Setting Objectives and providing Feedback

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Suggested Time 10-15 Minutes

According to A Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works (2012), setting instructional goals provides a specific focus for students. These goals should be personalized and meaningful to students.

Here are a few findings about Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback:

Students should be able to have some say setting objectives, but may need some help in creating specific and measurable goals.
Systems should be in place to communicate objectives with students, parents, and other stakeholders.
Some feedback principles to keep in mind would be:
- Should be specific and timely
- Should highlight strengths AND opportunities
Feedback can be
- Criterion referenced (rubrics)
- Based on assessment data
- From student self-assessment

Learn more about Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback!

Setting Objectives is like creating a road map for learning to meet long term goals. Objectives should be stated in student-friendly language that frame the knowledge they are expected to gain as opposed to the activities they will be doing, Having clearly defined objectives helps students gain understanding into the learning requirements for the year. Setting objectives should work hand in hand with providing feedback. Feedback helps students be able to make adjustments to their learning and the strategies they are using in their work. Teachers may rely on the process of unpacking state standards to create objectives are facilitate the creation of objects with his/her students.

In terms of offering feedback, students can be a part of the feedback process by tracking their own data and having conversation about what they are seeing in the data. If this is not a skill students have experience with, it may be helpful to provide them with tools or sentence starters to engage in those discussions.

Dean, Hubbell, Pitler, Stone (2012)