BONUS: Coaching, Teaching, & Classroom Management Strategies Sparked From My Conversation with Tyler Rablin (❤️Olivia Wahl)

In this bonus episode, I delve deeper into transformative approaches to feedback and assessment in education. Building on my conversation with Tyler Rablin (S4E13), I share crucial insights from my recent experiences coaching middle school teachers and explore why less is often more when it comes to student feedback. I challenge traditional notions of mastery-based assessment, advocating instead for a growth-focused approach that recognizes each student's unique learning journey.

Drawing from respected educational research and my hands-on coaching experience, l discuss why formative assessment should be viewed as an ongoing action rather than a mere task. I explore practical strategies for making feedback more meaningful and share a powerful story about co-teaching and student self-assessment.

Whether you're an educator, administrator, or caregiver, this episode offers valuable perspectives on creating more effective and student-centered assessment practices.

Key topics:

👉The optimal amount of feedback students can effectively use

👉Rethinking formative assessment as a verb rather than a noun

👉The importance of prioritizing growth over mastery

👉Practical strategies for implementing student-driven assessment

👉Real-world examples of effective co-teaching and feedback models

Episode Mentions:

➡️Angela Stockman’s blog post: 10 things you don’t know about formative assessment

➡️S2 E6: No More "Point-Less" Grading Systems with Dr. Sarah M. Zerwin

➡️Sarah Zerwin’s book: Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading

➡️Eva Keiffenheim’s The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read

#FormativeAssessment #tudentFeedback #TeacherCoaching #GrowthMindset #StudentCenteredLearning #EdChat #TeacherPodcast #FormativeAssessment #StudentFeedback #TeacherCoaching #MiddleSchoolTeaching #GrowthMindset #StudentGrowth #CoTeaching #EducationalLeadership #TeachingStrategies #StudentCenteredLearning #ProfessionalLearning #AssessmentPractices #TeacherTips #EducationInnovation #SchoolLeadership #KidsDeserveIt

When teachers, coaches, administrators, and families grow together, they create schools where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged, supported, and ready to thrive.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Olivia: Hi there. I'm so happy you're here. Your time is precious. And because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this episode. My conversation with Tyler Rablin offered you strategies to transform your feedback and assessment. If you have not listened to that episode, please take a moment.

[00:00:21] Olivia: It's season four, episode 13. It's incredible. In this bonus episode, I offer my insights after serving middle school teachers this week and reflecting on all of the different research and readings I go back to time and time again around feedback and assessment. I share why less is often more with feedback, why formative assessment should be viewed as an ongoing action rather than just a task, and why growth should be prioritized over mastery.

[00:00:53] Olivia: Stay with me. I am so happy to have you as a listener today. This is Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom, a show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive.

[00:01:17] Olivia: I am Olivia Wahl, and I am so happy to have you here for this bonus episode. I had the privilege of interviewing Tyler Rablin, and it's season three, episode 13. I will put a link in the show notes. If you have not listened to that conversation, please pause this and tune in to Tyler's amazing work with Hacking Student Motivation.

[00:01:41] Olivia: And what I want to focus on today is something that really lingered with me. We had this conversation way back in June, and I watched the episode, edited the episode, and every time I listen to it, I think so much about something Tyler said when it comes to feedback. And it's around minute 27 in our conversation.

[00:02:08] Olivia: And he actually says, “the most encouraging research I ever read is one that looked at how much feedback can students even use. They said that the maximum length of a full-length essay is about only three comments.” And he goes on to say, so to him, “that means only really two, two pieces of really pointed specific feedback are what would be helpful to a student.”

[00:02:35] Olivia: And I think about all of the teachers that I serve spending hours offering feedback to students, and I wonder how much of that feedback is actually applied and used and appreciated by students? So as I was working with middle school teachers and this week as a coach, a couple of big ideas were bouncing around in my mind, yes, the idea of feedback, but also self-assessment and students being drivers of their own learning and really being clear around their own targets.

[00:03:16] Olivia: And I started to pay very close attention to formative assessment that was happening in the classrooms I was in. And it reminded me of an incredible article I read a long time ago, um, it came out in 2015, it's by Angela Stockman, and it's called 10 Things You Don't Know About Formative Assessment. This has been my go to piece for a long time.

[00:03:39] Olivia: I'll make sure to tuck a link to it in the show notes. And there are 10, obviously, things that you may not know about formative assessment. I'm going to just name a few of them that I remind myself of over and over. Number one, I'll, I'll, I'll read you the opening quote, “Assessments come in varied forms, and they're executed for all different purposes. While summative assessments attempt to measure mastery at the end of a learning experience, the best formative assessments illuminate the strengths and needs of learners throughout the experience. Enabling teachers to respond in ways that are just right and just in time. Ready to ramp up your practice? Consider these little-known facts about formative assessment.” They are all amazing, I will just say that. The first fact is, “formative assessment is a verb, not a noun.” And Angela explains, “it's an action performed throughout the learning experience, not some thing that students are given to complete at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of it.”

