Formative Feedback

ne of the main areas I have looked to try to improve upon this week is my assessment techniques and also my feedback that I’m giving to students. Within my practical classes my assessment is largely done on the techniques used and also on the finished pieces. I could and will try to incorporate more of a discussion into my demonstrations where students give their opinion on why say for instance a thumb gauge is used to mark the depth of a trench on their woodwork project. The discussion element can really be used to better gauge students understanding of the principles and of the materials that they are using.

When I did some academic reading into feedback it quickly became apparent that most of the feedback that I give is descriptive rather than evaluative so far. “Formative assessment is that process of appraising, judging and evaluating students work or performance and using this to shape and improve their performance” (Tunstall & Gipps, 1996). This is not a bad thing as we are in the early stages of project work and this informal descriptive feedback is exactly what students need when learning the basics.

Overall, I am quite happy with how the first two weeks have went and I am looking forward to starting the practical bench project with the 5th year Construction students. I will need to really practice my demonstrations and ensure that I break down the steps fully and clearly when giving the demonstrations on the various joints. I will also a have to cut quite a bit of material for this project in the coming weeks but I have the working drawings for every part printed out into a booklet for students already and I have already done up a progress chart for this group which should really help.

My first-year wood technology class is really progressing well, and we are on track with the planning grid. I really want to emphasis and drill the basic skills into them over the coming weeks while also keeping the lessons fun and interesting for them. Teaching practical classes low gain feedback is often given to keep students motivated and to encourage students to follow correct procedure. They are progressing well in both the practical and theory elements, they have just finished off the main body piece for the race car and have added several new terms to their vocabulary such as dowel and pilot hole which we will be using in the marking out of the next few pieces. Happy enough with their overall progression.

My fifth year Construction class as I said in the midweek reflection are really picking up the sections of house well and it will be interesting to see will they be as good when we increase the difficulty of the drawings in the coming weeks to incorporate eves detail. Yet there is some students of a lower ability that I hope to bring them up a lever by giving class formative feedback which will identify where they might be struggling “A feedback typology is designed to provide a framework which can be used to reflect on useful classroom feedback based on lower secondary school students’ perceptions” (Smith, 2013).

My forth year DCG has a range of different abilities and I hope to bring all students to the assembly stage by the end of next week. A couple of the students have really taken to the software and are really proficient so I will need to challenge them further next week by getting them to added extra mates and movement to the assembly when they get to that stage next week. I need to work on continuing to challenge these students but also focusing on bringing the bottom 10% up to a standard where they can create the artefact on the 3d software. I plan to assess these projects regularly and provide feedback to the whole class rather than individuals. “There is some consensus suggesting students prefer individual to group feedback” (Cramp, 2011).

Bibliography

Cramp, A., 2011. Developing first-year engagement with written feedback. Active Learning in Higher Education, 12(1), pp. 113-124.

Smith, S. M. G. &. K., 2013. Student perceptions of classroom feedback. The Curriculum Journal , 30(4), pp. 150-169.

Tunstall, P. & Gipps, C., 1996. Teacher Feedback to young children in formative assessment. British educational research journal, 22(4), pp. 389-392.