Toolkits - Term 3: Empowering Students through Feedback.

 Feedback and Feedforward: Empowering Student Learning

With Elena Terekhina (Manaiakalani Network)

Feedback can come from teachers, peer or whānau; our focus is teachers' feedback.

The assessment for learning archway has six component parts (or capabilities)

1. Capability One: Building learning focused relationships sits as the foundation stone of the archway. Teaching and learning are founded on the quality of the relationship built between teacher and student. This strong relationship is the foundation for learning upon which all else rests.
2. Clarity about learning – Everyone knows what they’re learning, why and how (LI/ SC).
3. Assessment literacy – Knowing how to use assessment effectively (summative and formative).
4. Promoting further learning – Helping students move towards their learning goals (This will be one of our focus for today looking at effective feedback and feedforward).
5. Active reflection gives the opportunity for both teachers and students to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process.
6. Clarity about next steps requires shared knowledge of the big picture of the learning between students and teacher. Students know what they are aiming for and how to get there. 

All these capabilities based on principles, knowledge, skills and understandings which teachers and learners progressively develop and integrate one with the other to deeper and deeper levels of understanding.

Assessment is either summative or formative and needs to be used to improve learning. The purpose is to 

Feedback types

• Evaluative
• Descriptive
• Generative - how to improve

Clarke (2003) suggests three types of prompts for providing descriptive feedback dependent on the needs of the learner:

Reminder prompt (“You read that italicized word in a normal voice. Remember we talked yesterday about words with italics and what we need to do with our voice…”) 

Scaffold prompt (“Try rereading that sentence again and put emphasis on the word in italics to show amazement…”)  

Example prompt (“Try emphasising the word in italics with your voice to show amazement, like this: You aren’t going to eat that are you?”)

Focus for prompting needs to be around the learning intention(s) or goal(s) of the task. (As always)

Feedback is a shared response; teachers give feedback, and students need to act on it. These capabilities don’t develop automatically. They require planning, explicit teaching, modelling, practice and scaffolding

Giving them a map of what they have done.

Students with assessment literacy can understand what they are learning, how they are progressing, and what to do next. ​

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In Te Mātaiaho, progress markers and teaching sequences provide clarity about expected learning each year. When teachers share this information with students in accessible ways, students gain the ability to interpret feedback, track their progress, and adjust their learning strategies. ​

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This builds self‑regulation and motivation — key characteristics of how people learn. Students who understand progress information can take greater ownership over their learning, participate meaningfully in conferences, and develop long‑term learning confidence.​

John Hattie: we need more than a dollop of feedback. But it is more about what they hear/receive :

We know students and people in general are selective on what they hear. 

Ask students, "Tell me what you heard?" - This is to encourage students to interpret what we are saying.

Feedback should be more work for the receiver than the giver.

Research doesn't support the sandwich model for feedback, as they often focus on the Praise.

Effective feedback is focussed.

We often pick up the book and think where do I start. Pick one or two skills that are the most important that related to the success criteria.

Effective Feedback should be Focussed (Specific), Accessible, and Timely

Students need to be doing the heavy lifting (learning); don't do it for them. You can give support or scaffolds.

Feedback needs time for students to receive, if it is worth us writing it, then give students the time to read it!

Rather than writing feedback and then forgetting it. What about using feedback as detective work? Here is 4 comments which one goes with which story/essay? - Given to a group of four students. In maths, you have 5 right and 3 need fixing, find them and fix them. 

 - https://tipsforteachers.co.uk/feedback-detective-work/

Train students to give feedback, and then they will be able to do self-review better.

Ultimate GOAL is transferable Feedback - how will this feedback help them next time?

Post Grad Pt2: W5 Engagement, Data, and Evidence

Gathering Data and Evidence to Support Engagement 

Whakataukī

Nā te whakarongo me te titiro ka puta mai te kōrero.  

Through looking and listening, we gain wisdom.

Insights

What Data?

Data can help empower all of us: including us as Educators, Parents, Policy Makers and Students.

