Blogging: DC & the Importance of Respect

To me, one of the most important things to remember when you are blogging is that everyone has different ideas and opinions. While it OK for me to disagree with someone, I still need to remember to respect their opinion.

When we share our own ideas with other people it often helps us understand that idea in a better way. By describing what we think about something we often have to think about other perspectives that are out there. When someone disagrees with my opinion, it often makes me think of other ideas, or perspectives. Sometimes its hard to take/read/listen to other opinions but I need to remember that it’s ok for others to disagree and that we’re all entitled to share our own thinking.

It would be great to get some feedback from this post. I am working with a group of grade 4 students and we are learning about the purpose of comments and engaging with other people's blog posts.

I wonder how other people feel when their ideas are challenged?

What are Feedback Loops?

Today I was chatting to someone on our staff about feedback loops and what good feedback looks like.

One of the questions we came up with was 'if you are focusing on giving feedback all the time, how do you manage it?'. How do you make sure you are reaching all students in your class? ~ From what I've seen, most of the videos and examples I've seen of inquiry projects have been group work projects and therefore were easier to manage the feedback. I'm wondering if this how you make it easier to manage the feedback process, through group work? What do you do when it involves students doing independent tasks? How can we make the feedback process rigorous and well managed when students are working by themselves?

My colleague was also concerned that if she is so focused on giving feedback, she feels like she is not  able to provide her students with the same level of support. My thinking to this is that the feedback and support go hand in hand and that you're providing valuable support by giving feedback. I think there is a misconception out there on what feedback actually looks like. To me, it is dialogue (written or spoken) that helps move that student forward in their learning. The feedback might be direct or indirect communication through the form of 1-1 discussions, group discussions, assessment and success criteria (rubrics and checklists etc). Feedback can not only be given by the teachers, but peers and parents can be included in the feedback loops as well.

Finally, does anyone reading this have access to examples/exemplars or what good feedback looks like? Teachers like concrete examples to help them develop new things in the classroom. It would be great to share some examples.