Week 9

The week is here where we are going to be turning in our first LE for edTPA. It's very scary to think that this is the practice before the real thing. It's so important to do this work with the mindset of, "You get one chance to turn it in next semester... Make it count and get as much information and help as you can this semester." This is something that is completely new to all of us and it doesn't make me feel any better when I hear, "We can only give limited feedback". However, I want to take the feedback that I receive and make the next one, the real one, ten times better. I have also been communicating with my CE about this whole process and she is doing great with helping he best she can to work me into her schedule and the classroom schedule. I am getting some great experience from my CE, the students and from the classroom environment.

So for this week I have been thinking a lot about giving and receiving feedback. I found an article that gives Tips for Grading and Giving Students Feedback. This article includes twelve different tips for this topic. I am only going to include some of the ones that I found interesting and that I will consider to use in the future.

1. Use Rubrics- this allows you to show how the student did and how they can improve. Leave comments that will show students what they need to do.
2. Only focus feedback on one skill- this will allow the student to focus on one thing at a time. Don't try to overwhelm them with so much to fix that they feel defeated.
3. Rotate students to give deeper feedback to- you don't have to focus on every single student for each assignment. As long as you rotate and give each student your attention. 
4. Train students to give feedback to each other- this allows peer communication and each the students to give the first wave of feedback to each other. This saves you from having to repeatedly write the same basic comments that could have been easily caught by a peer.

These are some of the tips that I read and found helpful to me for feedback and grading. I liked how there were several different ways to approach giving feedback. I enjoyed this article and included it in the blog if you would like to look at it yourself.

This aligns with standard two of the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards perfectly. Teachers establish a respectful environment for for a diverse population of students relates to this article because teachers are treating students as individuals and giving them the feedback they need.