How do you get to the end of a project and know confidently that your students will do a great job presenting their final products to your community partners? How can you hold students accountable to meet benchmarks throughout the course of a project? How can you create a culture in your classroom or school that says it’s okay to make mistakes, take risks, and support each other? There is more than one answer to any of those questions, but the one answer they have in common is providing students opportunities for feedback throughout the process. Here are four ways that my 8th grade project based learning team provides opportunities for feedback.
Teacher Check-off
Even towards the beginning of the project, before it gets “messy,” “expensive,” or takes a lot of valuable class time, you should have some sort of benchmark, or checkpoint in the project, that gives the group (and the teacher) the confidence that students are on the right track. The group should describe the “possible solution” they have chosen to the problem presented to them in the project. This description can be in an outline or a proposal of some sort. At this point in the project, I find it helpful for teachers to give the feedback and give a green light of approval to continue. If it is an individual classroom project it is easier to manage, but when you try to integrate projects with one, two, or even three different classes, it is nice to be able to have all teachers give their feedback and “sign off” that they give the “green light.”
On our team, we also promote reflection throughout the year and especially at the end of the year. Our students wrote “PED” Talks (Presentation of Educational Development) to show how they used a growth mindset to improve academically, personally, and socially throughout the year. They had to create a very general outline that included how they would use evidence to prove this growth. As a team of four teachers, we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page with these outlines. As we were working on another project, they had to get all four of us to approve their PED talk outline.
What did this do for their final products? One, it helped the students make them more specific. Without this feedback we would have heard the same presentation 100 times. “I studied harder so my grades went up. I practiced presentations so now I can speak in front of people. I was a better group member than last year so I grew socially.” However since they needed four teachers approval and we were all checking in on them, we were able to encourage them to be more specific and make it their own. So instead I heard things about building churches, volunteering in the community, overcoming tragic family situations, and yes, we still heard about how grades improved, but we saw the evidence. We saw students include their reading levels from the beginning of the year, or a screenshot of grades from seventh to eighth grade. By taking the time to talk to the students, we were able to help them truly reflect on how they were gold medalists this year instead of being generic in their reflections.
Feedback Carousel
We used the feedback carousel recently in our Carnival for a Cause project where the students had to raise money for ASAP (Alliance of Substance Abuse Progress).
One of the pieces of the final product was to create a PSA (Public Service Announcement) about drug abuse awareness. They posted these at their carnival booth . Most students chose a flyer, but we had one group make a video and two of the PSAs were shared by being wrapped around prizes or even being the stick they put cotton candy on. About a week before the project was due, we could tell the students needed some focus time on their PSAs. They looked more like research papers, but there are only so many times teachers can tell them that. So we conducted a feedback carousel. All the groups hung their PSA on the wall (and the video was on a laptop on the counter). We sent 4-5 people to each PSA with several post-it notes and a tiny sheet that had the PSA solution criteria on it. The students then had 2 minutes to look at the PSA (because let’s get serious, no one is going to spend more than 1 minute looking at a flyer at a carnival!) and write feedback in the form of “Plus”, “Delta” or to give them next steps. Students drew a “+” sign on top to give positive feedback, “delta,” a triangle, to list things they would change, or wrote “next steps” that the group could use. After the two minutes, we rotated clockwise and those 4 students gave another group feedback. After about 10 rotations, we gave them 5 minutes to roam to other PSAs that caught their eye and give them feedback.
This provided three huge advantages for our groups.
- They were able to “compare” their quality of their PSA to the others that would be represented at the carnival.
- They became more familiar with the actual solution criteria that they would be graded on.
- They were able to get some “fresh eyes” to give them some feedback.
As much as I would love to have a school culture where students naturally ask other groups for feedback, we are not there yet so giving them time to do this is powerful! Here is another idea to help facilitate a feedback carousel in your classroom...
