Authors: Teacher Education through School based Support (TESS)-India
The content in this chapter is an excerpt from:
OECx:TESS101xEnhancing teacher education through OER: Tess-India. (2015). Week 2, TESS India Key Resources. (CC BY SA)
Monitoring
Improving students’ performance involves constantly monitoring and responding to them, so that they know what is expected of them and they get feedback after completing tasks. They can improve their performance through your constructive feedback.
be more aware of their performance and more responsible for their learning
improve their learning
predict achievement on state and local standardized tests
achieve higher grades
It will also help you as a teacher to decide:
when to ask a question, or give a prompt
when to praise
whether to challenge
how to include different groups of students in a task what to do about mistakes
Students improve most when they are given clear and prompt feedback on their progress. Using monitoring will enable you to give regular feedback, letting your students know how they are doing and what else they need to do to advance their learning.
One of the challenges you will face is helping students to set their own learning targets, also known as self monitoring. Students, especially struggling ones, are not used to having ownership of their own learning. But you can help any student to set their own targets or goals for a project, plan out their work and set deadlines, and self- monitor their progress. Practicing the process and mastering the skill of self monitoring will serve them well in school and throughout their lives.
Listening to and observing students
Most of the time, listening to and observing students is done naturally by teachers; it is a simple monitoring tool. For example, you may:
listen to your students reading aloud
Listen to discussions in pair or group work
observe students using resources outdoors or in the classroom observe the body language of groups as they work
Make sure that the observations you collect are true evidence of student learning or progress. Only document what you can see, hear, justify or count.
As students work, move around the classroom to make brief observation notes. You can use a class list to record which students need more help, and to note any emerging misunderstandings. You can use these observations and notes to give feedback to the whole class or prompt and encourage groups or individuals.
Giving feedback
Feedback is information that you give to a student about how they have performed in relation to a stated goal or expected outcome. Effective feedback provides the student with:
information about what happened
an evaluation of how well the action or task was performed guidance as to how their performance can be improved
When you give feedback to each student, it should help them to know:
what they can actually do
what they cannot do yet
how their work compares with that of others how they can improve
It is important to remember that effective feedback helps students. You do not want to inhibit learning because your feedback is unclear or unfair. Effective feedback is:
focused on the task being undertaken and the learning that the student needs to do
clear and honest, telling the student what is good about their learning as well as what requires improvement
actionable, telling the student to do something that they are able to do
given in appropriate language that the student can understand
given at the right time – if it’s given too soon, the student will think ‘I was just going to do that!’; too late, and the student’s focus will have moved elsewhere and they will not want to go back and do what is asked.
Whether feedback is spoken or written in the students’ workbooks, it becomes more effective if it follows the guidelines given below.
Using praise and positive language
When we are praised and encouraged, we generally feel a great deal better than when we are criticized or corrected. Reinforcement and positive language is motivating for the whole class and for individuals of all ages. Remember that praise must be specific and targeted on the work done rather than about the student themselves, otherwise it will not help the student progress. ‘Well done’ is non-specific, so it is better to say one of the following:
Using prompting as well as correction
The dialogue that you have with your students helps their learning. If you tell them that an answer is incorrect and finish the dialogue there, you miss the opportunity to help them to keep thinking and trying for themselves. If you give students a hint or ask them a further question, prompt them to think more deeply and encourage them to find answers and take responsibility for their own learning. For example, you can encourage a better answer or prompt a different angle on a problem by saying such things as:
It may be appropriate to encourage other students to help each other. You can do this by opening your questions to the rest of the class with such comments as:
Correcting students with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ might be appropriate to tasks such as spelling or number practice, but even here you can prompt students to look for emerging patterns in their answers, make connections with similar answers or open a discussion about why a certain answer is incorrect.
Self-correction and peer correction is effective and you can encourage this by asking students to check their own and each other’s work while doing tasks or assignments in pairs. It is best to focus on one aspect to correct at a time, so that there is not too much confusing information.