Dylan's 5 Strategies

Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions

• • If you don't know where you're going you'll never get there

  • What does excellence look like?

Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning

• • Cold calling (see example on the right)

  • No opt-out

  • Checks for understanding

  • Probing questions

  • Think pair share

  • Say it again - but say it better

  • Whole class responses (e.g. finger voting or hinge point questions, etc.)

Providing feedback that moves learners forward

• • Praise hard work not intelligence

  • Focus on self-efficacy, not self-esteem

  • Give task-involving, rather than ego-involving feedback (i.e. don't do: 'you need to put more effort' - do: 'there is a mistake on line 6, find it and fix it.')

  • Build students' capacity to use feedback (practice improving an anonymous students work from another class that has received feedback)

  • Feedback should focus on what's next, not what's passed

  • Don't give feedback unless you allocate class time for students to respond

  • Feedback should be more work for the students than the teacher

  • Don't make feedback too specific (don't do all the thinking for your students)

  • Provide a balance of critical and supportive feedback (consider using a single point rubric)

  • Grades are NOT feedback

Activating students as learning resources for one another

• • Use peer feedback (Note: easier said than done. Perhaps ask a consultant to help you lay the necessary foundations in your class to make this happen)

  • Provide sentence starters (e.g. "I think it would be clearer if...")

  • Start with peer assessment of anonymous work

  • Start in pairs before going into larger groups (e.g. think pair share)

  • Prioritize individual accountability in peer assessment (or group work)

Activating students as owners of their own learning

• • Use self-reports, but don't rely on them

  • Focus self-assessment on improvement, not on standards ("Never grade a student while they are still learning." - Alfie Kohn)

  • Make self-assessment a routine part of class work (exit slip?)

  • Question parking lot

  • In self-evaluations, have students identify changes they need to make, but not make them (yet)

  • Have student-led Parent-Teacher conferences (prepare a list of sentence starters or reflection questions for suddenly shy students. e.g. 'what help do I need from my parents?' or 'What help do I need from my teacher?')

  • Nurture both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation