Zach Diamond  0:03  
Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. 

Zach Diamond  0:28  
Hello, and welcome to episode 133 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond and I'm an MCP mentor and a middle school digital music teacher in Washington, DC. And today I'm joined by Jerod Brown, a Spanish and English language development teacher in Northern California. And by Dan Ronchak, a high school math teacher at Columbia Heights High School in Minnesota. Welcome Jerod and Dan, thank you both for joining me.

Jerod Brown  0:55  
Thanks for having me.

Dan Ronchak  0:56  
Ah, thanks for having me, too. I'm excited to be here.

Zach Diamond  0:59  
It is a pleasure. I'm excited to be here to this is going to be a very interesting topic, definitely a very pertinent topic. When that comes up a lot. We are going to be talking about providing effective feedback, which I think is actually a really big topic. And I think it's also very, there's a lot in MCP that allows us to provide very effective feedback. And I think it's one of the real joys of teaching in a modern classrooms is that feedback as students are revising, and, and improving their learning that way through feedback and through revision. So I'm really excited for this discussion. But before we start, let me let you guys introduce yourselves. So tell us more about who you are, what you teach and how you started your modern classrooms journeys. Jerry, why don't you go first. Great. So

Jerod Brown  1:44  
as you mentioned, Zach, my name is Jared Brown. I'm a Spanish and English language development teacher at Anneli High School in Northern California. And I kind of stumbled upon the modern classrooms project through the 62nd Edutopia video. And this was in December of 2020, when we were kind of doing some unique hybrid learning stuff. And I was preparing for the birth of my first child. And I was on maternity leave, and was fortunate to kind of earn a quick scholarship to the virtual mentorship. So I enjoyed the virtual mentorship with Shane Donovan, who is an absolute stud science teacher on the East Coast, and then began implementing it in my Spanish one classroom, particularly when we went back to school. So since then, I've applied and was accepted as a DMC E. And then eventually as a mentor, and was originally began serving as a mentor spring of last year, including BSI. And currently I am in my Spanish to classroom. And really, the driving factor for me was that I couldn't differentiate in my classroom, what separated an A student from a B student or a C student from a D student. And I felt like so much of what I was doing in my room was assessing and grading compliance or obedience. And it didn't feel equitable to me. And so I wanted to find a way I had dabbled a little bit in standards based grading, I wanted to find a way that I could really communicate with students what I thought they knew, and were able to do. And then beyond that, I believe wholeheartedly and I stress this as a mentor, that I think this model really is a driving force behind preventing teacher burnout, there are so many expectations on teachers and what they do in the classroom, how they serve the various needs of their students. And I largely believe that it is nearly impossible using quote unquote, traditional models. And so this model allowed me the flexibility to do some of the other stuff that matters to me. And I felt more effective, and that sort of generated positive feelings. And so we're going to keep this thing going. I'm happy to be mentor and absolutely love the MCP stuff in my room now.

Zach Diamond  3:51  
I love it. I love that idea of well, first of all, the flexibility is amazing. And also I love the idea of like sort of your efficacy, contributing to you not burning out. I agree with that. I feel like a better teacher even though I don't feel like a traditional teacher, you know, but it's like, really it is there is more effective learning happening in my classroom. And I fully agree with that. And just a couple of other unrelated bits and bobs here. Shane Donovan is actually an administrator at my school, DC International School. So I know him very well. And he has been on this podcast, so I'm gonna link those episodes that he was on in the show notes. And also speaking of the show notes, the Edutopia videos, I think they might be our most linked show note in all of the run of this entire bypass. So I will of course dutifully link that as well. So thank you, Jerry. That's, that's a fantastic introduction. And I fully agree with everything you said about modern classrooms. Dan, how about you tell us more about yourself? Well, actually,

Dan Ronchak  4:46  
like my I think it's interesting, Jared that you're talking about teacher burnout because I was actually getting burned out before I was doing the modern classroom also, by the way. Again, my name is Dan Ron check he him pronouns. I was probably about like 10 years into teaching at the point, like right before lockdown and was kind of like, I'm renewing my license right now. And I don't know if I got another five in me, and just kind of just feeling burnt out of that cycle of what you talked about Jared of just like grading and compliance and whatnot. But I did not watch the Edutopia video, I was actually shown MCP when I was working with our technology, integrationist at our school. Hi, Lesley. She showed us the free course and how you're going to do this free course. Because we were trying to build some hybrid courses after lockdown saying like, hey, there's some cool things that happen online. What can we do to integrate neat things that happened online into a more in person classroom. And so we look to the modern classrooms project to see if we could do that. Leslie's gone on to be a meme, MCP mentor and DMC II. Like I haven't gotten my DMC e thing yet, but um, I'm really anxious to get going on getting that like accreditation. But anyway, so I did the free course I really, really liked it. And it really like, I'm pretty sure it's in that free course that, like, once you hear about how this MCP model works, you really can't go back. And I was making it for just one of my classes. But then I just, I was like, No, I want to spread this around. And I want to do it with more of my classes. So over this past summer, I did the virtual mentorship program that helped me like refocus things that I was thinking about over the previous year trying to fill in some of the gaps that I found. And then this year, I've been like rebuilding my calculus course from the ground up in the MCP model. And it's just been really, really fun. It's like, it's hard, but it like, I can really see the value in what I'm doing. So it is hard work that I can see the benefits of so it doesn't lead to burnout, it makes me more excited about what I'm doing as a teacher.