[00:04:46] Olivia: And I think so often about years ago when I was in a classroom, I would do a pre and a post and even a mid-assessment. And it wasn't always showing me the growth. Enough that the students, um, were making because I wasn't clear on the targets. That was something that the second point makes: “What matters is their assessment and your assessment, not the assessment.”

[00:05:15] Olivia: So take that in, in that same second point, she says, “What matters most with formative assessment is our assessment of growth and why it is or isn't happening.” Okay. This, for me, ties directly to the PLC at Work process. Critical question three, critical question four: both of them speak to what do we do when students are not learning or growing in the way we need them to.

[00:05:47] Olivia: And the fourth question is, what do we do for students that already have the knowledge and we need to push or enrich in that way? So. I think those first two pieces and facts are fascinating and just good reminders. And now I'm jumping down to number six. Again, all ten are incredible facts you'll see when you read.

[00:06:09] Olivia: And now I'm jumping down to number six because I think this is at the core of everything I believe about formative assessment. “Formative assessment will make your students your very best teachers. Over the last few years, I've, (meaning Angela), I've learned how to presume competence and just let kids try the hard stuff.”

[00:06:31] Olivia: Over the last few years, I've continued to see a pattern and a need for cross-grade level articulation. And what I mean by cross-grade level I mean that middle and high school teachers need to be getting into elementary classrooms. I see kindergartners, 1st graders, 2nd graders, 3rd, 4th, 5th graders, reading for 20 minutes completely enveloped by their books, writing for 30 minutes, 45 minutes at a time.

[00:07:10] Olivia: And yet, when I ask middle and high school teachers often how long they believe students are able to read without distraction and really be focused, often the answer is 10 minutes or less. And I think part of that is as kids get older, we are putting devices in their hands that enhance distraction and that need for a dopamine fix that a book is, as one of my colleagues, Jennifer McCarty Plucker says, it's a slow drip.

[00:07:44] Olivia: Reading is a slow drip of dopamine versus that scanning of the social platforms. I also just think of the idea of how are we assuming or presuming competence? We need to stop always planning for students not being able to do a task and flip it and say, again: What do students need to learn? How will we know they're learning it?

[00:08:15] Olivia: And yes, What will we do for students that are not showing growth the way we want? And how will we push kids that already have the knowledge? That is a much more efficient way. So formative assessment can help us do that. The other book I lean on and revisit over and over and over is Sarah Zerwin's book called Point-Less: An English Teacher's Guide to More Meaningful Grading.

[00:08:41] Olivia: I had the privilege of interviewing Sarah about this book, and I will put a link to that interview in the show notes as well. But I'm jumping to chapter six, and this chapter, um, the opening: Invite students to set goals and reflect on their growth. And she speaks to, you know, when you're going to start an exercise routine, your goal is to see results, to see growth and progress.

[00:09:06] Olivia: It's never really the idea of mastery, like what would it mean to master something physically? It's that idea of just that process. And then in this chapter, Sarah goes on to explain why that idea of mastery is often at odds with the idea of growth and what students really need. She says, “In years that I've worked to find a different path to grades, I've found this presumptive focus on mastery to be at odds with what students need to be full agents of their learning.”

[00:09:40] Olivia: And then she goes on to say, “The very first semester I stepped away from traditional grading, I asked my students what they thought the semester grade should reflect. And growth, not mastery, was their unanimous answer. Over time, I've come to realize that my students were right. If my goal is to focus classroom assessment on what will be most useful to my students, then together, we need to develop a system that accomplishes two important goals.”

[00:10:09] Olivia: “It must do the following. Number one, focus on growing readers and writers rather than mastering skills or content. And number two, recognize that each student is on an individual, unique learning journey.” She wraps that section by saying, “A focus on growth instead of mastery just makes good sense. If students think they have mastered something, they think they've made it.

[00:10:36] Olivia: Done. Task accomplished. Let's move on. But the reading and writing skills we teach don't have beginnings or endings. The work continues. The learning never ends. A focus on growth reflects this. A focus on mastery misrepresents it.” And I reflect then on the districts that I'm serving and that focus on priority standards and mastery and what that means.

