Different Feedback Strategies to Meet Individual Teachers' Needs

            In The Learning Professional, author/leadership coach Keith Young and district director of student services Judith Mendoza Jimenez suggest three levels of feedback based on teachers’ needs and levels of experience: rapid response, moderate engagement, and expansive intervention. 

• Rapid response – Many classroom issues can be addressed quickly, say Young and Jimenez, “without the need for extended sit-down feedback sessions.” For example, during a classroom visit, an observer might prompt the teacher to check for understanding or focus on disengaged students by whispering to the teacher, handing them a note, or sending a text. “I didn’t have to wait until the end of the day to learn what the students needed,” said a teacher who appreciated the quick feedback. [Here’s a detailed discussion of real-time coaching.] 

            Another approach is having a brief feedback chat in the corridor immediately after an observation. An elementary principal found these informal conversations built rapport and helped teachers make minor instructional tweaks. Similarly, a district administrator observing a school’s faculty meeting pulled the principal aside and unobtrusively suggested a way to get input from reluctant colleagues. 

• Moderate engagement – “Some feedback needs more than a quick chat,” say Young and Jimenez, “structured enough to get into detail, yet flexible enough to fit into a busy school day.” Novice teachers might be asked to co-teach a lesson with a seasoned colleague, actively engaging with a new teaching idea without having to take full responsibility for the lesson, then debriefing afterward. Administrators might also orchestrate peer observation cycles to get teachers into each other’s classrooms and spread effective practices. 

            “It was powerful to see my colleague handle the same challenges I face – and to learn from their solutions,” said one teacher. “I also realized I need to plan my complex thinking questions in advance because improvising them during the lesson rarely worked for me.” 

            Another moderate engagement strategy is teachers recording videos of lessons and reviewing them afterward with an instructional coach. This is like athletic teams looking at game videos, say Young and Jimenez, “allowing educators to see missed opportunities, analyze strategies, and plan for improvement.” 

            For very proficient teachers who seldom need corrective feedback, the best approach might be to have them coach themselves based on rubrics, classroom videos, or an analysis of their students’ work. One experienced art teacher reviewed her students’ portfolios at the end of a semester and made a number of changes in pedagogy, lesson pacing, and scaffolding. 

• Expansive intervention – Longer, more in-depth coaching can help teachers develop new practices, improve student engagement, perhaps confront biases. An Arizona science department head engaged in a semester-long, twice-a-week coaching cycle with a novice teacher to plan lessons, observe classroom dynamics (especially student-led labs), and debrief after each classroom visit. “It wasn’t just about tweaking a lesson here or there,” said the teacher. “It was like a deep dive into everything – how I pressed my students, how I understood the standards, how I communicated during the lab, even how I handled their mistakes. I went from feeling overwhelmed to watching my students own their learning.” 

            Another idea is “ramble chats” – extended walk-and-talk conversations in which an instructional coach and an effective teacher talk informally about curriculum, pedagogy, and student learning – without the constraints of a formal agenda. “This type of feedback,” say Young and Jimenez, “proves well-suited to teachers who are either highly experienced or highly self-reflective or, ideally, both. The open-ended and time-consuming nature of these conversations fosters deep reflection and creative problem solving.” 

            The goal of this kind of differentiated support, conclude Young and Jimenez: “a professional learning culture where every individual feels seen, supported, and inspired to make changes – from quick adjustments to deep transformations. That kind of continuous improvement is possible when we reimagine feedback as not just a tool for addressing deficiencies, but as a catalyst for growth, innovation, and empowerment.”  

