What if there were no feedback?

Check out what happens in this video? Look for examples of feedback or lack of.

You see the "supervisor" alien check-listing the underling much to the human's demise. You may laugh when you see what happens in the absence of formative feedback. It is an important component of the assessment process. It gives teachers and students a baseline or a ruler relative to learning goals. It helps students answer the questions, "What knowledge or skills do I aim to develop? How close am I? What do I need to do next? Giving effective feedback is a skill that we all must master.

So you may be asking your self, how does this all fit together? Student work displays, visitors, implementation studies. Well, the display shows all what you value and answers the question "what might student work look like as a result of a rigorous mini or focus lesson?"

Samples of student work are at the heart of our process.

Specifically there are two displays that illustrate our process. One is around sentence fluency. It gives examples of co-constructed charts and use of mentor text. The student work reflects a process and the description along with arrows allows the observer a view into the rigor that came from language lessons and resulted in writing. The second display is one centered on punctuation. It cleverly gives examples of how punctuation influence comprehension and create voice and fluency in writing. The teachers both received feedback as they built and planned this display and lesson.

Feedback is our friend. I helps the student know the direction of learning and assists the teacher in reaching the highest levels of implementation and rigor possible. We need the feedback like our alien friend in the video. Without it we may seem to be running our heads into the wall.