Zach Diamond  7:00  
Yes, that fully resonates with me, it is hard work, especially at the very beginning, when you're learning to make videos and learning to do all this stuff. And it can feel like chaos to like it can feel like sort of, you've lost control. And we always talk about that teachers giving up control in a modern classroom. But as you become more experienced, it's like I love doing this work. I actually enjoy making videos, because I also see the students learning from videos better than they ever learned from me standing up and lecturing. So I fully agree, Dan, like, the work is rewarding, because you see that feedback loop and what you were saying Jared to like you become a more effective teacher that way. And it is more rewarding work planning. And it's also more rewarding when you're standing in the classroom with the kids. So that's wonderful. I love hearing these sorts of stories that just like we all agree on this stuff, right? All right, the model, the model works. Let's let's get into the topic here. So providing effective feedback. This is, I feel like it's a really, really big topic. And I feel like I didn't write any specific to modern classrooms questions in this outline, just because I want to talk about the topic more broadly. I think that that that the monitor classrooms will obviously come up in this discussion, but I just I want to get like, I want to broadly have this conversation about effective feedback, because I also feel like in every classroom, it looks different. So I mean, let's let's dive into it. I, I wrote this first question, thinking we should define what it is that we're talking about. So I just want to ask you both. What is effective feedback? You know, if we're going to be providing it, we should also think about what it is. How do we catch our feedback so that it's actionable for students? How do we make it constructive? And also respectful? How do we make it so that students actually grow when we give them feedback?

Dan Ronchak  8:43  
Right, and I think the key word you've got there is like actionable like that was after my first year of doing the modern classrooms project, there was so much time that kids could act on different things. I would talk to them after taking like a mastery check we call mega tickets. And it's like, okay, I talk to you and then I send them off, but I didn't feel like I was giving them proper feedback, so that they knew what they were supposed to do. So they they would take a mastery check. They didn't achieve mastery, but I didn't tell them what they needed to do in order to reach that mastery. And I really struggled with okay, what what things do I want to talk about, again, hard work, but like work I was really interested in trying to figure out the book I read over the summer, which is called coaching or classroom by Garnet Hillman and many satellites. Stat. Let's Mandy Statler. It's, it's one of those. But the three steps that that book gave me about trying to give feedback that I've really tried to implement to my classroom is making sure that whenever I'm talking to my students that I'm like, Okay, this is what you've got, right? What is your area of strength? This is where we're trying Need to go? And then like, how are you going to get there? What is that action step so that they can really ground themselves in like, oh, this, this is where we're trying to go, here's what you need to do to connect what you know, to where we're trying to go. Like adopting MCP, it's still hard for me to follow these steps all the time. But I've given my best sort of feedback to students when I really focus and follow that model.

Zach Diamond  10:27  
Okay, so it's, what are our strengths? Where are we going? And what's our next step to get there? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's great. And I like that it's one step. Right? You can repeat the process, I guess. But it's like providing the students with an action step. That that's great. And I think that like, it is, it is part of I mean, on a sort of micro level, I do that at the level of a mastery check, right, or even at a smaller level, just like an activity in class, right. And it encourages revision, it's like, when this is not done correctly, you give them a step and encourage, it gives them a sort of framework, a guideline for what to do when they go back into the same work again. And then they grow, right, because they learn what they did wrong. And they learned what to do, right? And then they presumably, hopefully won't make that mistake again. Jared, how about you? How would you define effective feedback?

Jerod Brown  11:22  
I think in my classroom, because it is a language classroom feedback certainly looks a little different than it might in other classrooms, largely because particularly when I'm thinking about speaking and communication, we can say things in multiple ways. And even sometimes when we say things, quote, unquote, incorrectly, people generally still understand what we mean. And within the context, and all of those other sorts of things that can apply in terms of, you know, one on one or open communication between people in language. So I really like to think about feedback in my classroom, if in kind of a matrix the sort of way and I actually sort of stumbled upon this, when I was in my graduate program, taking a PE class for elementary PE, even though that's nowhere near my background. And I stumbled upon this idea of error correction, and or error detection and error correction. And this idea that identifying errors is only part of it, and then the correction and the feedback is the next piece. And at the same time, those two things don't always need to be linked and happen at the exact same time. And I really like to implement that sort of thought process in my classroom and how I communicate to my students, but also, how am I can my students communicate to one another. So there are times that I asked students, or I individually identify in students work or communication errors, and I've simply identified the errors, and there's not a whole lot of correction that actually occurs, or they might hear themselves speak and be like, boy, that didn't sound right coming out. And it's just about identifying errors. And that's all that the feedback is sometimes the in that moment, that didn't sound right, that didn't feel right, whatever it may be. And then sometimes we take a kind of into the extended piece of error correction, which is now sort of what might be a different way to say that, or, or how can you communicate this differently. So when you sort of overlay that overall to the idea of feedback, in my opinion, effective feedback is not always necessarily being the only one to identify the errors, but creating space and opportunities for students to identify errors themselves, that is feedback in itself. And then when they have an opportunity to to identify those errors, that error detection piece, what's the next step in error correction? How does that feedback come? In my opinion, as Dan kind of mentioned, it's actionable, there has to be some sense of growth, redoing, revising, etc, which, of course, are sort of core tenants of this model. And that feedback, in my opinion, becomes continuous. It's a loop it's not an of course that's nothing new or, or transformative to say, but it's not a really a one way street. It's dynamic from me to the students and back and from themselves to one another.