“3 Essential Feedback Categories for Inspiring Educator Growth” by Keith Young and Judith Mendoza Jimenez in The Learning Professional, February 2025 (Vol. 46, #1, pp. 34-37)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1079 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Graphic Novels About Immigration

             In School Library Journal, Brigid Alverson recommends these graphic novels on the joys and challenges of the immigration experience: 

• Speak Up, Santiago! A Hillside Valley Graphic Novel by Julie Anta, illustrated by Gabi Mendez, grade 3-7
• Uprooted: A Memoir About What Happens When Your Family Moves Back by Ruth Chan, grade 3-
• How to Draw a Secret by Cindy Chang, grade 3-7
• History Comics: Ellis Island, Immigration, and the American Dream by Felipe Galindo Feggo, illustrated by Tait Howard, grade 4-9
• Just Another Story: A Graphic Migration Account by Ernesto Saade, grade 7 and up
• This Land Is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story by Julio Anta, illustrated by Jacoby Salcedo, grade 8-12
• Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum by Tracy White, grade 10 and up

 “Coming Home” by Brigid Alverson in School Library Journal, March 2025 (Vol. 71, #3, pp. 47-49)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1078 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How Instructional Leadership Teams Can Catalyze Effective Practices

(Originally titled “How Teacher Teams Can Transform School Practices”) 

            “The time is ripe for faculty-wide conversations around strengthening instructional practice,” says New York City principal M-J Mercanti-Anthony in Educational Leadership. This is important, he believes, because many teachers are unaware of recent research findings and continue to use outmoded and, in some cases, discredited practices with their students. 

            Mercanti-Anthony lists four reasons why the best thinking on teaching and learning is not being implemented more widely: 

• Teacher and administrator training programs have gaps, especially in cognitive science. 
• Educators’ egos are caught up in their work, and feedback can be taken personally.
• Schools’ egg-crate culture often prevents highly effective practices from being shared.
• Many teachers are wise to the “faux discovery” process: they’re asked to try out a new practice and gather data, only to learn they’re being manipulated into adopting it. 

How can principals address these impediments and foster sincere, productive discussion of best practices? 

            Mercanti-Anthony believes the key is good use of a school’s instructional leadership team (ILT). Members should be recruited based on their capacity and willingness to explore the research, take a fresh look at teaching and learning in the school, and commit to weekly meetings. It must be clear that other groups in the school will deal with discipline policies, the bell schedule, planning school events, and test data, allowing the ILT to be laser-focused on instruction. A step-by-step roll-out of an ILT’s work over time:

• Studying the science of how people learn – Mercanti-Anthony suggests that the ILT spend several months exploring often-untapped research findings, including:
• Retrieval practice;
• Spaced review;
• Interleaving;
• Connecting abstract concepts with concrete examples;
• Building metacognitive skills so students self-monitor and learn from mistakes;
• Asking questions that get students thinking deeply and elaborating. 

During this exploration phase, some ILT members may begin experimenting with new ideas in their classrooms.  

• Choosing one strategy – The ILT organically chooses a strategy to introduce to the faculty – for example, putting retrieval practice to work with the “brain dump” plan. “ILTs should resist the temptation of introducing more than one strategy at a time,” says Mercanti-Anthony. 

• Taking the practice to scale – To get the idea widely adopted, the key is peer-to-peer discussion groups, lesson study teams, and teachers visiting classrooms trying the new practice. 

• Repeating – Once the initial strategy is launched, the ILT chooses another, studies it in depth, and follows the same dissemination strategy. 

            If the ILT follows these steps, says Mercanti-Anthony, colleagues won’t see subsequent ideas as “one more thing.” He sees this as a multi-year process, “providing resources, suggestions, and assistance in keeping the process moving forward.” 

