Visaury Moreta

This inquiry focused on feedback has impacted me tremendously in the classroom. It has made me more aware of the kind of feedback I give my students, as well as it has made me think more about the kinds of assessments I give in my classroom. While this inquiry focused on writing and grammar, as the year progressed I learned that all assessments do not need to be a writing composition, and in fact, students enjoy some freedom and creativity. Moving forward, I would like to brainstorm new activities and think about ways students can demonstrate their comprehension and understanding. Additionally, this inquiry has strengthened the student-teacher and peer relationship because it requires a dialogue. While I am sure all teachers want to create a safe learning dialogue in the class, this year has allowed me to see that a feedback-loop process could help work towards that goal. Effective and helpful feedback requires constructive criticism and some vulnerability since written work is being exposed to students and the teacher. Most importantly, this inquiry, like any, should include students' voices and opinions.

 

This inquiry speaks to my practice because as a language teacher, feedback is at the center of learning, but not all feedback is helpful. This inquiry made me realize that there are different kinds of feedback according to what you are doing. And while a two-column feedback worked for my classroom, that is not necessarily true for all classes. Depending on the assignment, an educator can highlight only what the instructions asked for, could have students help give feedback to one another, or could be done orally outside the classroom. All teachers should focus on feedback, but my role requires me to be especially detail orientated in order to help students recognize their mistake and help them understand why. 

 

It is important to recognize that this feedback process does take time, especially at the beginning of the year; it is all about building a habit. And so, as the year progressed, it became easier to give feedback because the classroom was used to the feedback process, and understood the value it had. I recommend educators of all fields to take the opportunity to focus a little more on feedback in the classroom because it helps students recognize their mistakes and have a dialogue about what they could do to improve. It is also important to dedicate time to reviewing feedback in the classroom because it models to students the importance, and helps them build a habit. Additionally, it provides students the opportunity to practice something they have learned and get feedback on their process before they receive a final grade. I encourage all educators to promote a feedback cycle in their classroom. 

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Although not discussed in the entirety of my inquiry, timeliness of when to return feedback is important and there are many investigations done on this that range in answers, but usually agree that it should be returned promptly. My feedback was returned before another major assessment, but in the future I would like to spend more time focusing on the impact time could have on students processing the feedback. 

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Outside of my own classroom, this inquiry has shed light on the importance of an open-dialogue in the classroom. Traditionally, language classrooms have focused on assigning an assessment and returning them with a grade with a lot of red-pen markups, but no opportunity for a dialogue or for growth. In my learning experience, I have had very little, if any, opportunity to work on an assignment multiple times before being graded, and the feedback-loop / LDR, provides just that. The students want to understand what is wrong and the opportunity to improve, and this cycle provides that. While all feedback is helpful and should help students writing progress, my argument for the feedback-loop cycle is that it allows students to implement changes to a prompt they understand and have analyzed versus starting a new assignment. There is familiarity and a common ground to have an open-dialogue and compare the progress or the repetitions of errors. You wouldn’t assign a quiz before teaching the material and having students practice it, so why should writing assignments or assessments in general be any different? The feedback-loop cycle does just that, it provides students practice, feedback, conversation and an opportunity to try again and see the new writing they are adding. Feedback-loop cycle does not mean students won’t make similar mistakes, but they now have a text to refer to with edits that will help them better understand their writing errors. And so, outside of my own classroom, this inquiry highlighted the importance of helping students recognize their mistakes and giving them opportunities to have a conversation about their assignment and then editing their work.

 

In conclusion, this inquiry helped me realize that feedback can be powerful if done consistently. It requires patience, repetition and an open-dialogue of receiving feedback on the feedback process. While it might seem impossible and very time consuming, it's worth the effort because students express a sense of learning and progress, as my students all indicated they have improved in their writing, and feel like they receive a lot of feedback in Spanish. Ultimately, life is about continuous growth and this inquiry is just that… learning better ways to help students learn.