery, because I was always assessing.). Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade on the summative assessment, and by doing less lecturing, there was less time spent prepping (sometimes). 

Tweet Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade.

But with these two changes, I also found myself doing something else that helped students. Unfortunately, you have to wait until the next post to find out what it was. I'll give you a hint: it starts with an "A".

Let me pass the ball to you:

What are some time-saving things you've learned to do in the classroom?

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