Zach Diamond  14:12  
Yeah, that 100% Makes sense to me. And I would, I would almost like up the ante on what you were saying about how, you know, there are multiple ways to say things in a different language, and people will still understand you even if you get it quote unquote, wrong in a in a music class. People will either enjoy your music or not, but it's right, if you made it. Sure, sure. Right. Like, you get to decide if it's right. And so like when when we talk about error detection in the context of music, I feel like that's, let's it's almost the the best that I can do. Sometimes it's like, I'm not sure you should do it this way. And then I guess there's also correction in the sense of like, you might try doing this. But those are still action steps. And I don't know I like thinking of it in that sense. Like, I teach my students to give each other feedback in that sort of framework of tell them what you think of it, because you are the sort of like a measuring stick by how how this song lands, right. But it's I think it's even, it's even, it's just it's the same concept, but it just puts it in, in clear relief, because the student decides how the song gets to go.

Dan Ronchak  15:19  
And I think yeah, and I think to like you, you want even in a math classroom, a lot of times students, they know what problems wrong they're looking at. I was like, this didn't work out. Where is my error? Can you just point me in my air, and if I could just point at this spot, there's suddenly a lot of action that I don't even have to do right here, something has gone wrong. Immediately a student is going to think, what do I need? What did I do wrong here? Oh, they're interested in what they're thinking of what error they made. And they want to correct that error. Without me even saying other than look right here. What can you do?

Zach Diamond  15:52  
Yeah, I can totally imagine that I can totally imagine, like, on a difficult math problem, like with several lines of math happening, right, just a single error can throw off the final answer. And so if you could just show it to them, it's actually a really simple example of that. Well, that's an interesting transition, then, because it's my next question. Like, I wanted to ask you both what you think goes into designing a task in order to give effective feedback when the students complete the task? And I guess my thinking on this was sort of like a multiple choice question. It does the error correction and the error detection kind of at the same time, especially a true false question, right? Because by getting the wrong answer, you also get the right answer. And I don't think that's particularly effective in terms of feedback. It's just saying, you just get pick the other one and get it right, we don't actually expand on the learning there. And so my question is, like, how do we design those tasks where students have a process where they have a product, where they have something that we can provide feedback on? How would you design a task to be conducive to effective feedback,

Jerod Brown  16:55  
I like to, in my Spanish class, at least really think about these things in sort of nonlinear or non traditional ways. Because if it forces me to be creative, in this sort of assessment piece, or in this not necessarily assessment in determining of summative sort of idea, but in formative assessments, the tasks I'm asking students to do when I think about these things, nonlinear linearly, Daniel have to correct me if that math language, there is totally off. 

Dan Ronchak  17:25  
I'm really interested to see what you've got to say about your nonlinear thinking,

Jerod Brown  17:29  
there we go my nonlinear thinking, there we go. So I like to, you know, as opposed to instruction, practice activity, feedback on what you did wrong, do it again, sometimes I will just get students right into some sort of practice activity that oftentimes might be sort of stretching them beyond what I know that their capabilities are relative to the content, or what we've sort of, you know, quote unquote, got in. And then the feedback comes in the form of the first explicit instruction, so not the reteaching, or the reintroducing topics, but rather ongoing, I can see that you recognize a need for this new piece of language, you don't know what it is quite yet. We haven't been introduced to it to you haven't been introduced to it. And so now, I'm going to do that as part of this feedback on this piece that you're working on. And, of course, early in my career, it was a lot of that, you know, for the purposes of quick grading, it was true false type stuff, it was multiple choice type stuff. And now I've just tried to expand on those ideas as much as I can. So sometimes when it's needs to be quick and easy, maybe it's all of these sentences are false, fix them. And there's a little bit more work that goes into that. But I think designing tasks that can create the conversations you want to have with students, in my opinion, is much like sort of coaching that you might do with a sports team or coaching that you might do as an instructional coach, where you sort of have a preset idea of where this conversation needs to get to. And you're going to create the path in the in the sort of framework for it to get there. It's almost like UDL for a conversation as opposed to, you know, a lesson sequence.

Zach Diamond  19:11  
Yeah. And it's like backwards is designed to write like, you know, what specific objective we're going for. And you design the test to get the students into that sort of context. Right. Can Can you I'm putting you on the spot here, Jerry, but could you give me an example of what one one of those tests might look like?