“How Teacher Teams Can Transform School Practices” by M-J Mercanti-Anthony in Educational Leadership, March 2025 (Vol. 82, #6, pp. 28-34)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1078 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

The Art and Science of Interactive Readalouds

 (Originally titled “A Better Way to Read Aloud”) 

            In this Educational Leadership article, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High and Middle College) say that reading aloud to students has great potential for learning – if it’s done well. Here are the key factors they noticed when they observed and interviewed 25 highly effective grade 3-8 teachers: 

• A well-chosen text that will capture students’ interest and address a learning need; 
• Preparing and practicing beforehand to formulate questions and be able to read fluently;
• Establishing a clear purpose with students – a concept or skill they will learn;
• Reading with accuracy, correct pronunciation, appropriate rate, fluency, expression, phrasing, and enthusiasm;
• Engaging students with facial expressions and hand gestures;
• Discussing the text before, during, and after the readaloud – ideas, the author’s style and choice of words, key vocabulary, predictions;
• Connecting the text to reading and writing that students are doing – for example, writing a letter to one of the characters in the story or comparing the text to something else students have read. 

For primary-grade students, Fisher and Frey suggest the additional element of print referencing – drawing attention to letters, words, punctuation, and print concepts like left-to-right directionality. 

 “A Better Way to Read Aloud” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, March 2025 (Vol. 82, #6, pp. 10-11)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1077 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Children's Books on Climate Change

            In this School Library Journal feature, Tennessee school librarian Suzanne Costner recommends books on climate change and environmental activism:

• Cactus Queen: Minerva Hoyt Establishes Joshua Tree National Park by Lori Alexander, illustrated by Jenn Ely, grade 1-3
• The Ocean Gardener by Clara Anganuzzi, kindergarten-grade 3
• Loop de Loop: Circular Solutions for a Waste-Free World by Andrea Curtis, illustrated by Roozeboos, preschool-grade 3
• Marjory’s River of Grass: Marjory Stoneman Douglass, Fierce Protector of the Everglades by Josie James, grade 1-4
• My First Earth Day by Karen Katz, preschool-grade 2
• We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom, illustrated by Michaela Goade, kindergarten-grade 3
• Our Planet! There’s No Place Like Earth by Stacy McAnulty, illustrated by David Litchfield, preschool-grade 1
• Angela’s Glacier by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Diana Sudyka, preschool-grade 2
• To Change a Planet by Christina Soontornvat, illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell, preschool-grade 2
• Love, the Earth by Frances Stickley, illustrated by Tim Hopgood, preschool-grade 2
• Global: One Fragile World. An Epic Fight for Survival by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano, grade 3-8
• Ducks Overboard! A True Story of Plastic in Our Oceans by Markus Motum, grade 3-5
• Climate Action: What Happened and What We Can Do by Seymour Simon, grade 2-6
• The Global Ocean by Rochelle Strauss, illustrated by Natasha Donovan, grade 3-7
• Team Trash: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Sustainability by Kate Wheeler, illustrated by Trent Huntington, grade 3-6 

 “Great Books: No Planet B” by Suzanne Costner in School Library Journal, February 2025 (Vol. 71, #2, pp. 41-43)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1074 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Peter Liljedahl on Giving Students a "Navigation Instrument"

            In this chapter (13) in Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Peter Liljedahl (Simon Fraser University) says he and his research colleagues frequently ask students this question: 

So, you just finished a unit on ---. Was that unit just one big topic, or was it a collection of a bunch of smaller topics? 

“I have never asked a question that is so predictive of student performance on a unit test,” says Liljedahl. Typically, about 15 percent of students answer that the unit was made up of subtopics and can name and describe those chunks; those students score above 90 percent on the upcoming test. Students who know there are subtopics but can’t fully describe them score between 75 and 90 percent on the unit test. And students who say the unit is one big topic score below 75 percent. 

            Why the big difference? Because students who know the subtopics of the unit have a grasp of the content similar to the teacher’s and can see specific areas where they are doing well and others where they have work to do. This is a key insight about formative assessments, says Liljedahl: “Information communicated from a teacher to a student who sees the topic as one big unit will only inform that student of what it is that they can do; but because they don’t have a clear picture of the whole unit and all its subtopics, they cannot see what is still left to learn.” 

