Anyway, the latest thing I'm using in exchange for my soul is a feedback form, shared with the student, where we can have a dialogue about their work. Really simple idea but it's proving almost revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness using a Google Doc.
I get a piece of work in (or the student gives me a link to their work) - I write some ideas on how to improve it on their feedback sheet and they have to respond. The pro-forma is very simple - looks a bit like this:
Date / Teacher Feedback:
Date / Student Actions:
Date / Teacher Feedback:
Date / Student Actions:
...you get the idea.
But what's amazing about this is that I can have a whole class set of feedback forms in one folder and Google will tell me, down the right hand side of the screen, which student has written any actions on their form in the last day / week. At a glance I can tell whose thinking about Psychology outside of the classroom ...and who is not. Who is taking action on improving their work ...and who is not.
Not only this but I'm gradually building up a fantastic record of all the work the student and I are doing throughout the year to maximise their understanding and exam success.
An up-date on this.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed to lose momentum throughout the year and I'm not sure why. Terms 1 and 2 worked well. I tried to re-vamp in terms 3-4 to move more towards exam practice by getting students to re-draft exam-style answers they'd struggled with in class. Again, this was of limited success.
I think part of the problem is that there so much emphasis is on hand-written mocks / tests etc throughout the year because, ultimately, there's so much emphasis on the hand-written test at the end of the year (or two). It seems like the on-line form is a distraction from a more immediate piece of feedback verbally or something scribbled on the actual student script.
I'm now wondering if I need to move to Google Classroom instead as a way of developing high-quality on-line exam practice and feedback.