Jerod Brown  19:27  
Yeah, absolutely. So I had some students in my classroom, the other day, we began a hospitality project. So for sort of the context of my space, it's a Spanish to classroom, students generally can speak in the present tense, they can speak in sort of the immediate past tense. And we're moving into a little bit of the subjunctive, which is the like uncertainty multiple clauses and things. And so they are working in hospitality teams serving as the Travel and Tourism boards of different countries, and it's a fairly long project where they are Korea any marketing slogans and, you know, brochures, if you will, websites, etc, to encourage staff on campus, why they should spend their summers in these places. So some of that is the tech aspect. But in terms of the language aspect, a lot of students are coming to me, because I sort of purposefully created that this is not this is not where you went or where you're currently at, which is a lot of what you know, the sort of early language levels are, but rather, we're trying to convince some staff to go to these places. So this is sort of an extended language piece here related to the subjunctive have, like some doubt and uncertainty there. And students hadn't had that quite yet. So as they started to go through this project, they realized that they needed that. So the feedback became a little bit of instruction there. And then now as they move into their different pieces, as these tourism teams, kind of open dialogue about how the language might change, in even in a small piece of writing, from what they're recommending somebody does versus showing off their country, which could be in the exact same paragraph for English, or in English as an example, we recommend that you come to Guatemala to discover all of our beautiful mountains, here in Guatemala, we take hikes in the forest, or whatever it may be. And sort of there's some different language tenses in there that are unique and challenging.

Zach Diamond  21:35  
Sure, and I liked the way you described it, because it's like, they up they discovered that challenge on their own. And then there was a need for the feedback. So they asked you for it. Maybe they made errors. But then they asked you for help. Right? So it's like, you're right. It's like a loop. It's like we discover that we need this, we asked for the help we get the feedback. And and I think that that's just a really, really that's a really cool. That's a really cool assignment I actually did. I used to teach English as a second language when I lived in Peru. And I did a very similar assignment where I had the students invent a country and make a little brochure for it. So that's, that's very cool. Dan, I feel like your perspective on this is going to be very different. As a math teacher, so go, go ahead.

Dan Ronchak  22:16  
Well, I'll approve of your nonlinear learning path, Jerod. So you got you got a nice math stamp of approval there. Yeah, cuz math, like a lot of times becomes very binary, like, you feel like you either definitely got the right answer, or you definitely didn't. And there's a lot of wiggle room that actually happens in between there. So a lot of the stuff that you're talking about in terms of language in terms of music, I still think can apply to a math classroom. I think kind of like what you're talking about Jerod, I feel that if a student needs that in the moment, immediate feedback, then yeah, multiple choice, short answer, short answer that I'll auto graded. I really like for my students, because I don't Oh, live in their house. And so like if they're working late at night, and they want to know if they got that answer, correct. I want them to know that they got that answer correct. So they can feel confident to move to the next question. Or if they didn't get it correct. Make sure that they're not practicing bad habits that they have to unlearn later. So that they can find that moment of discovery of like, oh, I need to study a little bit more about fractions, even though right now we're talking about radians, because I'm trying to put these fractions together. But if I had taught them about fractions first, then they might not have listened to me until it was time to put these radian measures together. Something else I do, like when I'm trying to give them more like detailed feedback, because, and I think you've kind of talked a little bit about this, Jerod, you're trying to be mindful about like, when you're giving them that feedback, and that feedback is coming in the moment that they need it the most. And so I really make sure that the feedback that the really deep verbal feedback that I give with students that I'm really trying to make sure I've got that strength, I've got that goal they're going to and how they're going to get there on their exit tickets, their mastery checks, that those are more open ended questions, so I can really start picking through their learning and making sure okay, this is where your strengths are inside of this problem. Even if we didn't get the right answer. You got everything right. There was just one thing that you missed at the beginning. But hey, guess what, that's not related to our learning objective. So that's okay, that you missed that thing. So let's focus on our learning objective. And by the way, you should make sure you're thinking about, hey, might we want to go back and look at fractions. I actually just gave my favorite test of the year. It's an oral exam, where we get to talk this language of radians with each other. And my favorite part about it is I can really see like what have my students learned in that chapter? Because I get to really talk to them and I get to in that moment, as they're saying their questions is like say, Hey, why? Why are you thinking that? Where are you getting that? What are you thinking about right now? Because I want to know what you have learned. And having that language of learning, I think is really important in the feedback that I give students, because if I'm not talking about their learning and talking more about like, Oh, you didn't do this assignment, it's going back to that compliance thing that leads to teacher burnout. And I want to be talking about what these kids are learning in my class.

