Weekly Blog Post - Week 8

Hey everyone, welcome back to the blog! A few days ago, we had our eighth class for EDBE 8F83. In this post, I will reflect upon this lesson by using different prompts and supplementing them with images and resources. 

What stuck you during this session?

Something that struck me during this session was how important feedback is. I feel that often in math, students are marked as either correct or incorrect potentially with a few part marks given. However, this does not show the students where and how they need to improve which is crucial for their development as a math student. One quote from our class comes from Hattie et al (2016), and it states that “Thoughtful, appropriate, and targeted feedback is one of the most high-effect teaching practices you can implement in your classroom”. I feel that this perfectly encapsulates what the goals and motivations of a teacher should be as it focuses on putting the time in to help your students. 

What were the dominant emotions evoked (affect)?

One dominant emotion I felt during this session was surprise and wonder. I felt this especially when we were examining and comparing the different examples of rubrics (Single Point, Mindset and Communication). I have attached photos of a few of them below; my favourite is the Communication rubric as I feel it accurately informs students where they stand in the class by providing a level grade, details and feedback. 

What for you were the main points (cognition)?

The following three points summarize what was discussed in our lesson:

1. Good descriptive feedback is crucial for a student’s development in all classrooms, not necessarily a math classroom. It is important to ensure proper feedback at all times. 

2. A traditional rubric may not be your first course of action and there are many other types you can use to give equal if not better feedback. 

3. There is a large difference between assessment (gathering evidence on a student’s skill set) and evaluation (evaluating a student’s set) and it is important to use both in a classroom. 

What actions might you want to pursue further (awareness)?

One thing I would like to pursue further is the Single Point rubric as I had never heard of this rubric before our class on Tuesday. At the end of class, we were provided with an article from Edutopia that provided the benefits of a Single Point rubric. Some of the benefits that stood out to me were that it works against students’ tendency to rank themselves and to compare themselves to or compete with another and it gives space to reflect on both strengths and weaknesses in student work. I feel that one large problem in math class is the comparison of a student to their peers as it can cause demotivation and make students feel poorly about themselves. By using this rubric, it is harder for students to compare themselves as the feedback is more personalized instead of generalized. This alludes to the rubric giving space to reflect on both strengths and weaknesses as students can now reflect on themselves instead of comparing themselves to others. In the future, I would like to find some more information about the potential cons of this method or maybe some other types of positive rubrics. Here is the link to the article!
https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-reasons-try-single-point-rubric

That's all from me today! I hope you enjoyed reading my post and I hope you will be here for the next one!