Gallery Walk
A very similar way to give feedback is through a gallery walk. A gallery walk can be used as a final product display, but you can also use it for feedback time before community partners come to see final products. We did this also in our carnival project with the actual booths. This time we invited high school students (who had done this project with us when they were here) to come and play the games and give feedback. By having this set time to be ready for “external enemies” to come and give them feedback, the students had almost the same pressure to have it completed before this deadline (instead of staying up all night the night before it's due). It was impossible for students to wait until the last minute to create their game because we did the gallery walk a week before the carnival was open. This gave them time to, not finish their work, but to make it better. It was nice for the students to hear “next steps” from the high schoolers as opposed to their teachers. This also worked really well as a practice set up time to make sure our carnival was going to fit where we had planned for it to be.
Shark Tank
One of the most fun ways to give feedback is a Shark Tank style presentation. We also did this in our carnival project. At the beginning of the project we watched an episode of Shark Tank. The students developed the solution criteria for the presentation they were going to have to give to the “sharks” (teachers) to see if we would approve their booth to be in “OUR” carnival. After watching the show the students saw that they needed to have an emotional tie-in in addition to data and statistics, which didn’t break my heart as a math teacher! They also realized they needed their game and prizes ready for us to demo as well as be able to discuss the process in which they created their booth. We did the Shark Tank presentations on a Friday before our Tuesday carnival. This gave the students time on Monday to make the changes we needed to see in order to approve them. This was a really fun way to give feedback. It became almost a celebration day because all the groups got to watch us (the sharks) play the different games. Since we had so much other feedback built into this project, we were able to “fine tune” their booths without any major surprises. As we were giving them feedback, one of us was creating a “Next Steps” list for them to have to work on Monday. It was very helpful for us to see and experience what the carnival would really be like. How did they do their data and statistics? They had to find the expected value of their game to predict the amount of prizes they would need and analyze how many people would need to play their game to meet their goal amount they wanted to raise. But again, if teams took advantage of checking in with me beforehand for feedback, there were no surprises here on Shark Tank day either.
Seeking feedback is one way for students to be agents for their own learning. However, we as teachers are responsible for providing them these opportunities during class and helping them develop a mindset that we hope they take with them through all aspects of their lives.
There are a few things to remember about running feedback protocols in your projects.
- Make sure students understand the solution criteria. This helps them give higher quality feedback and gives them a chance to refresh their minds on what is expected in the project.
- Fishbowl the protocols for the first time or two. Students (even adults) do not naturally have a good critical friends group to give them feedback on their work. It feels awkward at times, but facilitating the protocol in a small group as the larger class observes helps the students see the benefit of the protocols.
- Debrief how feedback was given. Yes, I’m asking you to have your students give feedback on getting feedback. It is important for students to hear how their feedback was received. Even as a class, it is okay to talk about poor feedback given and find ways to improve it for the next time around.
- Make phrases like “I Likes” “I Wonders” “Next Steps” “Clarifying Questions” “Plus” “Delta” part of your and your students’ vocabulary. This really helps create the culture of feedback that you are trying to cultivate.
- Build feedback time into your projects by making it official benchmarks. It is easy to push feedback to the wayside when your community partners come in three days and your students still need work time. However, if from the beginning of the project you and your students know that it is an official project benchmark and it has a set date, you are more likely to make time for it. It will also push the students to have their rough drafts done sooner so they can get feedback on them.
So as your summer is starting, and you begin to think about your projects for next year, how will you implement feedback sessions in your projects? What are some ways you have found feedback successful in your PBL classroom? Let us know!
Trisha Burns is an 8th grade math facilitator at CSA Central Campus in Columbus, Indiana. She is a certified teacher and trainer through the New Tech Network and certified through ICPBL for project-based learning in Indiana. She has taught in the classroom since 2009 and facilitates for Magnify Learning in the summer. When she is not developing and implementing projects in her class room she loves to hang out with her family and scrapbook their memories!
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