[00:11:02] Olivia: And I wonder how clear we really are on the why behind this work and how clear we are with the purpose of the assessments we're crafting and creating, how clear are our students on the why behind the work they're doing. And so they can see a path. And after reading those words of Sarah's, I think so much about growth and how are we setting our students up for success right out of the gate to hold on and retain information in a process way.

[00:11:41] Olivia: And a few years ago, a colleague of mine provided, um, research and, uh, it was a medium article. And the article is written by, uh, Eva Keiffenheim. It's from October of 2020. It's amazing. And it's called The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read. There's an excerpt that I want to share with you because this is something I have since implemented myself as well as with students, and it has made a tremendous difference because if we're going to ask kids to be drivers of their own learning to have autonomy and agency, they need to feel success. And you don't feel success when you are not retaining what you're reading. And so I want to just share this incredible information with you. “The Feynman Technique is one method to make us remember what we read by using elaboration and association concepts.

[00:12:36] Olivia: It's a tool for remembering what you read by explaining it in plain, simple language. The Feynman Technique is a tool for remembering what you read by explaining it in plain, simple language. Not only is the Feynman technique a wonderful recipe for learning, but it's also a window into a different way of thinking that allows you to tear ideas apart and reconstruct them from the ground up.”

[00:12:58] Olivia: What I love about this concept is that, “the approach intuitively believes that intelligence is a process of growth, Which dovetails nicely with the work of Carol Dweck, who beautifully describes the difference between a fixed and growth mindset.” And Eva goes on to explain the four steps you need to take.

[00:13:20] Olivia: She breaks it down in essence, “The Feynman technique consists of four steps. Number one. Identify the subject, choose what you want to remember or think about. Two, explain the content. Three, identify your knowledge gaps. Four, simplify your explanation. So, I will put a link to that in the show notes because that medium piece is wonderful and, um, Feynman has done tons of research around this and is considered an expert when it comes to remembering what you learn and what you read.

[00:13:55] Olivia: I want to end with a story, and it's a story from this week of two teachers that are troubleshooting and trying new ways of co-teaching. And it struck me because we were having a debriefing conversation today and planning how they were going to move forward next week with their work together. And their students, um, are crafting book recommendations and, uh, we were talking about how they are seen by the children, both as teachers.

[00:14:30] Olivia: Not one is a general education or one is a special education. The children don't see themselves as attached to one of the teachers. They're both grown-ups in the room that serve and support all children in the class, and it's pretty beautiful. And we were talking about when the children were asked yesterday to give each other feedback and self-assess their book recommendations.

[00:14:56] Olivia: We heard feedback like, “It's good. It's great. It's great. It's nice. A+.” And when we were talking about that feedback today, we ended up boiling it down to how is feedback helpful? How does feedback push the learner, whether it's as a historian, as a scientist, as a writer, as a reader, and as a mathematician. And what we realized is that it's really specific and unspecific feedback that's - specific is obviously helpful.

[00:15:34] Olivia: Unspecific, not so helpful. It may make us feel okay at the time, but it doesn't push us forward as learners. And so one of the teachers said, how about we have a model, you present your model, and then I offer you both unspecific and specific feedback, and the children can tease out which felt like it actually helped you make revisions or edits to your book review.

[00:16:03] Olivia: And I think that's the type of thinking, that's the type of work we need to consider. What I want you to notice though, it wasn't that the lesson or the thinking necessarily started with that modeling. The kids were able to play with offering each other feedback first. We then, through formative assessment, noticed patterns with how they were offering each other feedback that was very unspecific and now know what we need to model moving forward.

[00:16:38] Olivia: So I hope this leaves you thinking about the power of formative assessment, the power of making sure that we value growth over mastery every day with our children. And the idea that Sarah says of recognizing that “each student is on an individual, unique learning journey.” And guess what? So are the grown ups in their lives.

[00:17:05] Olivia: And it should be a parallel thread. That's what we all deserve. Again, if you haven't listened to Tyler's episode yet, please take the time. Go back. It's an incredible conversation, and I truly believe Tyler is one of the leading innovators when it comes to assessment in our world. I did have people also reach out on social asking if Tyler's book, Hacking Student Motivation, is appropriate for elementary, and I would say a wholehearted YES.

[00:17:36] Olivia: I think all that he speaks to, all of his hacks in the book can be adapted down for the elementary world, um, because all the core philosophies go across, I would say PreK to 12 education. So thanks for tuning in. I cannot wait to see you next week. Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl.

[00:18:00] Olivia: Thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com

[00:18:19] Olivia: Let me know how you're navigating formative assessment and providing feedback to your learners. Tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right now. Away to better the lives of the children in your care and stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll share how I applied what I learned from the guests in schools that week.

[00:18:45] Olivia: See you then.