There are many forms of data that we can collect:

Tests/Quizzes

Annual Assessment

Benchmark Assessment

Data can be gathered in different ways e.g. through teacher observations; student engagement; student homework and data through apps.

Data needs to be:

• availabe, complete and relevant 
• safeguarded, trustworthy and private 

Teachers and Adminstrators need to have the knowledge and skills to use the data. In order ot be able to communicate to whanau and the community in order to support and improve learning.

What is Engagement?

The main themes are that engagement is essential for learning, that engagement is multifaceted with behavioral and psychological components, that engagement and disengagement are developmental and occur over a period of years, and that student engagement can be modified through school policies and practices to improve the prognoses of students at risk.

-Finn, J.D., Zimmer, K.S. (2012). Student Engagement: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?. In: Christenson, S., Reschly, A., Wylie, C. (eds) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_5

Student engagement represents the time and effort students devote to activities that are empirically linked to desired outcomes of college and what institutions do to induce students to participate in these activities (Kuh, 2001, 2003, 2009). The meaning and applications of this definition of student engagement have evolved over time to represent increasingly complex understandings of the relationships between desired outcomes of college and the amount of time and effort students invest in their studies and other educationally purposeful activities (Kuh, 2009; Wolf-Wendel, Ward, & Kinzie, 2009). For example, building on Tyler's "time on task" concept (Merwin, 1969), Pace [End Page 683] (1980, 1984) developed the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) to measure "quality of effort" to identify the activities that contributed to various dimensions of student learning and personal development. His research across three decades (1960 to 1990) showed that students gained more from their studies and other aspects of the college experience when they devoted more time and energy to certain tasks that required more effort than others-studying, interacting with their peers and teachers about substantive matters, applying their learning to concrete situations and tasks in different contexts, and so forth (Pace, 1984, 1990).

- Kuh, G.D. (2009). What Student Affairs Professionals Need to Know About Student Engagement. Journal of College Student Development 50(6), 683-706. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.0.0099.

What Evidence can we gather to indentify Student Engagement?

• 
  Observation
• Attendance
• Lower Scores, participation
• Creating other artefacts
• Social Anxiety

Emotional Engagement includes boredom, sadness, anxiety and belonging

Behaviour Engagement includes persistence

Cognitive Engagement includes investment in learning, challenge, self-regulation, going beyond the learning, and effort in mastering new knowledge and/or skills

Remember, if you're using gaming, not all students are into competition!

Takeaways

AI is a useful tool that can help to analyse gathered information, but is not always accurate or reliable.

Gathering Data, there are lots of methods we are not limited to one method or way!

When doing a survey, do a pre-survey to check the quality of questions.

Reflection

There is nothing wrong with testing out your survey before doing the real attempt. Even when things go wrong, we can analyse them in the research.

Pitomata - Share Meeting

First Glimpse of Pitomata

New development in our Share Pedagogy with the connected. 

We need people to think about - now young leaders can capture learning what is going unseen , how can if showing the growth of learning rather than a finished product , student agency 

Sign in with Google. 

A new communciation pops up at the top of the page, and spaces you are part of (classes) and following (friends)

• You can insert straight from Google Drive, everything must be insert through the drive. 
• You can search/filter posts to view. Needs to be reset 
• Oversight
• Class - is where you can manage the class (add students) 
• Members: can be seen who is in the class
• Can freeze students while remove comments, delete, and learners can flag a comment, this gvies you a report and this is emailed to the teacher and principal. We can also edit the comment. 

Parents - can they comment?

Tuhi mai Tuhi atu - school to school

How do we make the comments are purposeful, rather than a social chat.

Layers:

Principal - see all - oversight and make discussion

Team Leaders  - see team

Teachers - see class

Student - granula level

Next Steps - Whanau Hui - to discuss with community to see what students are doing

Rolling out 2027 T1 - no cost

Edublog has a button that can convert Edublog to a PDF this can be moved into Pitomata. Pitomata can this can also be taken to a new school too.

Manaiakalani is only paying for Edublogs up to January. Wordpress will preserve for 2 years, then disappears. 

External friend who is vetting from an outside perspective and looking at security.