Zach Diamond  25:27  
Yeah. And I think also like, those convert, this is going to start to come up and my next question for you. So I'll put a pin in this. But I think it's very interesting to talk about that. Because those conversations will be different with each student, you can really tailor your feedback to what each student needs. But I was really interested to hear what you had to say about that creative and open ended piece too, because like, I have the student right now she's in my class. She's been on this. For the past couple of weeks, she's been kind of struggling with her project. And she keeps saying, Mr. Diamond, I just want there to be a right answer it, this is an eighth grader. And so she's I don't know what her math class is, like, relative to, you know, your math class. And but like, it's, it's just like, I like hearing that from a math teacher. It's not always so binary, there's not always right and wrong. Because if you get the wrong answer, there's a reason that you got the wrong answer. It might be that you forgot to use fractions in a certain way. Or it might be that you don't understand the concept of radians, it might there's there's pieces that go into this right into getting the right answer. And I'm putting quotes around the right answer. Yeah. And so your feedback has to be targeted, right, to the specific needs of each individual student. And so that's, that's really cool. And I also I, I want my students in my because I teach the class that I teach, I want my students to approach learning that way. Like, there's almost never a single right answer. I don't know, like, as a math teacher, maybe you don't agree with me? I think that like, there's there's always different ways to the right answer. And there's almost never a singular right answer. It depends on the context. You know, I always tell my students like, well, what if you were doing it in phase two, when they're doing their math problems, when they say, well, two plus two is always four. And I'm like, on base two, right? And so like, it's just, it's never so simple as it's right or it's wrong. And so I love this idea of like, picking apart the process to find the place where the feedback is needed. Let's, let's talk about that. Let's talk about targeting our feedback a little bit more. What I wrote in The question is, how do we provide feedback on a more informal basis, right, like, sort of just in class, as we're walking around talking with students, I think this is probably where modern classrooms and the model will start to come into the discussion a little bit, because we do have a lot of time and freedom to move around the room and check in with students who we know need help, because they're behind, then we can see that on our tracker, right? So we can sit down with them for a little bit more time and say, Okay, let's look at your let's look at your work and see what's going on here. And really target our feedback in more informal and verbal, discussion based ways. How would you to describe that in your modern classrooms, the way that you provide informal, discussion based feedback to your students as they need it in the areas where they need it.

Dan Ronchak  28:13  
I think especially at this time of year, like on Friday is the last day that we've got before spring break. And so right now, everybody, me the students, we are tired, and we just want it to be spring break right now. We cannot wait three more days to get there. It needs to be now. So like, a lot of my job, I feel in giving feedback to my students at this point is the cheerleader like, Yes, I know you're tired, I'm tired. We're all tired. But if we can't just like waste these days, we got to make sure that we're still moving forward. And we're still making progress on that tracker. So like having those informal conversations are most of the feedback that I'm giving to students right now. It's just like, Yeah, I know you, like are worried about like, Oh, am I really ready to take that mastery check? I'm not sure it's like, well, you know what, let's just take it. Because if you take it, I'm gonna see what you're thinking. I'm going to know what you're thinking. And I can tell you exactly what you need to practice before you're really ready to take that mastery check. So let's just take it more exploratory for once. Even if we don't find we're ready. And who knows, maybe you'll take it and you'll actually show you do know it. And you just didn't have that confidence. Just because we're so tired at this point right now.

Jerod Brown  29:34  
Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, I think most people that listen to this podcast are either familiar with the model because they're implementing it or they're really considering it. I think that, you know, this is perhaps a shameless plug for the model but in relation to designing assessments or designing practice activities to create feedback, really, I think this model and designing the classrooms structure and logistical flow of your classroom is how you design a process of feedback. And so this is really in my opinion, like the bread and butter of this model. And and the primary value, I think, for most of my career feedback was one direction, and it was limited and usually couldn't be expanded upon. And it sort of needed to be quick. And if the student could couldn't comprehend it in the way that I was saying it, then we just don't know how to move on. Yeah, whereas the model now provides the flexibility to have varying levels of conversation with your varying students and their various needs. And that's really my favorite piece that there's just more time and there's more space for me to have important conversations with students that can be as short and brief as they need to be or can be expanded on a little bit, we can try to, you know, push the content forward, expand in an immediate sense, how would you apply this moving forward, etc. So that's the first piece that just a plug for the model that I really believe wholeheartedly that this model creates the space to do this sort of stuff to have these informal, but more frequent feedback conversations with students. And then in a more formal sense, when students take summative assessments in my class, which some people might know as unit tests, or whatever it may be, I actually on the backside of their, their pacing tracker, they turn into me a unit reflection, and some of the standard questions that I asked are, what lesson was the hardest for you? Why, what was the easiest? Why? What habits of learning or reflection and revision Are you proud of what would you change moving forward? And I tried to provide feedback on that. So that doesn't come in the form of written feedback. But I will try to meet with students at least twice a semester. So they get those back when they receive their tests back. And then twice a semester, I'll just call them up when we've got some time to have an even more expanded conversation about, you know, hey, I noticed that in unit two, you felt like this. And unit three, you felt like this? Can we talk about the change? What was working or what wasn't? What was going on for you at that point? How are you doing now. And I think it's part of that, that dialogue that is continuous, that is not top down. That's not only when things are incorrect, but it's that we're sort of creating the space through the model to have conversations that feel they're much lower stakes for students. And as a result, they're more willing to be reflective about their work as it relates to the content, but also their performance as a student in the classroom.

