Student Learning Objective & Action Research Project

The McGuffey High School like any other Pennsylvania School is required to have their students take the Keystone Tests. Looking at previous years of results, students at McGuffey High School have low percentage points in their literature and vocabulary skills. To improve this, I have helped create an action plan.

The Problem:

The main problem is that students have difficulty expressing conceptual knowledge on assessment components that require written expression. So the main problem is that we are not building the learning capacities of students to express their content knowledge in varying formats consistently and according to defined strategies.

Instructional Strategies:

- Post, review and utilize Keystone Assessment Rubrics and other common rubrics in courses. 

- Increase the exposure of students to assessment items that require students to express their content knowledge by utilizing written expression. 

- The High School Faculty will engage in a consistent student conferencing process with students that transfers ownership of the learning process to students, they will also incorporate academic coaching strategies to increase the students understanding of their personal achievement needs with an emphasis on written expression.

McGuffey High School Writing Initiative Teacher Conferencing and Feedback Strategies:

One method for increasing student academic achievement in your course is providing students with quality feedback on their performance in ways that are positive and encouraging. All students come to school wanting to do well, but some struggle partly due to the inability to connect to the content, to the teacher, or to both at a personal level. If we invest in student conferencing, our school can tap into something that is powerful, personal, and at the heart of our profession as educators. It is as much a part of the solution as the writing itself because it unleashes two of this faculty’s greatest strengths, our ability to communicate and the care we have for every student. We know if students write more, their writing will steadily improve, but if we invest the time to do conferencing, I believe we can tap into something that is transformational. Effective student conferencing is not easy, but when done well it can provide a great opportunity for you to clarify your learning expectations, provided specific feedback, and remind them that we are “all in” for their success.

A few facts about student conferencing and feedback to maximize the time you spend conferencing based on How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students by Susan Brookhart (2008).

1-    The major benefit of student conferencing is that it provides the teacher an opportunity to give personal feedback to the student on their performance.

2-    Feedback is an important component of formative assessment.

3-    Good feedback impacts more than the cognitive understanding of the student on the activity, it also impacts their motivation to improve.

4-   Feedback is more than a review of the grade on the activity; it requires a discussion on specific ways in which a student can improve their performance on the next learning opportunity.

5-   Feedback builds first on the positives of the student performance and then transitions into specific strategies students can use to improve their performance.

6-    Good feedback is clear and specific.

7-    Good feedback builds the capacity of students to become self-regulated learners.

8-    Providing good student feedback is a skill that requires practice.

9-    It is essential that students can describe your expected outcome for the activity to you, if they can’t this is a good place to begin the discussion.

1- Feedback should be self-referenced, meaning that you are comparing the student’s performance against their own past performance instead of the class as a whole.

1- Comment on one or two points and suggest small steps for improvement. Use simple vocabulary and check for understanding of content-related terms.