HPRP 4

How do I know what my students are learning? How am I growing as an educator?

The nice thing about having four classes a day is that I am able to make small (or big) adjustments throughout the day to fit my students' needs. If I notice my first period class really struggled with the warmup, I can provide a sentence starter or list of options to choose from for second period. If students are constantly getting stuck during the work time, I can review instructions, alter the assignment, or change the due date. I have learned to not be so rigid in my planning and instead to actually allow time for student inquiry and productive struggle, so that they are the ones doing the thinking, talking, and learning, not me.

How can I provide my students with quality and timely feedback?

At the beginning of the year I had the ambitious and unrealistic goal of reading and responding to all of my students' daily warmups every day. Although I did manage to read and respond to them all several times weekly, I found a better way of giving feedback: verbally.

For formative assessments, I try to give specific praise for what a student has done well for the whole class to hear in order to encourage that student while reinforcing whatever skill we are practicing (ie. citing evidence). For summative assessments and longer pieces of writing, I will give written feedback to all of my students with specific areas of growth to focus on for future assessments.