            The missing piece in many classrooms, he believes, is finding a way “to help students see mathematical topics as collections of subtopics, sections, and/or special cases the way teachers do, and use this knowledge to inform themselves about what it is they can and cannot yet do.” The analogy in navigating on land and sea is knowing where you are and where you are going. For students, “where they are is what they understand, know, and/or are able to do. And where they are going, within the scope of a unit of study, is what they have not yet learned, don’t yet understand, and/or are not yet able to do.”

            To accomplish this, Liljedahl says, we need to give students a navigation instrument with the subtopics of a unit, including specific examples of what they are expected to learn in each one. After a lot of trial and error, he and his colleagues came up with a grid that looked like this for a unit on fractions, with examples of fractions problems.

***

Fractions                        Basic            Intermediate        Advanced

    

Add and subtract            1/5 + 3/5        1/4 + 3/8            3/5 + 1/7       

proper fractions

Add and subtract 

mixed fractions

Multiply and divide

proper fractions

Multiply and divide

mixed fractions

Solve order of

operation tasks with

proper and mixed

fractions

Solve contextual 

problems involving 

fractions

Estimate solutions for

problems involving

fractions

***

Linking specific questions to the outcomes of each row “turned out to be vital,” says Liljedahl. “Although the language in the left-hand column is clear to us, students needed to see specific questions to fully understand what many of the outcomes meant.” This was especially important in the primary grades, where students’ reading proficiency was still developing, but was important right through high school. 

            The real power of navigation instruments comes when students have taken an end-of-unit review assessment prior to the final test. Students compare their answers to correct answers and mark each one on the navigation grid with these symbols: 

    - A check if it was correct;

    - S if it was mostly correct but there was a silly mistake;

    - H if it was answered correctly with help from the teacher or a classmate;

    - G if it was answered correctly with a collaborative group; 

    - X if it was attempted and answered incorrectly;

    - N if it was not attempted. 

Having students do this after an interim assessment and then use the results to study for the final test, Liljedahl and his colleagues saw “astonishing results:” 50 to 70 percent of students saw immediate improvement of 10-15 percent; knowing where they were and where they were going was all they needed to improve. “I mean, now I know exactly what I need to work on,” said one student. “I finally get what we are doing,” said another. A third: “Are you kidding me? This is great. I know what we are doing now.” This was especially helpful for low-achieving students; they made significant progress by focusing on the basic-level questions. 

            Why didn’t all students improve? Some of them (about 15 percent) already knew what the subtopics were, so the navigation grid was redundant information and produced no improvement. Another subgroup really didn’t care about their learning or their grade. They already knew where they were (in the lower achievement range) and didn’t have any ambition to improve. “That is not to say they couldn’t be helped,” says Liljedahl. “Just not in this way.” 

            There was a third group of students who didn’t benefit from getting specific information on their practice test: students who were achieving at a B level, and thought that was good enough. “Hey, I got a B,” said one student, “without doing anything. Why would I want to put in a bunch of work to try to get an A?” Another: “A B is good enough for my mom.” A third: “I’m not one to go the extra mile.”

            Isn’t it enough for teachers to give students written feedback on their quizzes and tests? For students who understand the details of curriculum units, yes, but for the 85 percent of students who don’t, says Liljedahl, this is not enough; they need to know where they are and where they are going, in detail.

            Why the categories Basic, Intermediate, Advanced? Liljedahl and his colleagues started with Easy, Medium, Hard, and students found those were clearest. But teachers preferred Basic/Intermediate/Advanced, and students had no difficulty with it, so that’s what was chosen. Another option considered was Novice, Emergent, Expert, but the researchers realized that those labels describe the abilities of the students rather than the complexity of the tasks.

            What about students who see the three levels and are happy to do just the Basic level? This is a problem, says Liljedahl, “but the problem is with the students, not with the navigation instrument. And for this reason, the solution lies not in the instrument, but within the students.” The teacher’s challenge is working on students’ basic motivation so they care about learning.