Post Grad Pt2: W3 Innovation Ideation and Prototyping

Whakataukī

He iti hau marangai e tū te pāhokahoka
Just like a rainbow after the storm, success follows failure

Why you should and how you could better embrace ideation and/or prototyping in your practice to find truly innovative solutions.

Build Courage Through Making: Emily Pilloton

• Learn to express yourself
• Celebrate who you are
• Shift power dynamics
• “I fundamentally believe that if girls and women are more involved in, invited into and given more agency to shape the world, that our world will be more beautiful and more equitable and more just, and it will be designed for everyone,” she says.
• Fear is important and can be isolating; we, as women, need to be brave. It is a skill that can be learnt.

5 Tips for Bravery

Emily has countless pieces of advice for those looking to build their bravery and hone their maker abilities. We selected five from her book to get you started. 
• The best way to start is to start.
• Acknowledge your fear, then tell it to go jump off a cliff.
• Practice the hard parts.
• Find your mentors and ask for help.
• Finish what you start.

Why is community important? - By building things for others, we build ourselves up and can become leaders. These ideas will live on for many years. E.g. chicken coop for a farm. 

Using this kind of thinking would benefit neurodiverse people, as they often think outside of the box, giving a range of ideas. From a leadership perspective, we are thinking up ideas to acknowledge students' attendance.  People can be reluctant to share ideas, or have none, how do we overcome this. 

Insights

Design thinking is never believing you have the answer - Ewan McIntosh

Keep ideas flowing, yes and..., how might we..., have many ideas then narrow it down again, set a time limit, stay on topic ...

Different constraints: if your budget was $1, $1000, unlimited, or time limits

What is TPACK?

 

Using TPACK - remember to wear the GREEN Thinker's Hat.

 

After our previous collaborative project, our group will need to be aware of this 'Groupthink'!

Takeaways

Using Tools to help Ideate - https://ideamap.ai/

If we look at Being Brave using this tool, the map is huge, and then we can whittle it down.

You can simplify to something like this...

Although these ideas are hard to read, there are some great ideas here that all make sense and were along the lines of what I was thinking.

Reflection

Now to implement and prototype some of them!

These are a couple I'd love to start with...

Make it Write - Scribo

Scribo: A Writing Intervention Tool

Scribo, as in Screebo, from a Latin word that means to write. 

Insights

In August 2025, it was decided that we need to focus on writing, with a target of 80% of Y8 or above in Writing by 2030. It can be applied to any student whose writing element is below the expected level. But need to apply to the Ministry to get more licenses. Can add Teachers at no cost.

14 Week intervention; it is not a trial 

Students can access 'Claro' and teachers 'Claro Foresight' to gain more information or support (AI Bot).

We need to explicitly teach students how to use the programme, not just "click and collect" at the suggestions. 

The goal is to improve writing, not to reach a particular score, as others may do. 

It can read to students; students can use speech-to-text, and we can adjust the level of feedback for students from sophisticated.

Teacher View: we can view the Scribo rubric or the curriculum rubric. 

Grove on the Menu will give you ideas for teaching skills.

Students need 50 words to generate feedback, which can be used as formative assessment. 

Looked at a Class from Tokoroa that had been trialling - worked well for Irlens and Neurodiverse students.

Dashboard:

• Can get the temperature of class/school
• Scaffolds - enhance writing
• Write Check hover - comes up with possible changes
• 100 is not the goal
• Y7 and 8 cohort - differentiate by ability
• Separate Year levels great for reporting back and producing graphs.

 

Slides 56 0n -    Steps through Set UP of Scribo + Acitivities

• Library
• Create from scratch
• Use Scribot AI
• Flip the Pen
• Can add Keywords - great for use of scientific words (Teacher Input). Feedback will support use of these

Slide 69 - show how it aligns with NZ Curriculum, AI very accurate.

When starting out

1. Apply the law of averages to assign tasks
2. Write as soon as possible and often
3. Many use cold write and then put that in for students to adjust. Using Scriblet, writing check and then a challenge.
4. Categories you can click on and off to make a focus.

HELP:

Effective Pedagogy in Writing

Takeaways