Dan Ronchak  32:41  
Well, and to like, because you're having so many of those, like small, informal interactions with students, I'm also finding that my students feel more comfortable with me, as opposed to teaching a more traditional model where I was standing up talking to my entire class at the same time, there's very few times that I was able to have that small one on one conversation with students, I'm having a one on one conversation with students, maybe not a very long one, almost every day now. So they have way more opportunities to be more open and honest with me about their experience of learning about what they're going through, that these more formal feedback sessions really helped them open up and be more honest with me too.

Zach Diamond  33:22  
Yeah, I completely agree with everything that both of you said. And I think Jerod, you nailed it. In saying that this is the bread and butter of a modern classroom, I feel like there's no shame in plugging modern classrooms here at all. It's not a shameless plug, it's a plug like this is the reason that modern classrooms is so incredible, because we can take 356 10 minutes to sit down with a student and talk to them, you know, that conversation will change. That same student on a Monday will have a different conversation with you on a Thursday, that same student may need one thing while another student needs something else. And, you know, it's fine to get up and say it looks like a lot of students are doing or making the same error, right? Like, a lot of you were forgetting to use fractions to use Dan's example, or whatever the case may be, right? That's fine to do like a full class reset. But when every individual student can have that back and forth with you, I think that that it almost goes beyond feedback and my understanding of what feedback is, it's a conversation. It's like, we're going to we're going to learn what you need, and we're going to give it to you. And in that process together. We're going to construct your knowledge and fill the gaps and figure out what what you need to be successful on this mastery check. Yeah, 100% 100% Well said

Dan Ronchak  34:41  
Zach got excited. Jerod, you got us both real excited here.

Zach Diamond  34:46  
Thank you. I mean, I, I I feel that way, right. So it's not hard for me to say it. It's just it just the way that it is teaching in a modern classroom, so I appreciate it. But I feel like we all feel the same way. We all agree on this. So folks, we're gonna go to the break. And here's an announcement for you. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about providing feedback in a modern classroom.

Toni Rose Deanon  35:10  
Hey, listeners, it's Toni Rose here with some announcements and reminders. If you and or your teacher bestie are interested in the virtual mentorship program, we do have scholarships available, make sure to check out modernclassrooms.org/scholarships. We have regional scholarships available for educators in Baltimore City, New York City, DC, Chicago, Tulsa County and the Twin Cities that include full tuition, a year of implementation support and a $500 stipend for finishing the program. We are continuing our scholarship across the state of Indiana, which includes implementation support, and 30 PGPs. Any educator in the state can enroll right now, at modernclassrooms.org/indiana. We also have partnerships with districts across the country who are paying for educators to go through our training. As for professional learning, make sure to check out our webinars page on modernclassrooms.org/webinars. And to connect with our community, join our Twitter chat on the first Wednesday of the month and our virtual meetup on the second Wednesday of the month. Both are at 7pm Eastern Time, and we hope to connect with you outside of our podcast.

Zach Diamond  36:14  
Alright, folks, we're back with Jerod and Dan. And we're going to talk some more about providing feedback. And I'd like to get into the specifics a little bit more now. And talk about the modalities of feedback that you both provide. And by that I mean, you know, do you predominantly give written feedback, verbal feedback, we talked about conversations, we talked about auto correcting tests, things like that. You know, what types of feedback do provide to your students and go ahead and get specific on this one, because I would love to hear how these things actually work in your classrooms.

Dan Ronchak  36:46  
Yeah, so like giving this verbal feedback, I've likened it to dessert, and whatnot, like the vegetables is like, oh, running my classroom, taking attendance and whatnot. But like giving this verbal feedback, for me has been really, really fun. And it distracts me from a lot of my other teacher duties. I have that problem, too, right. So it's just like, I just want to like talk to people like whenever I can. So in fact, actually, when I'm grading mastery checks, I often just write little notes. So that when I actually give students feedback that I am just like looking at those notes, so I can make sure that conversation goes quickly. Because at that point, a student has already been waiting, we haven't every other day schedule, they've been waiting, like two days to get that feedback. So I really want to make sure that right away at the beginning of class, I can really quickly say, Hey, this is what happened. Here are your strengths. Here's our learning objective. And then here are your next steps. When I'm giving them that feedback. On the bottom of all of my exit tickets, I have like three categories system. Because like we were talking about Jerod, I also want to make sure that my students are reflecting. And so I have them score themselves at the bottom of every mastery check. And so I want to know, to what level do they feel like they understand the material like, do you? Can you just come up with an answer, but you're not sure why that answer? Is there. If you really understand why then do you really understand what's going on? Can you apply it? I don't know, I move these numbers around. And I can really just like write out stuff, no problem, then you can apply the math, but you might not necessarily understand the why behind it. The goal is you can do both. And then finally is like can you really clearly identify what you're writing? Is your work all over the page? Or is it really neat and orderly so that anybody could look at that and understand what's going on. So I might talk to a student and say, Hey, I'm looking at your work, you very clearly written out everything, you've applied a lot of the skills that we have been working on. But one of the major things that we care about, let's just keep talking radians because that's my current chapter. In this language of radians, we really want to make sure that you understand why does this negative need to show up in front of cosine? And then we can say, all right, well, we need to identify the quadrant that cosine is going to be in. So what I want you to look at is how do we structure and inequality so we can understand what quadrant cosine needs to be in and go back through your notes. Try to find some examples. And I want you to go to your check for accuracy. Practice a little bit and then we're going to do this exit ticket again.

