How to use student feedback to improve teaching?
Measuring what students are learning should be an ongoing process, not only to assess your students by grading, but to adjust your teaching and what is going on in the classroom. I recently introduced the Parking lot as a way to end each learning session. At our school we do block scheduling, meaning my class in English is every Monday from 08:30 – 1:10 pm.
One incredibly useful tool for engaging student voice in the classroom is a “parking lot”. A successful parking lot not only gives students an easy way to contribute their voice to the classroom community, it also makes the internal dialogue of the classroom community transparent. Fully validate every note. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with every note, nor do you have to take the advice of every note. You do have to acknowledge and consider the idea in the note in front of your students, however. Read the notes word for word, as best you can, and talk through the ideas with your class. Listen to the thoughts of at least three or four students before you contribute your thoughts. Then, listen to a few more students before sharing a decision or final thought. If you change your mind because of something you heard, say so and explain how, or why, it helped you see the issue in a different light. Source: CompetencyWorks.
I have earlier in a post introduced the parking lot. Here I would like to share a way to do this with Padlet. I have also written about the use of Padlet, find more info here. I did make a Parking Lot poster in my original classroom, and then change my classroom and left the poster behind. It makes more sense to do this online, easier for the students, easier to understand, and you can save the comments and go back to them easily. I am saving the Padlet Parking lot from my last class here. It is a good feedback for me and also the students in the class. Some love blogging, some not so much, some are happy some want change. Many want more structure, I can do that, using the white board, can do that too and also more clear about homework. And by the way, if you take the time reading it the part about not making money refers to my mentioning that my first year English class of 2013 wrote a book that they sold on Amazon, Connected Learners, and it is still for sale by the way. I’m sure this class will do something similar!
We have to first recognize the importance of collecting and using student feedback to improve our teaching, and then realize if we adopt this growth mindset we are paving the way for our students to do the same. https://t.co/AygiWBtue5 via @elt_thinktank
— Ann S. Michaelsen (@annmic) September 5, 2018
“It is not enough to simply listen to student voice. Educators have an ethical imperative to do something with students, and that is why meaningful student involvement is vital to school improvement.” – Adam Fletcher Source: Elthinktank
2 comments