            Does splitting up each curriculum unit into subtopics and levels of complexity keep students from seeing the bigger picture of mathematics? “This is a very good question,” says Liljedahl. “We were concerned about this as well.” But it turns out that for students to see math as a connected whole, they must first see the subcomponents. This was especially important for students who answered the initial question saying that the unit was one big topic: “They needed to see the distinctions to see the connections.”

            Doesn’t stating the learning goal at the beginning of a lesson (as many teachers are required to do) take care of students understanding what they’re doing? “In theory, yes,” says Liljedahl. “In reality, however, it doesn’t.” Students need to see the detail and dive into assessing their own work and taking responsibility for improving it.

            Isn’t this the same as self-assessments that students are sometimes asked to do? The difference, says Liljedahl, is that most assessments ask students for their opinion of their abilities. Here, students are looking at their actual achievement. He and his colleagues found that students took the data seriously – and most of them rolled up their sleeves and went about improving their learning.

            How can teachers know if they’re doing a good job helping students know where they are and where they’re going? At the end of a unit, suggests Liljedahl, have students make a review test on which they will get 100 percent. If they can do this, they know what they know. Then ask them to make a review test on which they will get only 50 percent. If they can do that, they know what they know and what they don’t know. 

 “How We Use Formative Assessment in a Thinking Classroom” – Chapter 13 of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl (Corwin, 2021); Liljedahl can be reached at liljedahl@sfu.ca; see Memo 992 for a summary of chapters 1-3 of the book, Memo 1013 for a summary of chapter 5.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1070 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

David Brooks on Young People Becoming the Best Versions of Themselves

            In this New York Times column, David Brooks says he believes that for individuals, character is destiny, and for a healthy society, moral formation is essential. At a recent meeting hosted by the Making Caring Common project at Harvard, Brooks took note of some key ideas for teachers, parents, and “anyone who wants to build a society in which it is easier to be good”: 

• A communitarian ethos – A common belief today, says Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of Making Caring Common, is that young people’s ultimate goal is individual achievement and happiness, versus the common good and caring for others. “Schools that focus on moral education,” says Brooks, “stand athwart that tide. They have a sense of moral mission, that who you become is more important than what career track you pursue… They have rituals to mark transitions. They have retreats and group travel so that people can see one another before the makeup goes on.”
• Moral skill-building – “Treating people well involves practicing certain skills, which can be taught just as the skills of carpentry and tennis can be taught,” says Brooks. They include:
• The skills of understanding – listening well, eliciting people’s life stories so we accurately see them and they feel seen; 
• The skills of consideration and treating people well – offering criticism with care, asking for and offering forgiveness, breaking up with someone without crushing their hearts. 

Brooks fears that many young people aren’t learning these skills. 

• Exemplars – “Admiration is one of the most powerful moral emotions,” he says. Nelson Mandela revered Mahatma Gandhi; Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Standon admired each other. Kids need to study examples of true greatness. In the words of Warren Buffett, “Tell me who your heroes are, and I’ll tell you how you’re going to turn out.” 
• Moral traditions – “We are the lucky inheritors of many rich and varied moral traditions,” says Brooks. “Schools can teach these traditions and students can decide which seem true to them. People become their best selves as they begin to embody the values of a specific moral tradition.”
• Self-confrontation – Everyone has core faults they must confront and conquer, says Brooks. Dwight Eisenhower had a terrible temper; some people are egotistical, judgmental, or people pleasers. Parents and schools can help young people to acknowledge and try to fix their shortcomings. 
• Public service – “Community service, whether it’s feeding the poor, sitting with the homeless, or championing a cause, is not just to make society better,” says Brooks; “it is done to usher a transformation in the person doing the service.” This kind of service fosters emotional understanding – “the ability to be made indignant by injustice, outraged by cruelty, to know how to gracefully do things with people, not for people. That kind of knowledge comes through direct contact with the problems.” 

 “The Character-Building Tool Kit” by David Brooks in The New York Times, January 10, 2025; Brooks can be reached at dabrooks@nytimes.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1070 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.