Zach Diamond  39:29  
Okay, so that is predominantly verbal,

Dan Ronchak  39:31  
all verbal. I just said that all to their face.

Zach Diamond  39:35  
Do you give them written feedback as well? Yeah,

Dan Ronchak  39:38  
I do written feedback on their tests. One of the things that I've been doing with written feedback this year is I've removed the scores from my tests so they can see how many points things are worth and I do score them. But the feedback I'm giving them written on their tests, is all just written out. And I wanted students to avoid the conversation of What score did I get in more have a conversation of what have I learned? What do I still need to learn? And by removing the scores, that's what they do. It was something I did by accident because I was scrambling to get them their tests back quickly. And then immediately I saw, Oh my gosh, they're not talking about their score. They're talking about my feedback. I need to keep doing this.

Zach Diamond  40:21  
That's amazing. I mean, they have to talk about something, right. So they always want to compare each other's grades. But in this case, they don't have the grades. So they just like, well, what feedback did you get? I don't know. I'm guessing. But that sounds awesome. That sounds awesome. Jerry, what about you,

Jerod Brown  40:36  
I do a couple different things. And of course, I don't know that any of this is earth shattering. One of the things that I do really like to do in my class is, every once in a while, I'll actually pause on giving feedback for like almost an entire week. And it just sort of let students work. And of course, if there's like major gaps in understanding, then I'm going to pause and work individually with those students. But if I can see common errors popping up, then I actually won't address them in the moment. And instead, we have kind of an a block schedule. But Mondays we have a shorter, shorter period for all of our classes. And so I'll take like 10 to 15 minutes on a Monday and kind of mini lecture to my whole whole class. But it's almost it's not almost it is never new content. And it is instead, hey, I'm seeing some really common errors of this, this. And this just sort of letting everybody know, generally, you know what the feedback there is one thing that I really enjoy doing in my class, and I would encourage teachers to do more of this, if they can find the capacity, is I highlight errors on exams quite a bit. I don't exactly say what the error is. And I don't think that that's necessarily groundbreaking. But on exams, even for students that are really struggling with content, I actually try to be really explicit about highlighting and naming the good things they're doing. And so I will circle things I'm finding that are strong, even if their task was to write an entire sentence. And it's very clear that they're struggling to do that, I might highlight of the contextual information that they put in the sentence and say, Boy, this is really strong context of the sentence, even if the subject and verb that they put in, didn't agree or something was wrong there. And they're going to figure that piece out as well. But particularly in a language classroom, I also think it's important to show students where they're using language well, so that they keep using it and keep repeating it very similarly, I see it very similarly to like teaching little children how to speak. For example, I have a two year old and if she says, you know, we're outside and she says, Oh, the birdie flute away or flight away, I might repeat it back to her and say, Oh, the birdie flew away. And instead of sort of just immediately saying, Oh, it's not flight, it's flu, or, you know, you're just sort of modeling that language back to them. And trying to repeat some of those things that she's She did really well, you know, the birdie and away and we're just going to kind of redirect that verb usage. So I do that similarly, with high school students on a little bit more written basis of sort of scouring their exams, that's not an every time thing. And that's not an every question thing. But I try to give those back to students with three or four places, that they're really doing things well, so that, you know, they're sort of it's not always don't do this, do this instead, but rather, this is really strong, continue to do more of this.

Zach Diamond  43:22  
No, I love that. I love the idea of non corrective feedback of just like, yeah, of almost reframing the idea of feedback for students, like this person who is my teacher is not going to always tell me that I'm doing it wrong. They're gonna, you know, they're just here to help me improve. And they're here to give me that validation when I do something, right. Yeah, I love that. It's like a very human relationship. It's not like, there's not that like red circle on my on my subjunctive that I conjugated wrong, or, you know, my, my radians that or I put the negative and the cosine, whatever it was, Dan, I don't know. If

Dan Ronchak  43:57  
you're going to hear any sort of feedback, a person is going to hear any sort of feedback better if they get some positive feedback first,

