Why May Matters More Than You Think (And How to Make the Most of It)
I’ve been trying to start this column for weeks, but each time I do, I remember something in my yard that needs doing. The serviceberry tree I just planted needs watering. I need to prep the garden beds so I can plant the greens. The lawn, after so long in suspended animation, suddenly needs cutting and weeding. Such is life in May. Summer’s gravitational pull suddenly becomes inescapable, both in the garden and in my classroom. In class, students who’ve been as steady as metronomes all year start missing readings, I find myself veering into more tangents and taking up…
Continue ReadingMy Favorite Time-Saving Valentine: Student Self-Assessment
Given the recent Valentine’s Day holiday, I wanted to share a quick post on a feedback tool that I truly love: Student self-assessment To understand my love of student self-assessment, think about the final draft of a major paper or project and the following question: Should you provide some sort of feedback with the final grade/score you give? This question is harder than it seems. One of the clearest conclusions in all of feedback research is that feedback given in the summative, final stage is dramatically less effective than feedback that comes in formative stages. Part of this drop in…
Continue ReadingThe Core of My Approach to Better, Faster Feedback: The New Pyramid of Response
When I speak to teachers about feedback, I often open by asking my audience the following question: How many of you meaningfully discussed how to give feedback while training to become a teacher? Generally few, if any, hands go into the air, which instead tends to slowly fill with awkward laughter as everyone begins to realize a rather absurd truth: We spend a huge amount of our teaching life responding to student work, and yet most of us received little or no instruction concerning how to do that while in school. This question then naturally leads to another question: Given…
Continue ReadingMy Favorite Pre-Break Lesson
Yesterday I got the question for the first time: We aren’t going to do anything today, are we? The question gave me a good laugh. It was Tuesday morning and the break the student referenced as a reason to kick back and do nothing didn’t start until Friday afternoon. Even still, I think the question speaks for a lot of us this time of year. I always forget how tired they are, how tired I am, after 17 demanding weeks. As the student said it, truth be told, I could feel the break—still four days away—nudging at my mind too. …
Continue ReadingBetter, Faster Feedback Part 1: Feedback Literacy Revisited
One of the funny things about writing educational books is that, once published, each book stays a snapshot in time. The same is not true for the author though; the author continues to experiment and evolve, to try new things and grow in philosophy and practice. That is why over the next few weeks I plan to do a mini-series on the powerful lessons about giving better and faster feedback that I’ve learned since writing Flash Feedback. The core of what I do is still the same as it is in Flash Feedback, but as a little mid-winter gift, I’m…
Continue ReadingLet’s Talk About How to Give Better, Faster Feedback
I was at the National Council of Teachers of English conference* a couple weeks ago, and as I walked through the showroom I heard the pitch from edu-AI companies, over and over and over again: “Save time by providing instant feedback to your students.” As a full-time teacher with nearly 150 students, it isn’t too hard to figure out why companies would lead with this pitch: As I’ve discussed in this newsletter for nearly a decade, the logistics of providing feedback are nearly nonsensical for the modern teacher. Multiply my 150 students by the length of an essay/narrative (about 3…
Continue ReadingAll That Glitters Is Not Good Teaching
Keys to Engaging Lesson Design and a New Lesson Plan Drop! In their wonderful book 100% Engagement, Susan Barber and Brian Sztabnik begin by saying the following: There is a myth that says engagement is the purview of young, fun, and modern teachers. They draw students in by building rapport around fashion, music, or sports. They turn everything into a Kahoot! or Quizlet so all facets of learning become gamified. They pluck the best samples from their future Rembrandts and Picassos and post them on Instagram, making everyone green with envy. They then follow this up by saying this: If…
Continue ReadingTeaching the Why: A Quick, Effective Strategy for Increasing Student Engagement
I have a rule that I tell students on the first week: If you don’t know why we are studying something, why we are studying something in the way we are, or why I’m assessing you in a certain way, please ask. I will always answer, and I will never answer (as I sometimes did early in my career) with Because I’m the Teacher… This little speech is admittedly a bit theatrical, but theater can be useful to make a point, and I really want my students to hear an important message: What we do in here matters. It is…
Continue ReadingMore Than a Name: Four Quick Tools to Increase Student Engagement by Helping Them to Feel Seen
My topic for the last few posts, Gen AI, may be the large, loud, and ostentatious elephant sitting in the corner of teachers’ rooms across the world right now, but I’ve found that many teachers’ rooms also have a second elephant these days, equally large but a bit more subtle: Student engagement, or more accurately the lack of student engagement. Engagement is an internal state, which makes it hard to measure and study. But to use a more modern metric, the vibes around it right now aren’t good, and the limited data we have mostly supports these troubled feelings. A…
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Matthew M. Johnson 