Zach Diamond  44:06  
fully. Yes. Yeah. In my case, I would say it's almost all verbal. But I have a little anecdote. I remember during the COVID year, I started the COVID year where I taught my class fully on Zoom, right? Like I, I started, so what I would normally do is grade ninth grade, but revise my students mastery checks in the Google Classroom grading tool, and I grade them out of one. So it's either a zero or a one either mastered or revised, right, and students who got to zero this is before COVID. In my class, I would just type in a little comments box, I would type please see me to revise in class or whatever. And then during the COVID year I started because I would almost never see my students. It was really hard to check in with them. I started actually writing unit to try doing this in this in this in the box and I asked my students, which do you like better do would you rather have a reminder to join a breakout room with me? Or do you want to just have the feedback in there and like universally, they all said we want the feedback. We want you to write what to do in the comment. And so I do now I do that, unless it's a really little thing, and I'm just like we need to talk. Or maybe if it's a really big thing, also, I might be like, we need to talk. So just see me in class. And that's the extent of my version of my written feedback. But But I do think that they appreciate the written feedback, because that experience showed me like they all said that. So speaking of the Google Classroom grading tool, my next question for both of you is about the specific tools that you use for feedback, if any. I like I mentioned, I use that Google Classroom grading tool, and I now use the comments quite extensively. I think it's more work to write the specific feedback in there. But I think it's worth it because they want it and it does help them to fix it without demanding so much of me in person. So I do that that comment bank is really cool. There's another tool that they that my school rolled out to us called moat. And know if you guys have seen moat, it's like a, it lets you record voice snippets instead of leaving written comments. That's a cool one, I'll drop in the show notes. But do you have any specific tools that you use for providing feedback that you could share?

Jerod Brown  46:09  
I think in my classroom, the primary tool that I like to use the sort of non traditional or that differs from some of the things that you've already mentioned, is my pacing tracker. And I will be honest, the first year that I rolled out the modern classrooms project model in my classroom, I was really concerned about this. And I, a lot of it had to do with some of my own negative beliefs and my own previous experiences as a student. And so I wasn't ready to frame the conversation like it needed to be. And fortunately, just through kind of my own individual work within the model, that belief system changed. And so when I started to roll out the pacing tracker, in my classroom, some of the best conversations and the best opportunities for me to provide feedback is directly related to the tracker and how I use it, how we display it overall, for our full the entire class to see but also my ability to go around to students while they're doing sort of our daily check in and use that time. And the tracker that they see as a tool to talk about what's working or what's not working. And I know that's not necessarily a tool related to tech or anything that's particularly flashy. But I think that when we can, as teachers rolling out the model, reframe the tracker, or really use the tracker as an opportunity to connect to students, as opposed to an opportunity to show students where they're right or wrong, then it becomes a powerful tool for leveraging what's working or not working, and how we can move them forward, how they can move themselves forward, who they can work with to move forward, all of those sort of secondary conversations and beliefs that can come from the tracker, once we sort of get past the surface level, who's good, who's bad sort of a belief system that can that can follow that. So that is my primary tool that I use, aside from Google classrooms that EdPuzzle feedback that can be provided in that regard.

Zach Diamond  48:08  
Yeah, sure. And I think that it gets it a type of feedback, that is that sort of transcends the content also, right, like feedback in a much broader way. on sort of how the students are doing, right, those those more meta skills, those, you know, self management skills, so that that's great. Dan, how about you.

Dan Ronchak  48:28  
So I definitely agree that making sure that you're using that tracker as a way to give feedback, I have in my tracker, I everybody actually has an individualized tracker. So there's one page that is the same for everybody. But then they all have a separate tab. And in that separate tab, I can actually send them little messages. As I'm grading. I haven't used it a whole lot, but I can send them messages. And inside of that tracker, it has a more detailed breakdown, just like a checklist of all the things that are going on inside of the unit so they can see everything. I'm really excited about it. Because once that one column says self check, and my name is Ron, check, the other column says Ron check. And so you can see the Self Check versus Ron check, like, what do I have? Because a lot of times it gets rid of a lot of the conversations, Hey, did you get that thing? It's like, Well, did you check the run check column, it's like, if it's there, I got it, don't worry about it. So, but I liked that message feature. And I also liked that moat thing, because it's nice to be able to have a verbal way to give feedback outside of the classroom. Because I always worry whenever I type an email that it is not going to be clear, and my tone might come off wrong. So I liked the idea of trying to incorporate some sort of audio recording because we all make videos, so why not just record a quick video for a student and send that off to him. It doesn't take much longer than me writing an email.

Zach Diamond  49:50  
What a good idea. That's such a good idea to I didn't even think of that. Yeah, and like with something like Screencastify where you could just quickly make that and send off the link right then in there. That's fantastic. I love that idea. Man. This has been fantastic, great ideas. And what a fantastic discussion. This has been great. How can our listeners connect with both of you?

Jerod Brown  50:12  
You can if you'd like to, you can find me on Twitter. I'm @JerodBrown_. That's J E R O D. Brown underscore at Jerod Brown underscore, DM me there. And then I'm happy to send over my personal email address. I'm happy to share anything I've built or support anybody that's interested in the model. And of course, expand on any of these conversations. I appreciate you having us, Zach, this is fantastic. And Dan, great. chatting with you and hearing a little bit about what you do.

Dan Ronchak  50:42  
Yeah, it's been great hearing from you too Jerod. If you'd like to contact me, I am ronchakd@colheights.k12.mn.us. It's a lovely long email address.

Zach Diamond  50:59  
Don't worry, folks. I'll have that one in the show notes. This has been fantastic. Thank you both so much for joining me, listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/133. We will have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the Modern Classrooms blog on Friday. So be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. And of course, thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. 

Zach Diamond  51:39  
Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @modernclassproj that's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.